218 replies to this topic

[mab01uk]

Photobucket Breaks Image Links Across the Internet
http://uk.pcmag.com/...ss-the-internet

[panky]

Just signed up on Imgur, took about five minutes to upload 69 pictures from my PC, should have done it a long time ago.

[GraemeC]

What utter greedy jobsworths. I can't even comprehend the number of destroyed topics on the hundreds of thousands of fora that exist. I would say they have destroyed probably around 15 years of internet history to disappear. 

 

And Photobucket would care because?

 

In reality there is some sense in what they have done - the sheer volume of forums and images affected just goes to prove how many people took advantage of their 'free' service, for which they probably make very little back on the advertising.  I wouldn't be surprised if that part of whoever's business Photobucket belongs to are making a considerable monthly loss.

 

OK, their approach to fix it may have been to go to the other extreme and they will no doubt price themselves out of the market, but I can understand their choice to do something.

There will be either a further change, or Photobucket will get wound up or sold on.

[The Matt]

There will be either a further change, or Photobucket will get wound up or sold on.

Exactly. The majority of users simply won't pay. If they'd set the fee at 5 a month, a lot of people would pay. 10 a year, most would pay. 400 a year, very few will pay.

They'll surely have to review this decision.

[Spider]

In a way, while this is short term pain, I think for one, my life will be better off once I get away from Photobucket.

 

It was tollerable when I first started using about 6 - 7 years ago, but has become increasingly 'unfriendly'.

 

As Mark from the MK1 Forum pointed out, what Photobucket are doing is Ransomware. I hope and trust it will bite them on the backside. Better yet, being US based, I hope someone wealthy enough takes them to task for this.

 

Some may think 'what do you want for free?' and to some small degree, I do see that, however when we all signed up to use Photobucket, there was no indication that this would happen, only a storage limit and that if we wanted it free, we'd have to put up with the adverts. However, what they have done is allowed many of us to upload years worth of memories with little more than 'We'll look after your memories' and now they are wanting to extorting money from us for this.

 

For what it's worth, those like me, who are now looking for a new hosting site, Wiki has a comprehensive list, though I don't know how up to date it is;-

 

https://en.wikipedia...haring_websites

 

<EDIT: I'm not 100% certain this is altogether legitimate. I just received an email from Photobucket, not altogether unusual, however it was on my business email address for which is not registered with Photobucket. I'm sus on this. >

Edited by Moke Spider, 01 July 2017 - 07:12 AM.

[r3k1355]

 

What utter greedy jobsworths. I can't even comprehend the number of destroyed topics on the hundreds of thousands of fora that exist. I would say they have destroyed probably around 15 years of internet history to disappear. 

 

And Photobucket would care because?

 

In reality there is some sense in what they have done - the sheer volume of forums and images affected just goes to prove how many people took advantage of their 'free' service, for which they probably make very little back on the advertising.  I wouldn't be surprised if that part of whoever's business Photobucket belongs to are making a considerable monthly loss.

 

Very true, although if you setup/run a free image hosting website then what do you expect will happen?

It will cost a ton of money to run and there's no clear way to actually make money back.

[Spider]

 

 

What utter greedy jobsworths. I can't even comprehend the number of destroyed topics on the hundreds of thousands of fora that exist. I would say they have destroyed probably around 15 years of internet history to disappear. 

 

And Photobucket would care because?

 

In reality there is some sense in what they have done - the sheer volume of forums and images affected just goes to prove how many people took advantage of their 'free' service, for which they probably make very little back on the advertising.  I wouldn't be surprised if that part of whoever's business Photobucket belongs to are making a considerable monthly loss.

 

Very true, although if you setup/run a free image hosting website then what do you expect will happen?

It will cost a ton of money to run and there's no clear way to actually make money back.

 

 

That's fine, however, it's a no brainer too, so why didn't they put some realistic limits on it from the outset?

Ransomware.

[mab01uk]

Just signed up on Imgur, took about five minutes to upload 69 pictures from my PC, should have done it a long time ago.

 

But of course there is no guarantee Imgur won't do the same at some point in the future when they have a lot more users and you have a lot more than 69 pictures uploaded or shared on long running forum project threads, etc.

So probably best to have a better alternative plan for hosting photos in place if possible.....ready for the next time this happens?

 

At the moment my pictures are not affected, yet. After signing up for Photobucket I used up the "free" 2Mb of space so have since paid for some space for a small fee but I guess that will end when due for annual renewal if not before.......

