“We've been acquired and Twitpic will live on”
twitter.com
twitter.com
Edit: or just scrape all the images, put them into their own service, then cut them out?
My opinion is that you're right but it's Twitter's money and it knows lots of things (how many Twitpics, how much traffic etc) that the rest of us don't...
who would want to buy them if that's true?
Huh? They said they would be implementing an export function, have in fact now done so. It can be found here, at the bottom of the page:
It's slow, but it works.
Twitpic is not and never has been a photo storage service. It was/is a service for adding pics to tweets. That's all.
It doesn't make any sense to move them to another provider: the Twitpic addresses are already included in the tweets and Twitter isn't going to change those to different URLs.
Since Twitpic's purpose was to post photos inline at Twitter, what proportion of their photos have they probably lost?
Given that they can't even cope with the idea of copying their pics off this old device, what are the odds that they can cope with the idea of downloading an archive from Twitpic?
I'm all in favor of companies letting you take your data out of any service you've used, on principle, but frankly, this scenario doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, that's an extreme case, and web services are typically not set up to deal with extreme (in fact, totally hypothetical) cases.
I still haven't seen anybody put up a rational counter-argument. Does that mean nobody can?
It also wouldn't be smart because, as regular users quickly discovered, Twitpic's system often didn't work so you had to upload the same pic again. And again.
Then there's the fact that -- very, very obviously -- if you upload a 4000 x 3000 photo, Twitpic reduces it to the sort of tiny size that fits into a tweet. (Twitter does the same.)
I used Twitpic daily for many years, and I know it very well. The only thing that would be worth retrieving is the hit-counts for various pics, some of which went over 20,000. However, it's hardly a big deal if I lose those numbers. They're not of any practical value.
For example, not being able to imagine people wanting to save pictures from the service - people can lose their local copies from device/hard drive failure, or lost cellphones, and the digital copies are the only ones that remain. I can attest that this has happened to me.
Anyone who has a different view of the facts could present a counter-argument, but really, no one has.
people can lose their local copies from device/hard drive failure, or lost cellphones
Yes, this is true. But as I pointed out, Twitpic is not and never has been a storage service, and it does not keep original photos. The business was set up to post pics to Twitter, not to cater for the very small number of people who might have suffered in this way.
That said, all those photos are STILL AVAILABLE ON TWITPIC and can easily be saved from its pages. A simple browser extension would even download several of them at a time.
The only counter argument, as far as I can see, is that Twitpic should have been set up to provide a different type of service, perhaps called Storepic or whatever. But it wasn't. No amount of downvoting hides the fact that some people are simply failing to understand this simple truth.
I should also mention, I made no mention of using Twitpic as a storage service. Even getting a compressed/altered version of original photos is better than completely losing them many times.
Even getting a compressed/altered version of original photos is better than completely losing them many times.
Absolutely agree.
I can't speak to exactly why you're being downvoted, but your comments read as very defensive and angry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338469
It's blunt but it's short, accurate and to the point.
"I cant get something? I will make sure no one can!"
It smells like a big scare tactic to put the mess on someone else's plate. It worked I guess.
I understand the fundamental argument here, but were people really thinking that twitpic was some kind of online image archive? Are there lots of people operating on the assumption that twitpic was going to be forever available and available as an image catalog?
I see twitpic, imgur, Facebook, and even services like flickr as temporary methods to share photos online. Berating twitpic for not having an export seems a little bit odd to me.
Indeed, and for that reason it's a shame why only few services allow seamless synchronization. Apparently, you can show Google Drive photos in Google Plus, but not with an Apps account (which I have). Dropbox currently comes closest: I can add photos from files/folders to Dropbox photo albums. This is really the nicest way of photo sharing: I can just copy a photo to my Dropbox folder, share it in an album as in Flickr. My local Dropbox folder is backed up through time machine, etc.
Of course, Dropbox' album functionality is currently severely limited. I'd really like to see them expand it, or Google to make their service smoother and generally available, or some startup that makes photo albums from your Dropbox/Drive/OneDrive folders.
These are really not the same types of service.
* Twitpic was for posting photos incline on Twitter in the days before Twitter added that feature. This is a very specific function: it's not a photo storage site, and never has been.
* Imgur was originally for sharing photos on reddit, but not inline: you go to Imgur to view them. But there's no guarantee that your photos won't be deleted for one reason or another (as the celebrity nudes were deleted).
* Facebook is for sharing photos with friends. There's every expectation that they'll be available as long as you have a Facebook account, and you can download them. However, there's no guarantee that your original photos will be saved in their original resolution. Again, it's not an archival back-up site.
They are different sites, set up to provide different functions.
[1] Prime example is the bostonfire twitter account. They were using twitpic, seemingly out of stagnancy in not changing services. When they couldn't post pictures on September 4, they switched to posting pictures directly to twitter. Cannot think of a reason to switch back.
I can't imagine someone acquiring twitpic just to continue operating it the same way it has been.
It would be nice if Twitter bought Twitpic and shut it down to new posts, but maintained the existing photos at the old links. Otherwise there would be lots of old tweets where the pics no longer worked.