Tinypic is shutting down

Tinypic just sent out emails that it is shutting down its free image hosting site

[cabsco]

Here is the content of the email I received from TinyPic today:

TinyPic is shutting down its image hosting service because we can no longer support a free service that derives 100% of its revenue from ever declining on-site ad revenues.

Aug 20, 2019 - no new images may be uploaded on TinyPic.

Aug 26, 2019 - hosted images will no longer be viewable on third-party sites.

Sep 16, 2019 - last day for TinyPic account holders to access their accounts to download their images.


It is noted in the email sent to me by TinyPic that bulk download is not an option, so each image will need to be download separately.

Unfortunately, I still have some of my old blog posts image hosted on tinypic. More than 200. Sigh! A lot of people, especially webmasters with old/outdated websites will be affected by this unforeseen short-noticed closure. This will affect the web.

[Dimitri]

It might also be a wise decision, considering the EU copyright directive, which is making platforms liable for the material uploaded by their users.

[engine]

Oh, it's been around for ages. Thanks for the info.

[Dimitri]

The thing is, free hosting services of all kind will disappear progressively. It has a cost to host images, videos, data, etc ... during the golden age of the Internet, it was easy to cover the expenses with ads, but today, we all know how this is no longer the case. If you add to this all the potential legal issues with letting people host anything on "your" servers, it's sure that it's a part of the Internet which will disappear.

[tangor]

With the ad spigot getting shut down there's no incentive for sites like TinyPic to continue operations. Despite the common belief (among users) that the web is free, it is not, never has been, and never will be.

Heck, users have to pay to play in the first place (which should be the first clue!). :)

That said, I avoid third party anything as much as possible. I also value my content/creations to the point that I won't knowingly put them on a third party site I have no control over. And even then, I'll keep that to a minimum if it simply HAS to be done (such as a hosting account).

Still, this seems like awful short notice to their clientele, so TinyPic must be having severe financial problems. (Guessing).