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So for those of you who don't pay attention to Photobucket (which is probably like all of you considering the current year), the site was apparently bought by some dude in 2015. His aim was to make the site a profitable business. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/16/photobucket-fee-hike/ You know, Photobucket. A site that people had used entirely because they didn't want to pay for image hosting. It's nothing new for an acquisition to try to push for revenue. That's not noteworthy or exciting. However, they went about it in hilariously bad fashion. All hotlinks from the site, now and in the past, have been replaced with this image: All of them. The site has been around for 14 years. It used to be the go-to for most people posting most images back in my day when I was still an angsty teen Vae. Back when your computer still made a phone static war cry when it connected to the internet. Photobucket now prompts anyone who wants to enable hotlinking again, and fix their broken images, to pay for a plan upgrade. How much is it? 400 fucking USD per year. $400/yr for image hosting. Something you can do on Imgur, Tumblr, and a number of other sites for free. Additionally, some people have stated that they can't access their accounts at all, even to download their old images and migrate them to a new service, without being forced to pay. They're greeted with this screen: People have been blowing their Twitter the fuck up with "Fuck you"s and "Are you serious"es and "I'm just going to a different service." It's nothing that affects me, since I haven't used PB since like 2006. But still, how do you fuck up that bad at basic business sense? An aging site, whose sole saving graces were that it was easy to use and free (for the most part), and you shoot the biggest draw to even bother with it right to death. Either this guy is pulling tactics, and trying to kill PB as a competitor for his own lower-priced site and services, or he needs to take elementary-school-level business classes. You can't "kekeke" like a cartoon villain and hold shit for ransom that literally no one actually needs. When someone down the street is offering the same fucking thing, with a nicer newer coat of paint, for free.