Twitpic, an app that allowed users to post pictures to Twitter (TWTR), officially closed down over the weekend, citing legal action by Twitter and the drop in users over the past few years as reasons for its closure.

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In a twist of events, last week creator of Twitpic Noah Everett announced the service would live-on, with a new buyer emerging. This quickly changed, when the apparent buyer dropped out of the bidding, and Everett re-announced the death of Twitpic.

But now Twitpic will live on in read-only form, and has been acquired by Twitter. It might only be the name Twitter is after, but it is enough to keep Twitpic alive in some way, even if the full service is dead.

"We weren't able to find a way to keep Twitpic independent," said Everett in Twitpic statement. "However, I'm happy to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to give them the Twitpic domain and photo archive, thus keeping the photos and links alive for the time being. Twitter shares our goal of protecting our users and this data."

By acquiring Twitpic, Twitter keeps all of the photos in their servers now, instead of potentially getting deleted by Twitpic. This is another incentive to keep Twitpic alive in some sense, with millions of potential photos lost if Twitpic were to fold.

Twitpic's Android and iOS apps have been removed from both stores - Everett has said Twitpic will not accept any more photos and will live on in read-only mode. This is a shame for anyone who continued to use the service, but Twitter does have its own way to upload photos now.

Looking back, Twitpic could have been so much more, if the team had worked to port the app to other social networks and added more editing functionality. Once Twitpic's numbers began to dip, it looks like the team gave up on the project somewhat.

No word on if Noah Everett or any other developers at Twitpic will move over to Twitter. Also no word on how much Twitter paid for Twitpic.

TagsTwitpic, Twitter photos, Noah Everett, photo-sharing service