Bye Bye, Photobucket

[Boatboy24]

I've been using Photobucket for years to store some photos and post pictures using tags. Got an email from them today saying since I'm not a paying member, I will no longer be allowed to link to images in my account. Performance on the site has been getting steadily worse for a while and its been frustrating to say the least. Time to find an alternative. :re

To make matters worse for some, this already went into effect. So images that have been embedded no longer work. Way to give a heads up, Photobucket.

Alternative testing: trying to embed from Amazon Prime Photo. Couldn't make it work last time I tried.

[img]https://content-na.drive.amazonaws.com/cdproxy/templink/FRNvj7oIKAFvSZNCgcoMqWvFTleBXmBTCKqgKMi4AHMpX92IB?viewBox=821%2C616

 

[Johnd]

I've been using Photobucket for years to store some photos and post pictures using tags. Got an email from them today saying since I'm not a paying member, I will no longer be allowed to link to images in my account. Performance on the site has been getting steadily worse for a while and its been frustrating to say the least. Time to find an alternative. :re

To make matters worse for some, this already went into effect. So images that have been embedded no longer work. Way to give a heads up, Photobucket.

Alternative testing: trying to embed from Amazon Prime Photo. Couldn't make it work last time I tried.

[img]https://content-na.drive.amazonaws.com/cdproxy/templink/FRNvj7oIKAFvSZNCgcoMqWvFTleBXmBTCKqgKMi4AHMpX92IB?viewBox=821%2C616

If your troubles would be resolved, why not pay a reasonable fee for the service?

 

[ceeaton]

If your troubles would be resolved, why not pay a reasonable fee for the service?

He's saving money for that deck he's replacing!

 

[Johnd]

He's saving money for that deck he's replacing!

Doesn't sound like a few dollars dribbled into the photobucket would buy much deck anyway.........

 

[Boatboy24]

If your troubles would be resolved, why not pay a reasonable fee for the service?

$400 a year isn't a reasonable fee.

 

[dralarms]

$400 a year isn't a reasonable fee.

Dang, you could almost setupyour own server for that.

 

[Boatboy24]

Dang, you could almost setupyour own server for that.

I did - for less than that. No public access, but I can get to it from anywhere that I have a signal.

 

[Johnd]

$400 a year isn't a reasonable fee.

Well, that certainly doesn't seem like a reasonable fee, I wouldn't do that either!!!

 

[ibglowin]

Dayum........


How much space do you need!

$400 a year isn't a reasonable fee.

 

[wineforfun]

I use befunky.com. Free service..................for now.
Or picmonkey.

 

[dcbrown73]

I use Google Photos. The best part is every time i take a photo with my phone, it automatically backs up to my Google Photos. You get unlimited storage too if you allow Google to optimize / compress the image in the cloud.

 

[Boatboy24]

Dayum........


How much space do you need!

Not a ton. But when clicking the link in their love letter, I was brought to an upgrade option at that price. Plenty of free options out there. At least for now.

 

[Boatboy24]

I use Google Photos. The best part is every time i take a photo with my phone, it automatically backs up to my Google Photos. You get unlimited storage too if you allow Google to optimize / compress the image in the cloud.

Amazon is the same. But I think if you embed an image from there, they put a time limit on it. I'm experimenting. To be completely honest, the only reason I had the photobucket account was to embed images on another forum. Dealing with ads and popups seemed like a fair exchange for some limited photo storage. I don't need to do that to post pics here, obviously.

I think they've figured out that people weren't actually using it to store and share photos and they weren't getting the traffic they'd hoped for. Their user experience and service has never been that great, so I imagine the bulk of their users were just using it the same way I was. The ads have gotten very numerous and aggressive of late and I guess this move is the latest to try and weed out the rif-raff and get down to the basics of true revenue-generating customers.

 

[Putterrr]

My father always said "There is no free ride in life"

cheers

 

[ibglowin]

There are a few politicians and national committees that thought that as well once upon a time!

I did - for less than that. No public access.....

 

[jswordy]

If your troubles would be resolved, why not pay a reasonable fee for the service?

Photobucket is asking for $400 a year or $40 a month from me (which is $480 a year!). While that may be fine for some of our well to do members, some of us regular working stiffs feel that's a steep price. They have lumped me in with professional photographers, who are getting remunerated for their work. Plus they POed me in the way they did it. Boom! Done. No chance to adjust.

I understand that their business model no longer works, and I understand that sites like this and others I am on have encouraged members to use Photobucket's free third-party service to upload content so the sites can then make money - it's what Photobucket encouraged. The days of free third-party hosting are going away, folks, so sooner or later all sites will have to bite the bullet and pay the freight to host their own pix. Two sites I am on now have done that for 20 years plus. I commend them. Every pic posted since the early 90s is still stored there.

Meanwhile, as mentioned here, there are still places we can run for pic hosting. But we cannot, in the end, hide forever. I hate the loss of institutional memory my favorite sites have undergone as a result of this. But "it's on the cloud" is going to cost more and more as they monetize it in coming years. Putting that on the backs of the users seems the inappropriate place for it to be, IMO.

I mod, and there are discussions going on now about what to do. It looks to me like the sites that don't host their own pix will run the risk of being usurped by FB over the long haul. Perhaps another company will see opportunity here. We'll see how it all shakes out.

Could be my pix look more like this now than an actual pic in the frame.

https://goo.gl/photos/UqTkAriFdRDrG7ke7

 

[jswordy]

I use Google Photos. The best part is every time i take a photo with my phone, it automatically backs up to my Google Photos. You get unlimited storage too if you allow Google to optimize / compress the image in the cloud.

I am still trying to figure out how to third-party link the Google pics to get them to come up in the frame as a photo and not a link. Help?

 

[Johnd]

Photobucket is asking for $400 a year or $40 a month from me (which is $480 a year!). While that may be fine for some of our well to do members, some of us regular working stiffs feel that's a steep price.

Since you quoted me, I feel the need to respond. When I made that comment some time back, no fees were given, but when they were, I choked. For the record, I wouldn't spend any of my hard earned money to store pictures on someone else's storage space.

 

[jswordy]

Since you quoted me, I feel the need to respond. When I made that comment some time back, no fees were given, but when they were, I choked. For the record, I wouldn't spend any of my hard earned money to store pictures on someone else's storage space.

Yeah, John, I saw your later comments after I posted. It used to be "don't worry, it's on the cloud" meant it was free hosted. Those days are almost gone now.

My view is, why should I PAY, when it is content that is going on a commercial site or forum where the SITE is making the ad dollars by me contributing for free. (Photobucket really screwed up Amazon, for example.) Photobucket wants the same dollars from me that they do a paid pro photographer. It seems to me they went about it the wrong way. Get the sites to pay. Anyway, there are lots of software companies that have discussion packages that have a hosting component. It just costs the site more. But that is the way it is going.

And sure enough, LOL, if you go to Google News and search "Photobucket," OMG! Here's just a couple...

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15919224/photobucket-broken-images-amazon-ebay-etsy-paid-update

http://nypost.com/2017/07/05/how-photobucket-is-now-shaking-down-its-users/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40492668

They'll never get a dime from me! I spent half the day today getting my pix back out of there, until the site went down. Probably overloaded with folks doing the same!

The cynic in me says Photobucket did this to get eBay or Amazon to buy them up. We'll see.

 

[Boatboy24]

I refuse to take my pics from there - I still have copies of everything there on my NAS and/or hard drive. In fact, I'm feeling malicious and might just load more, to max out my storage. They are getting exactly what they want from most non-paying users, which is deletion of all their photos. Now, they have all that much more storage space that they can use for paying members.