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Seriously? There's a photo hosting site out there that's less user friendly than Photobucket?Yes, Flickr currently offers a lot of free space as does Google, but they aren't quite as user-friendly as Photobucket in so far as links and automated resizing goes. That said the future of Flickr continues to be questionable as that site fails to make anyone any money either...
While doing a little online research earlier today in an effort to find a new hosting home for the image files that I want/need to post, I read something that might spell even further problems for Flickr. Flickr is owned by Yahoo, and Yahoo was recently bought by Verizon. So far Verizon has not made their intentions known to the public, but they have been known to treat their customers even more poorly than Photobucket has handled their latest policy change (and I'm speaking from personal experience), so Yahoo and everything under their corporate umbrella could disappear without a warning before long.
In hindsight, I'm thinking the sudden prevalence of pop-up ads on Photobucket in recent months should have been a red flag that they're hurting for cash. This "third party hosting" situation could be a blessing in disguise by allowing it's "free" members time to retrieve their files before they and Photobucket disappear without a trace.Interestingly (or maybe not), Photobucket's site is down right now. Taking the sum of the above smart comments, I think something else is going on at PB. Maybe they are on the brink of failing and this is a Hail Mary / maybe they want to sell out to someone and need to show a spike in revenue (not that this move wouldn't come up in due diligence) / maybe the terms of some prior funding require a move toward profitability in some time period and they are getting close to the date / etc.
I clearly don't know and only marginally care because it disrupted our fun little forum here. But it does feel as if something behind the scenes sparked this seemingly poorly executed business model change. My guess is PB will either be gone, have new ownership or be back to offering free services in a few weeks or so...
I looked at a couple of recent posts in which I had linked to a photo I had stored on Photobucket, and instead of the image there is now only the "IMG" placeholder. But I spent three to four hours over the last couple of days retrieving and/or deleting all of the files I had stored there, so now all of the links I've made over the last 10 years are truly broken.Did you post pictures here at Fedora from Photobucket and, if so, are they showing here now or are you getting the "update your account" message that I am on the pictures from PG I post here at FL?
The wording on that image that Photobucket is using to block our photos is the thing that bothers me the most about this situation. "Please update your account..." suggests that the problem exists because of something that we, the users, have or haven't done, not because Photobucket has suddenly changed their policy and wants to extort an unreasonable amount of money just to use their flawed services.
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