It looks like Photobucket decided to shut me down, no more links. Time to look for another site to host pictures. They did this to me one time before, so you never know, they might come back.

People have reported, and in many cases complained that Photobucket has shut them down.

I wonder how many of those people would continue to report for work every Monday morning after their boss told them they would not be paid for their work that week.

What photobucket did was offer their service for free for a number of years to attract a following, which they hoped would stay with them when they decided to charge for the service. Very few if any services can operate on a long term basis without making a few bucks.

And they made the mistake of thinking that advertizing would bring in revenu to compensate (isn't that what Facebook does?), then made the mistake of thinking that offering printing services would be profitable, then made the mistake of thinking that going from free to $400 per year (with no prior announement and no indication of how to recover your pictures) would result in users thinking that's reasonable. A better business model might just possibly be to take a route which is not based on bait & switch. Businesses have to make a buck at some point (unless they're run by Elon Musk) so their present business model may still run into some bumps on the road to failure.

Weird. Others are reporting that their pictures are back to normal (free).

Mine came back too. Go figure. Corporate communications is also an area they could improve.

Having a fairly low coefficient of trust, while I posted photographs to PhotoBucket, I retained the SD chips in the safe. So when they chose to limit/charge for their services it was not a problem to leave whatever had been posted to their choice. I have moved on to another host that does not mind third party posting, but I still keep the SDs safe in the safe,

Well, well! From $400 a year to $30 a year? Or in the case of a medium size user $70 a year?

http://photobucket.com/plans/?...(6%20months%20active)

Screw 'em. For about 50 bucks a year I'm using SmugMug - easy to use, no stupid ads, reasonable price. Everything Photobucket should have been had they actually tried.

I liked Photobucket. I liked free. I also understand that free isn't practical. Had they notified me in advance that they were moving to a pay-to-play platform for a reasonable annual fee, I likely would have ponied up and liked it. Instead, they tried to stick it in and break it off without lube and tell me it was a good deal. No way.

quote:

Originally posted by DesertRam:
Screw 'em. For about 50 bucks a year I'm using SmugMug - easy to use, no stupid ads, reasonable price. Everything Photobucket should have been had they actually tried.

I liked Photobucket. I liked free. I also understand that free isn't practical. Had they notified me in advance that they were moving to a pay-to-play platform for a reasonable annual fee, I likely would have ponied up and liked it. Instead, they tried to stick it in and break it off without lube and tell me it was a good deal. No way.

That's what I did, and am very happy with the change. SmugMug acquired Flickr, too, but features and cost for the accounts remained the same.