Photobucket blocked 3rd party hosting

WezV

I have originals and backups from the last few years, but there is some older stuff I need to reclaim

OilCityPickups

Obviously I'm gutted that all my historical pickup rebuild threads will be stripped of pictures ... there are loads of them ... and they equal a lot of hard work from me. There is no way I can go back through all the threads and re upload matching pics from my hard drive Lightroom library for everything ... but if folks have a special interest in an article PM me ... and I will do my best to re populate it with shots hosted on another site.
I am furious with 'Photobollocks' but I suppose I should have seen it coming ... sigh.

crunchman

The stupid thing is they are talking $400 per year for hosting pictures.  You can get your own website from somewhere like Godaddy for $5.99 per month (with 1GB of storage) and host them there.

Looks like they are just trying to hold existing users to ransom.

ICBM

Apparently you can still link thumbnails, so all is probably not totally lost. It would still mean going back through all the old posts to edit them though.

Personally I am quite happy that there are probably a few old threads of mine on other forums which will now have the 'Please update your account' image in place of a picture - it will remind other people not to use PhotoFuckwit ever again.

usedtobe

crunchman said:

The stupid thing is they are talking $400 per year for hosting pictures.  You can get your own website from somewhere like Godaddy for $5.99 per month (with 1GB of storage) and host them there.

Looks like they are just trying to hold existing users to ransom.

I was half tempted to half seriously suggest we all got our own website sorted.. 
Obviously, it's a bit ott for the vast majority of us, but for perhaps a significant number of us, a real option..

WezV

I have a website so I could go that way, but I like being to upload from a phone via an app.  

StormshadowGuitars

WezV said:

I have a website so I could go that way, but I like being to upload from a phone via an app.  

Yes, same here. I'm not sure i want all those pics on a website to be honest. Its  nice and handy using something like that from the phone, especially as not all the pics i want to keep somewhere.

WezV

I am now on my 6th attempt to download the main album and it's been corrupt each time.  Apparently the button to delete your account has stopped working too.

is this a conscious attempt to slow the exodus, or just too many people trying to leave at the same time?

Danny1969

Test 

Ignore this I was just trying something to get around image hosting 

crunchman

Not sure what's going on, but I can still see PB pictures.

olafgarten

WezV said:

I have a website so I could go that way, but I like being to upload from a phone via an app.  

If you are using Android, it wouldn't take too long for me to make a quick app which will upload pictures to your website.

streethawk

Photobucket is the worst thing in the history of the internet.

I've been using postimage.org lately and will be looking into google pics. 

ICBM

Just reading some stuff elsewhere that this might actually not be a stupid move, but a carefully-thought-through one - and in fact, the vast majority of the users getting angry and leaving is exactly what they want - which also explains the brutal way the change was rolled out with no warning. It does make sense...

Since these are all the free(-riding) users who cost the company a lot of money for storage capacity and bandwidth but don't generate any, because hotlinking - if done correctly - doesn't trigger ad revenue. Bye bye… the company instantly saves a fortune and doesn't lose any income.

Then repositions itself as a smaller, subscription-only service probably aimed at professionals and companies, so it can drop all the infuriating ads that drive passive viewers away from it. Hence the deliberately high price for the only service that offers hotlinking, since it's actually still trivial for those users.

The real problem for other companies who still offer a free service will be how they make money from it.

Neil

ICBM said:

The real problem for other companies who still offer a free service will be how they make money from it.

That is the trouble.

People often expect media for free nowadays but somebody has to pay for it somewhere.

My guess is that once everybody starts migrating their pics to other free sites the huge cost of extra bandwidth will get the other sites charging which will cause migration to the next site and the merry-go-round will start all over again. 

TimmyO

I have/had paid storage on both Onedrive and Google drive/pics but both make it hard to embed in forums (deliberately I presume)
Google is the most frustrating as it seems to work but the link expires after a day or 2 lol 

WezV

Neil said:

ICBM said:

The real problem for other companies who still offer a free service will be how they make money from it.

That is the trouble.

People often expect media for free nowadays but somebody has to pay for it somewhere.

My guess is that once everybody starts migrating their pics to other free sites the huge cost of extra bandwidth will get the other sites charging which will cause migration to the next site and the merry-go-round will start all over again. 

I would happily pay a reasonable hosting charge.  $399 a year seems excessive.

its not just the free users affected here, pb's existing paid subscribers are also being held to ransom.  People who pay $100 a year jave had the same message as those who pay nothing.... even worse, PB are still advertising those $100 accounts!

ICBM

I wouldn't be surprised if they allow hotlinking on the cheaper accounts again quite soon - probably once they've jettisoned enough of the users who will definitely never pay anything. The quickest and easiest way to sort out the percentage of users who will pay from those who won't is to introduce a deliberately excessive charge and see who jumps, and who hangs on in the hope of a partial rollback.

This could be wildly wrong (and it wasn't my deduction, I read it elsewhere! My initial reaction was that they'd go bust within six months) but it does look to me as if it could be an intentional strategy and not total stupidity. No-one could be *that* stupid, surely? A partial rollback would also make them look like they're listening, to the type of customers they actually want.

OilCityPickups

I think for us purchasing more server space on our Oil City site and hosting future images/articles there will be more economically viable. Perhaps in a searchable database... then linking to Fretboard will be a simple matter. 

TonyR

Photobucket account now deleted - it was a pile of steaming turd anyway... Photo-fuckit!

Imgur it is for me.

StormshadowGuitars

WezV said:

I am now on my 6th attempt to download the main album and it's been corrupt each time.  Apparently the button to delete your account has stopped working too.

is this a conscious attempt to slow the exodus, or just too many people trying to leave at the same time?

Did you get them OK eventually? 
I've just done mine again to be sure then deleted the account, they came down much quicker now and no corruptions