# Photobucket now not free?



## qooqiiu (Oct 12, 2007)

No more 3rd party hosting and embedded pics for forums without paying a fee.

Is this right? I have only
Just noticed this :?


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## FJ1000 (Nov 21, 2015)

Yup - unfortunately so. It's already killed loads of useful threads on forums all over the internet

A-holes!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## qooqiiu (Oct 12, 2007)

Clearly they want to go out of business then.


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## YELLOW_TT (Feb 25, 2004)

qooqiiu said:


> Clearly they want to go out of business then.


Yep the VW VWROC forum I am also on now allows you to post pictures direct from the pictures on you phone might be an idea on here :idea:


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

I sent out an email to all members about this and asked them to re-host pictures on safe hosts our preferably this forum direct as an attachment.

This can also be done from your mobile phone when posting..

If everyone chips on and sorts out any missing pictures that would be great. I'm trying to limit the damage by copying stuff manually before it goes but there's a limit to how much I can do. Any help would be appreciated.


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## Roller Skate (May 18, 2015)

In fairness to Photobucket we've all been using their service for years ... free of charge.

They've been trying to monetise their service for a long time but to no avail, which is a shame. That said, their servers had become ridiculously slow over time and I stopped using them for this reason a long time ago.

Comments like "clearly they want to go out of business then" simply takes the piss. From the time when Photobucket went online til now someone's been paying the bills for the servers, someone's been doing the maintenance etc.

They're obviously desperate to make some money to keep the thing going because I can't see the canvas and photo printing model they introduced working as a business model. Sadly the model they're using now seems to look like a smash and grab, holding forums hostage to get some money injected into the business.

It's simply not going to work. Too much free competition out there now. Which again, is a shame.

Don't for one minute think you were doing them a favour by using their service for free all these years, because some poor buggers have been paying the bills for you to host your pictures all that time.


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## ZephyR2 (Feb 20, 2013)

I always thought it was funded thru the ads and the occasional orders for printed pics, personalised mugs, coasters etc. Clearly there's not enough people ordering coasters. :lol:


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## barry_m2 (Jun 29, 2015)

Roller Skate said:


> They've been trying to monetise their service for a long time but to no avail, which is a shame. That said, their servers had become ridiculously slow over time and I stopped using them for this reason a long time ago.


Very much this! I haven't used them for years now because the site was painfully slow, but still had a load of pics on there. Started copying them off just in case I didn't have them anywhere else already and my god, pop-up after pop-up.. soooo slow to load up pages too... I just gave up in the end and asked them to close my account.


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

They could of course be hopng that Google buy them out for the content and further exposure.


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## Roller Skate (May 18, 2015)

John-H said:


> They could of course be hopng that Google buy them out for the content and further exposure.


There's zero value in the site, and lets face it Google doesn't need the exposure. Google offers pretty much unlimited photo storage with Picasa. I'm aware it doesn't offer the same sharing facilities as PB but then those that need those options are a small demographic.

The problem with trying to monetise Photobucket was people only went there for the upload, they weren't and have never been interested in mooching through pictures of cats and obscure images resulting in a low Google ad click through rate. Nowadays Google isn't paying what it was 15 years ago for clicks, a very small percentage in fact.

Photobucket will no doubt limp on for a while longer before somebody says "enough's enough" and simply shuts it down.


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## NickG (Aug 15, 2013)

So how do we go about posting pictures now then?

The upload attachment is ok, but only if the photo is under 1mb which is basically never (yeah they could be reduced in size and quality but that's not a fast process, especially using the phone!).

Is there another upload site to use?


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## Hoggy (May 8, 2002)

NickG said:


> So how do we go about posting pictures now then?
> The upload attachment is ok, but only if the photo is under 1mb which is basically never (yeah they could be reduced in size and quality but that's not a fast process, especially using the phone!).
> Is there another upload site to use?


Hi, I use this for my Sigs, but of course, could have the same prob in the future for pics.
http://www.picturetrail.com/members/edi ... d=24776412
Hoggy.


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## 3TT3 (Aug 30, 2014)

90% of the pics Ive posted since 2014 have been direct attachments .
500-700kb is fine for most usage I find .


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

3TT3 said:


> 90% of the pics Ive posted since 2014 have been direct attachments .
> 500-700kb is fine for most usage I find .


Good man


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## ashfinlayson (Oct 26, 2013)

TBH Photobucket is doomed, needs a complete re-platform to cope with the amount of traffic and storage they're dealing with now and as Skate says, there is no way to pay for it because it's more of a service than a viable product.

The site I work for is in a similar boat, not so much in revenue generation but built to deal with 10K+ reviews and now on just under 5 million. The system doesn't owe us anything but re-platforming will cost into the hundreds of thousands. You'd be amazed at how many huge brands are relying on sticky plasters to keep their £multimillion turnover websites afloat.

Good developers are in short supply so building enterprise level solutions is very expensive. You don't see me complaining though, I have a TTS :lol:


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