Photobucket and Others Restricting Service

Jammer Six said:
What did you think they were doing? Storing your pictures? Donating their harddrive space? Creating world peace through photographs?

They're a business. They're supposed to make money. It's what they do.
Click to expand...

They sell ads for money. They gave us free photo hosting in exchange for us seeing ads. It's what they did. They made money, but apparently want more.
 
Arathol said:
They are still all there and accessible. Download all of them to your hard drive while you still can.
Click to expand...

Downloaded 700+ Photos today. I have about 200 left to download.

Once I get the rest, I'll delete everything on my account, send them a delightful email in which i tell them to pound sand and log out for good.

It used to be a fine photo hosting site. Pop-up ads, incessant email and now fees? Move this thread to W&C and I'll tell you what I really think. ;)
 
Lone_Wolfe said:
They sell ads for money. They gave us free photo hosting in exchange for us seeing ads. It's what they did. They made money, but apparently want more.
Click to expand...
Yup, that's what I said. They're a business. Everything they do, they do for money.

It sounds like you think this hooker should kiss you goodbye for free, for some reason. And that's just not what she does.
 
Jammer Six said:
Yup, that's what I said. They're a business. Everything they do, they do for money.

It sounds like you think this hooker should kiss you goodbye for free, for some reason. And that's just not what she does.
Click to expand...

You made a really silly and wrong ASS-U-mption about what I think. They used the same business model that thousands and thousands of other sites that offer 'free' content do. Draw traffic to the site with the free content or service, and sell ads that are shown to those visitors. No kisses from a hooker needed.
 
Lone_Wolfe said:
You made a really silly and wrong ASS-U-mption about what I think. They used the same business model that thousands and thousands of other sites that offer 'free' content do. Draw traffic to the site with the free content or service, and sell ads that are shown to those visitors. No kisses from a hooker needed.
Click to expand...
Business costs go up over time, banner ad revenue plateaus. Remember, probably hundreds of millions of people are using this free service, that gets expensive to run. It had to crack at some point. The hooker analogy is crude but accurate, ain't nothing free in this world.
 
lieferung said:
Business costs go up over time, banner ad revenue plateaus. Remember, probably hundreds of millions of people are using this free service, that gets expensive to run. It had to crack at some point. The hooker analogy is crude but accurate, ain't nothing free in this world.
Click to expand...

Not disagreeing about it being expensive to run, but I have to wonder if their ad revenue really plateaued or if something else went wrong. In recent months, they're about tripled the amount of ads visitors to the site see. Makes me suspect mismanagement, or worse. I wouldn't be surprised at all it photobucket is on the verge of bankruptcy. If they weren't already, I'll bet they will be soon. They went about this all wrong. Also, other photo hosting sites are still 'free', in other words, ad-based.
 
That's pretty funny.

If they're profitable, they went about it all right, and what might have been is for others.
 
Jammer Six said:
That's pretty funny.

If they're profitable, they went about it all right, and what might have been is for others.
Click to expand...

I doubt they'll be profitable anymore, as they're losing a lot of site traffic, which means they'll lose advertisers. They've made a lot of enemies by the way they went about it. Billing yourself as "Free photo hosting" for years, then suddenly changing to $400 a year photo hosting. I kind of doubt they have enough high-volume users who'll pay that amount to make up for the lost ad revenue they're going to have.
 
I keep digital copies of important photos on a couple of physical hard drives, a free hosting service and a paid hosting service. A couple of terabytes is not that expensive. It requires a fair amount of idiocy for me to delete all copies.
 
lieferung said:
Business costs go up over time, banner ad revenue plateaus. Remember, probably hundreds of millions of people are using this free service, that gets expensive to run. It had to crack at some point. The hooker analogy is crude but accurate, ain't nothing free in this world.
Click to expand...
I'm not going to argue too hard against this but storage and pipes get cheaper every year.
 
Man all these people defending these sacks of crap (photobucket)makes my head spin. They are doing a last ditch money grab and they're scumbags. After reading their legal policy it is obvious they can do whatever they want and do not have to justify or give notice.

That is the last straw for me with photobucket the site was a glitchy turd and they worked on that and now it cost 400 bucks. no thanks
 
JB in SC

Yes, keeping our images within our own control and safe is half this battle.

But I don't know if this issue is so much a matter of secure storage as it is for the sudden withdrawal of a platform enabling images as powerful visual content posted across forums and blogs over the internet ... the archival, resource, educational, personal sharing ... all put in context by the user. Sadly the hosting site's offer for third party hosting is withdrawn retroactively and suddenly and apparently without warning ... and at the unrealistic cost of $399/yr to reverse.

I suspect that any money paid to them will go down the drain with them.
 
John Watson said:
With the amount of pop up ads, the site was such a pain to use that I haven't used it in some time anyway.
Click to expand...

This right here is why I don't get all the upset. It's been bad for a while, there are better services. It seems to me people are just sore because they were too comfortable with the status quo and too lazy to switch over. I don't see the point in being sore when the easiest solution is to just use another site. It takes a bit of work but aren't saving your photos worth a bit of work? Certainly more so than making a sore feelings thread.
 
What villains! They stored hundreds of my pictures for free, for years and now they want compensation?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top