If you use photobucket for your sigs etc.

[RabidBat]

Just a heads up, as you can see from my signature atm, if you do not give photobucket $400 a year. They will disable your ability to embed/link any images you have hosted with them.

Seems like business suicide if you ask me. $400 is just insane. That's a new decent GPU right there. Hell even commercial HD video streaming services don't cost that much annually.

So if you use this service for forum sigs and blogs etc, you might want to look at an alternative, unless you have more brains than money that is.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Just a heads up, as you can see from my signature atm, if you do not give photobucket $400 a year. They will disable your ability to embed/link any images you have hosted with them.

Seems like business suicide if you ask me. $400 is just insane. That's a new decent GPU right there. Hell even commercial HD video streaming services don't cost that much annually.

So if you use this service for forum sigs and blogs etc, you might want to look at an alternative, unless you have more brains than money that is.

Imgur works just fine and is free.

 

[Lancake]

Imgur works just fine and is free.

Yeah, I use it all the time. You should use an imgur account though, as without one, your uploads may expire if they don't get a single view in 6 months. The chance of that happening is slim but well, you never know

 

[therimmer96]

To be fair, letting people use your bandwidth and hosting with no one actually visiting your site is also business suicide... it kinda makes sense. Don't want people hosting their sites images on your server and internet connection if you're not gonna get paid.

 

[Gasboy]

To be fair, letting people use your bandwidth and hosting with no one actually visiting your site is also business suicide... it kinda makes sense. Don't want people hosting their sites images on your server and internet connection if you're not gonna get paid.

I guess all the ads plastered over Photobucket's website aren't bringing them any money?

 

[ZombieMouse]

Ads displayed on their website don't earn them money when the images are being displayed on other websites. Bandwidth costs money.

 

[Gasboy]

Ads displayed on their website don't earn them money when the images are being displayed on other websites. Bandwidth costs money.

Part of the reason why people don't use the actual Photobucket site is it's layout and ridiculous amount of ads. Which makes more people use them as a simple image repository rather than some sort of blog/photo display site. So they resort to banning the use of third party links unless you pay through the nose. Which means less people will use them, and less chance of their ads being seen.

Imgur has been more user friendly, and I actually enjoy browsing and participating in the community there. And I've used them as a depository for images because the ease of use of their site. I imagine Imgur will have an influx of new users at Photobucket's expense.

It's one thing to want a fee to use a website, it's quite another to go "SURPRISE!" and slap people with a steep up front price in order for their links to work again. Asking for money is fine, but they did not have to be a dick about it. They deserve what is coming.

 

[therimmer96]

Imgur was also founded as an image repository. The entire purpose of the site was to be a host for reddit. If you found a site expecting it to be an image based social media platform, and people just use it as a way to not need to pay for image bandwidth on their own sites, those people are dicks and deserve to have their links blocked.

 

[Gasboy]

Imgur was also founded as an image repository. The entire purpose of the site was to be a host for reddit. If you found a site expecting it to be an image based social media platform, and people just use it as a way to not need to pay for image bandwidth on their own sites, those people are dicks and deserve to have their links blocked.

I very much doubt most of those people even understand what they are doing or why it is wrong. I don't think charging money for something is wrong, but Photobucket has gone around it the wrong way entirely.

 

[RabidBat]

To be fair, letting people use your bandwidth and hosting with no one actually visiting your site is also business suicide... it kinda makes sense. Don't want people hosting their sites images on your server and internet connection if you're not gonna get paid.

I agree, they need to make money. But jumping straight to $400 a year is just waaaay too much.
I'd be okay if it was something reasonable like $5 a month. ($60 a year)

While it remains at such an insane price, I am done with the site.