TEMPO.CO, San Francisco - Photo-sharing site Twitpic said Thursday it would close down operation this month despite its previous announcement that the site had found a mysterious buyer. Twitpic founder Noah Everett said users had time until October 25 to export their files.

"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," CNET quoted the statement posted on its website.

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

On September 4, 2014, the site announced shut down after a trade mark dispute with social network Twitter.

Twitter threatened to cut off Twitpic's access to their interface if the photo-sharing site did not give up their trade mark.

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.

ERWIN Z | CNET