Photobucket just blew up billions of photos online.

fractal

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 15, 2013
Looks like Photobucket decided you have to pay $399/year to post your photos in forums.

My smugmug account, which is superior to photobucket starts at $5.99/month.

I really feel bad for those that have photos posted in various thread/trip reports and sites over the years. For the photobucket users out there - how much notice were you given of this change?

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photobucket-just-broke-billions-photos-embedded-web/
 


I was not given any notice. I stopped using them around 6 months ago though because my image links were being "hacked".

I use Flickr now.

(I need to go back to my trip report here to fix the pictures though....)
 
Thank goodness I removed all my photos a couple years ago! One weekend I spent hours carefully replacing Photobucket pics posted on the DIS with my SmugMug versions. I do feel sorry for all the people who have relied on Photobucket exclusively especially since it sounds like they didn't get adequate notice! And I'm sure some PB users had not backed up their photos elsewhere. And I loved the claim by PB that they offered "competitive subscriptions". Competitive for whom? Large businesses? Families? Most people who can afford $399 a year have multiple other choices for photo hosting.
 
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There are a couple of options for posting pictures here on the DIS. You can still use some other service, like Flickr, to host your pictures. Or you can embed the pictures directly into your post. There are some limits as to the allowed file size but you'll never have to worry about broken links.
 
I resize my photos and embed the photos directly onto my posts.

There are a couple of options for posting pictures here on the DIS. You can still use some other service, like Flickr, to host your pictures. Or you can embed the pictures directly into your post. There are some limits as to the allowed file size but you'll never have to worry about broken links.

I've tried posting pics from my phone that I put on the computer. It always tell me the file is to big.
How do I resize. Is it something easy to explain?
 
Looks like Photobucket decided you have to pay $399/year to post your photos in forums.

My smugmug account, which is superior to photobucket starts at $5.99/month.

Love SmugMug. Just have the "basic" account though, about $40 or $50 a year.
 
I've tried posting pics from my phone that I put on the computer. It always tell me the file is to big.
How do I resize. Is it something easy to explain?

My photos come up in Paint. I go to "resize" on the top of the screen and select "resize by pixels" and type in 1000 in the horizontal field which then automatically resets the vertical field to match up. Save that photo's file and then I can copy and paste it over to the Dis. You can play around with the numbers but the 1000 pixels seems to work well with embedding.
Hope that helps.
 
Photobucket user.

No notice whatsoever!

Looks like all my pictures and TRs are going to be hosed shortly. Guess I'll have to investigate jumping to SmugMug.
But from the commentary on the web, there is no guarantees that the other image hosting sites will not start implementing similar policies.

ETA - I just checked my plan and it looks like I'm allowed to link pictures. I'm just not allowed to use them as a 3rd party host.
 
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It costs a lot of money to run a service like Photobucket in the form of server hardware, bandwidth and all the other costs that go along with running and supporting the service. It was 'free' only because it was intended to be an ad supported service (absolutely nothing on the Internet is Free) where ads were presented to the viewer when they went to a Photobucket page to view a photo. Once people started embedding their photos stored on Photobucket, on other websites the ads were no longer being displayed thus compromising the revenue source for Photobucket. That is unsustainable and they had to stop it or they'd be bankrupted by people using the service without paying for it (viewing ads is a way of paying for the service).

While their abrupt change was a little ham-handed they had not choice, they could not keep literally providing the service for free. The reality is that nobody should ever expect to get photo storage fully for free like this. If you're not paying something for the service you use and you're doing something similar you should have an alternative plan because companies are not going to keep providing these service for free, it's just too expensive.
 
I was using it only for here, every other place I'm able to copy and paste from my computer but half the time on this forum I'm told they are too big. All my pictures from my phone are automatically backed up to google photos and all the pictures I take with my camera are stored on my computer and backed up on a server we have at home. I guess I'll figure out some other way to get them on here.
 
Dont know much about this as never posted a photo but was enjoying trip report from Diser and photos say not hosted is that why ?im sad love her reports.
 
I was using it only for here, every other place I'm able to copy and paste from my computer but half the time on this forum I'm told they are too big. All my pictures from my phone are automatically backed up to google photos and all the pictures I take with my camera are stored on my computer and backed up on a server we have at home. I guess I'll figure out some other way to get them on here.

Same here. I only used PB for upload on Dis because I read that on here when I joined a few years ago. I have about 50 pics on FB. I have no problem watching an ad or listening to an ad on Pandora. I get it, it's advertising and keeping them up and running.

Dont know much about this as never posted a photo but was enjoying trip report from Diser and photos say not hosted is that why ?im sad love her reports.
Most likely yes.
 
Arrrrgh yeah. That was the former part of my week - relocating all photos uploaded to the 'net since 2004... that was no fun.

Oh well, hope Photobucket enjoys going out of business because everyone I know is deleting their account. Nobody I have encountered has said they paid PB's ransom.

And yes, I know that business has to evolve, but I really shake my head at this move. If they couldn't afford to run the site without advertising, then they should have never started the business model of "free image hosting" on the Internet. And GOOD GRAVY my biggest issue with this is that PB deliberately marketed to customers for over a decade, "This is what you need so you can post photos on message boards, internet forums and sales groups!" Now... they are ransoming people's account contents in a punitive way, after persuading customers to use their service.

I wouldn't pay a Disney restaurant to give me food poisoning on purpose; I won't use Photobucket if they are going to tell me for over ten years, "You're good, you're using our services the way we want you to," but suddenly, "We said free. we know we said free. But guess what? You owe us $400 dollars, you can't access your account, and definitely NEVER use the links we provide to you, to actually LINK to any of your pictures!"
 
It costs a lot of money to run a service like Photobucket in the form of server hardware, bandwidth and all the other costs that go along with running and supporting the service. It was 'free' only because it was intended to be an ad supported service (absolutely nothing on the Internet is Free) where ads were presented to the viewer when they went to a Photobucket page to view a photo. Once people started embedding their photos stored on Photobucket, on other websites the ads were no longer being displayed thus compromising the revenue source for Photobucket. That is unsustainable and they had to stop it or they'd be bankrupted by people using the service without paying for it (viewing ads is a way of paying for the service).

While their abrupt change was a little ham-handed they had not choice, they could not keep literally providing the service for free. The reality is that nobody should ever expect to get photo storage fully for free like this. If you're not paying something for the service you use and you're doing something similar you should have an alternative plan because companies are not going to keep providing these service for free, it's just too expensive.

Agree about their broken business model, but flicking the switch with no forewarning was a terrible business decision and I sympathize with their users.
 

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