Twipic has been hosting images on Twitter for years now. Even though competitors have cropped up and Twitter has introduced its own native picture storage option, the service remains a well-known means of hosting images for use on the social network. Its official Android app, which popped up several years after the service gained wide adoption, still managed to accumulate hundreds of thousands of downloads.

But alas, the party couldn't last forever. The service is set to shut down on September 25th. Twitpic's founder has explained in a blog post that Twitter contacted the company a few weeks ago demanding that it abandon its trademark application request. If it didn't, the service risked losing access to the social network's API, a blow that would effectively kill it.

Twitpic filed for the trademark in 2009, and it had finally reached the "published for opposition" phase of the process where other parties can reach out to voice their opinions. Twitter's is pretty obvious here: "Thanks, but we got this from here."

Without the resources to fight such a behemoth, there isn't much left for Twitpic to do. Sadly, it was only a matter of time anyway. With Twitter offering a means of storing pictures natively, outside services are simply less relevant.

Source: Twitpic blog