Photo

After announcing it had found a mystery buyer, the company again announces its plan to shut down at the end of the month.

CNET

Despite assurances that it had staved off a previously announced closure by finding a mystery buyer, photo-sharing site Twitpic said Thursday it would shut after all.

After announcing in early September that it would shutter its service for sharing photos on Twitter due to a legal dispute with the social network, Twitpic said it had been acquired and would remain in business, with details to come. However, Twitpic and its mystery savior could not agree on acquisition terms, Twitpic founder Noah Everett said in a statement posted to its website.

It's with a heavy heart that I announce again that Twitpic will be shutting down on October 25. We worked through a handful of potential acquirers and exhausted all potential options. We were almost certain we had found a new home for Twitpic (hence our previous tweet), but agreeable terms could not be met. Normally we wouldn't announce something like that prematurely but we were hoping to let our users know as soon as possible that Twitpic was living on.

I'm sincerely sorry (and embarrassed) for the circumstances leading up to this, from our initial shutdown announcement to an acquisition false alarm.

Everett said users will have until October 25 to export their data and photos.

Twitpic announced on September 4 that it would shut down at the end of September due to a trademark battle with Twitter. Everett said the decision was made after Twitter threatened to cut off Twitpic's access to its application programming interface -- the tools that allow developers to tap into Twitter's platform -- if the 6-year-old startup did not abandon its trademark.

Two weeks later, Everett announced that had been acquired by an unidentified buyer and would stay in business. The company promised that more information would be forthcoming but has been silent about acquisition details.

Launched in 2008, Twitpic was perhaps the best-established third-party image-sharing service for Twitter users, letting them link to photos in tweets. It was a source of citizen journalism as tweeters spotted newsworthy events -- such as the Hudson River plane crash -- captured the action on their phone, uploaded images to Twitpic and shared the link on Twitter.