Photobucket ToS changes

I got a photobucket but hadn't used it in years. My dolls are mostly old anyhow and users here don't care to see them. So I seriously doubt anyone will be looking for mine.

 

So, a few days after my rush of anger and frustration, I can't help but review Photobucket's actions from a business perspective. We're all thinking "how can they even dream of keeping their customer base after doing this?" Well, maybe that's the entire point. 75% of PB's expenses come from maintaining the servers for all the photos loaded into their 'free' accounts. And they're not getting any kind of income from those accounts, other than the massive amounts of ads. Their ad revenues as well as unique site visits are declining and they are definitely profit focused at the moment. So what if they decided to take the nuclear action to their business?

I don't know for sure that this is what they're doing, but I do know that they would have at least checked out their competitors' prices. Maybe they deliberately set the price for 3rd party hosting so high, trying to kill off the majority of the drain on their servers. Then, maybe 3rd quarter or early next year, they could roll out either a full site redesign, or a set of 'adjusted' account levels with lower prices, or even try to rebrand themselves as a different company altogether.

IF that is their strategy though, they really needed to talk to someone in marketing or promotion about online reputation and customer goodwill. I know a lot of people who wouldn't go back to PB now even if they did resume full 3rd party hosting for free accounts, just based on how they handled this situation. But there's not a clear service provider to step in and fill the gap now, as evidenced by all the discussion in this thread. And some people/businesses are paying the $400 (however reluctantly), until they can get their accounts in order and find a substitute.

Speaking of substitutes: I have a question about Flickr. When you upload an image, does it automatically detect the camera information somehow? Or do you have to enter that in? I'm just browsing some Flickr pages, and a lot of the pictures have the exact camera used to take the shot listed on the page.

 

@lilly22 Flickr automatically detects it, but you can set it to not display that information.

 

That's just it though, just based on this move, I imagine they are going to lose most (if not almost all) of both their non paying AND their paying customers (after all, if I were a paying customer, I would actually probably be heading for the hills even faster, because I would NOT want to give my money to a company that practices such underhanded methods). If they had handled the transition better, I would probably consider staying (if I were a paying customer and they offered a cheaper plan), but the way they handled this? No way. I am not giving one cent of my money to a company that treats their customers/users like garbage. Paying or non.

 

Not true, for me at least. I probably wouldn't search for it, but if someone goes to the effort of uploading a photoshoot I want to see it regardless of sculpt.

Yes. It's called EXIF information and all images taken by a digital camera (including phones) will have it. It contains stuff like exposure values, lens and body serial numbers and GPS coordinates if your device has a GPS, and your name if you've set copyright or owner information. A provider like flickr will strip out anything identifying, but you should be aware of privacy implications of sharing photos on other mediums.

 

Have I missed the information on how to fix links in locked threads????
Perhaps it could be made into a sticky at the start of this thread.

 

you don't 'fix'... you have to 'replace' photobucket links with an alternative link like flickr... the bucket links will be useless and you will neen another place to share pics from (I doubt you will be paying the 400$ and that's they only way to make the PB links work)

 

I don't think you can replace photos in locked threads. There is no edit option.

 

There's no edit option, but I reported my own posts with the link for the new Flickr image and a request to please update it, and the mods were able to take care of it for me.

 

Boy are they going to be busy

 

omg that felt so gooooooooooooood.... told off PB and deleted my account! And all my stuff, that i think is already saved is double backed up now in zip files

 

Oh! They will busy for years!
I guess this at least means we don't need to fret about threads being deleted quickly then. I wonder if the Mods would like us to send in one link at a time?

 

I reported single posts, with all the links (in order) in the report, to reduce the number of reports to deal with.

 

Wow! What a jerk move from PB. $400/year is waaaaay too much to pay for photo hosting. A website only costs about $10/month. Absolutely ridiculous cost.

 

Was planning to leave Photobucket anyway.

Their editor tool went to crap. Then they had insane ads and popups, felt like a minefield of viruses. And it was hard to copy links. The old reliable website I have been using forever has been replaced by something useless, frustrating, and scary.

This is simply the last push I needed to close my very old account after yanking my images.

 

now if flickr would just get off is arse and get theirs running again I'd be thrilled

 

Wow, this is really disheartening. I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures out there on various forums from the past 11 years. There's no way I could transfer all of them over.

 

Speaking of which I hit the edit button on Flickr and tad-ah the editor popped open. Haven't tried it yet but I didn't get the white screen of "So sorry."

 

@lilly22 I'm inclined to agree. They aren't worked about losing their non paying AKA ad revenue only customers because they don't want these customers. Setting the price higher than anyone would reasonably pay feels like it must be deliberate.

Casual users won't pay it, and business users can get hosting far cheaper elsewhere. This must be a deliberate attempt to take the strain off their servers.

I'm not deleting anything. Why should I free up storage for them because they blackmailed me?

 

okay now i can crop and fix light/color all in one place.. BUT... only TWO picture frames O_o ... and they are 'both' white???? stingy cuz that i did use. and The little preview box for 'filters'... all look the same LOL annoying... and why did it flip my pic on it's side? Oh well .. got the basic crop back and that is nearly essential to me