 

PhotoBucket now charges $399 for third-party hosted images

"As far as alternatives are concerned, there is Imgur for instance which supports the embedding of images on third-party sites.

While members of Photobucket may wait and hope that the company reverses the stance on third-party hosted images, it is probably better to migrate the photos to another hosting service entirely.

You can download your entire library of images by selecting Library on Photobucket, and there the download album link under actions."

https://www.ghacks.n...-hosted-images/

 

"Beware of relying on any one service. Any of them can fail, price themselves out of reach, or change their terms of service. Keep backups of your photos and posts, and be prepared to make decisions to move to another service as needed."
http://www.laurenway...-host-site.html

Edited by mab01uk, 01 July 2017 - 09:07 AM.

[r3k1355]

 

 

 

What utter greedy jobsworths. I can't even comprehend the number of destroyed topics on the hundreds of thousands of fora that exist. I would say they have destroyed probably around 15 years of internet history to disappear. 

 

And Photobucket would care because?

 

In reality there is some sense in what they have done - the sheer volume of forums and images affected just goes to prove how many people took advantage of their 'free' service, for which they probably make very little back on the advertising.  I wouldn't be surprised if that part of whoever's business Photobucket belongs to are making a considerable monthly loss.

 

Very true, although if you setup/run a free image hosting website then what do you expect will happen?

It will cost a ton of money to run and there's no clear way to actually make money back.

 

 

That's fine, however, it's a no brainer too, so why didn't they put some realistic limits on it from the outset?

Ransomware.

 

 

Quite possibly, wait till you (think) you've got everyone over a barrel and then rip them off.

 

Hopefully it will blow up in their face and just putting in small charges would have been a better idea,

[Black.Ghost]

 

What utter greedy jobsworths. I can't even comprehend the number of destroyed topics on the hundreds of thousands of fora that exist. I would say they have destroyed probably around 15 years of internet history to disappear. 

 

And Photobucket would care because?

 

In reality there is some sense in what they have done - the sheer volume of forums and images affected just goes to prove how many people took advantage of their 'free' service, for which they probably make very little back on the advertising.  I wouldn't be surprised if that part of whoever's business Photobucket belongs to are making a considerable monthly loss.

 

OK, their approach to fix it may have been to go to the other extreme and they will no doubt price themselves out of the market, but I can understand their choice to do something.

There will be either a further change, or Photobucket will get wound up or sold on.

 

I agree with you to an extent. However, there are now hundreds of thousands of users who will just say no; there really is no point a few people doing it because forums all over the place are still full of broken links. I, for one, won't even bother going to check out the build threads anymore because there will be 50 pages of broken images. The result of this is most of the users will probably stop using the service altogether. That means less unique hits, and ultimately less advertising revenue. Why would you pay to advertise on a site that gets little traffic?

 

It's basic supply and demand. Like has been said, the optimal amount was probably around $10. Just enough that people will still be prepared to do it to avoid the hassle but not so much that you lose the majority of your users. There is so much competition on the internet, there is always the next big service. It was a stupid business decision (time may prove me wrong, but I doubt it).

 

What it will do is contribute to the demise of forums. People aren't going to trust other hosting sites anymore not to do the same thing, and no one wants to spend ages uploading all their pics. It would take me a full day's work to change all my images and relink, and I have very very few. It pushes people towards FB updates instead. The way FB works though means a build update thread isn't ideal, unless it's being run as a completely separate account. 

 

It may be the intention to run the service down and sell it off. For me, it's a basic lack of economic understanding. I suspect it does cost a lot to run and host, but there are plenty of companies out there who run a loss leading brand / product / service for all manner of reasons. They should have had the foresight to see that when they set it up. 

[nicklouse]

just thought i would have a look at imageshacks costs now

 

started off free now upto 1K a year

 

https://imageshack.com/upgrade

[r3k1355]

Thats mental, but then their own site does list the cheapest package as 'Most popular'

[andyt]

Just signed up with imjur as well very quick uploads but is this the way to post pictures? 

 

http://imgur.com/9sr3zCQ
http://imgur.com/HGnxYso

Edited by andyt, 01 July 2017 - 07:47 PM.

[panky]

Click on the bottom link in the list to copy and paste it in your reply, the pictures then appear automatically on here.

[nicklouse]