Someone got fired and the new CEO has turned third-party hosting back on.
Someone got fired and the new CEO has turned third-party hosting back on.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I wonder how much of that harm was irreparable?
It's a nice peace offering to flip everything back on but it just goes to show what happens when you move from either "free" or "dominate with low cost (or piles of VC cash) then turn up the pricing when everyone is hooked." Users will simply go to the next similar service that offers a lower price or free as there's never a shortage of alternatives.
Sales rule 1 when selling in tech: "You can't compete on features." The competitive advantage is too short lived because someone will either replicate it, poorly replicate it, or just claim they do it too.
Ah, hadn't gone far enough back to see the old thread. My bad.
In my experience, you get some credit for not screwing up. You get a lot more for screwing up and fixing it. It's probably taught a lot of people not to rely on a third party to store their personal information, but we've had photo hosting sites crater before and people just moved on to the next free one...
It just shows you can't trust Photobucket. What they've done once they are likely to do again.
So many forums moved to allow the photos to be uploaded directly which is a much better solution as that way you know the content will be there as long as the forum is.
Yeah, that's great, but I think what we've gained (at least on this forum) makes them irrelevant. I suspect that's the case in a lot of places and they have lost an unrecoverable amount of business. They basically put the noose around their own neck and kicked the chair away. Even if you get the chair back, it was still a fatal move.
Reminds me of an issue we had with a chemical raw material a few years back. One of our suppliers suddenly had issues getting this raw material to us at all, and IF they could the price was tripled. It was a unique product, unavailable elsewhere, so we reformulated the product. We actually improved several performance metrics and processing issues while lowering our formula cost to boot. They came back about a year later with a great supply and lower prices. Sorry, don't need you anymore.
In reply to The0retical :
In my eyes it was certainly irreparable. I get that offering a service essentially for free (Well, excluding whatever ad revenue they made, that is. That place was getting to be as bad as the sketchiest of pron sites for pop up ads and other BS by the time I left anyway.) is probably not the most profitable model. If they had approached the whole deal in a different way, and said "Hey everyone, we can't keep doing this for free anymore, in a couple weeks we're going to need to start charging a modest fee for 3rd party hosting." I probably would have played ball, assuming the fee was indeed modest. Instead, they basically deployed ransom ware tactics against everyone.
berkeley em, I'm never going back.
People have very short memories. If the new owners have a valid business plan, more power to them. If they can manage the negative publicity ( we ARE talking about them on the net) and flip it around to their benefit, it could all work out.
I use forum threads as a way to archive pictures since I don't keep them in any other format. The Photobucket debacle was a good warning to diversify.
I used to do elaborate build documentation on Cardomain exclusively, and then they messed all that up. So now I post on a few forums.
carguy123 said:So many forums moved to allow the photos to be uploaded directly which is a much better solution as that way you know the content will be there as long as the forum is.
Yeah, but then you lose control even worse. If you have multiple build threads, you have to upload multiple times. If you want to remove a photo, you never really know if it's removed. You're still having someone else host your content for free and at their own whims.
I'm still a big believer in owning your own domain and renting space on a web host. Then you have control. You can move your content from one host to another without breaking anything. You can delete something whenever you want.
I don't think PB is going to pick up a lot of new customers, but those who have been using it will likely continue to use it. They may not be competing on features but they have the volume. There are people who have been using it for a decade and for whom it would be way too much work to change to a new service. PBs new pricing will encourage those people to stay, and forums will work once again which is a service to all. This will be interesting to watch.
Now, if only we could find a way to block Pinterest galleries from showing up on image searches. They're doing a great job of divorcing images from relevant content!
Too late for my build threads I deleted everything and closed my account
Keith Tanner said:carguy123 said:So many forums moved to allow the photos to be uploaded directly which is a much better solution as that way you know the content will be there as long as the forum is.
Yeah, but then you lose control even worse. If you have multiple build threads, you have to upload multiple times. If you want to remove a photo, you never really know if it's removed. You're still having someone else host your content for free and at their own whims.
I'm still a big believer in owning your own domain and renting space on a web host. Then you have control. You can move your content from one host to another without breaking anything. You can delete something whenever you want.
I don't think PB is going to pick up a lot of new customers, but those who have been using it will likely continue to use it. They may not be competing on features but they have the volume. There are people who have been using it for a decade and for whom it would be way too much work to change to a new service. PBs new pricing will encourage those people to stay, and forums will work once again which is a service to all. This will be interesting to watch.
Now, if only we could find a way to block Pinterest galleries from showing up on image searches. They're doing a great job of divorcing images from relevant content!
Does entering “-Pinterest” work?
In reply to Furious_E :
Exactly.
mtn said:Keith Tanner said:carguy123 said:So many forums moved to allow the photos to be uploaded directly which is a much better solution as that way you know the content will be there as long as the forum is.
Yeah, but then you lose control even worse. If you have multiple build threads, you have to upload multiple times. If you want to remove a photo, you never really know if it's removed. You're still having someone else host your content for free and at their own whims.
I'm still a big believer in owning your own domain and renting space on a web host. Then you have control. You can move your content from one host to another without breaking anything. You can delete something whenever you want.
I don't think PB is going to pick up a lot of new customers, but those who have been using it will likely continue to use it. They may not be competing on features but they have the volume. There are people who have been using it for a decade and for whom it would be way too much work to change to a new service. PBs new pricing will encourage those people to stay, and forums will work once again which is a service to all. This will be interesting to watch.
Now, if only we could find a way to block Pinterest galleries from showing up on image searches. They're doing a great job of divorcing images from relevant content!
Does entering “-Pinterest” work?
Obviously, you know it does if you're searching via text string. Still a pain in the butt.
Keith Tanner said:carguy123 said:So many forums moved to allow the photos to be uploaded directly which is a much better solution as that way you know the content will be there as long as the forum is.
I'm still a big believer in owning your own domain and renting space on a web host. Then you have control. You can move your content from one host to another without breaking anything. You can delete something whenever you want.
This is my method. I host my pictures either on my own website or my Midatlantic7s website (BMW pictures) and have for years. I was using the free hosting provided by my ISP (Comcast at the time) but then I realized that if I changed ISPs that would go away, so I set up my own website using a commercial webhosting service (angryhosting) and host the photos there. Has the added benefit of not being blocked at work... ;)
Keith Tanner said:Now, if only we could find a way to block Pinterest galleries from showing up on image searches. They're doing a great job of divorcing images from relevant content!
You have just managed to describe a major annoyance of mine perfectly and in a way I never could have. Were I to talk about this issue I would have devolved into a grumbling "rabble rabble" inadvertent regular car reviews style stream of nonsense with occasional audible "SAME IMAGES OVER AND OVER WITH NO INFORMATION!! RABBLE RABBLE!"
But now I can say "divorcing images from relevant content" and not sound like a caveman. Thank you Keith
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