In what seems to be the final chapter of Twitpic, the original photo sharing service for Twitter users, the company has agreed to hand over the twitpic.com domain name and photo archive to Twitter.

We weren’t able to find a way to keep Twitpic independent. 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. Also, since Twitpic’s user base consists of Twitter users, it makes sense to keep this data with Twitter.

The announcement comes on the same day as the service was scheduled to go offline, following the previous announcement that Twitpic was unable to find a company willing to acquire it.

It is unclear if this was a goodwill gesture on behalf of Twitpic to hand over the domain name, or if it is related to the trademark issues that led to Twitpic originally closing the service.  And it is unknown if any money was exchanged with the domain name handover.  But Twitpic’s founder, Noah Everett, does not seem to be following Twitpic to Twitter.

Twitpic will be moving to a read-only mode, with the apps being pulled, however users can still login and delete or download any photos they wish.

The announcement is great for historical reasons, as some iconic photos were uploaded to the photo service prior to Twitter offering their own photo uploading service directly, including the most famous photo uploaded to Twitpic, the photo of the US Airways crash on the Hudson River.