"Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slide show and encouraged users to post these ads in bulletins and profiles throughout the community. We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community's terms, and we had no choice but to disable their service. MySpace does not block third-party embeds or services that abide by our terms of use. We support the freedom of expression and creativity of our community and must continue to protect the experience expected by our users." (From here)
MySpace is the fifth most popular website out on the web. Photobucket, with over 36 million registered users, is the biggest photo uploading website.
This came as a shock to us, because we had just read, (about Photobucket) "Why is the company doing so well? Well a lot of MySpace users seem to love the company and host a lot of photos on that site" (Quote from here)
Fortunately, it seems that this decision only affects videos and remixes, so pictures are safe. This is good, because Sarah has an account on Photobucket. They host over 250 of her (and our for that matter) pictures, and she has posted those photos on websites throughout the web. She has also uploaded a few videos. Although she does not post them on MySpace, we know tons of people who do.
If we wanted to upload a video, we would want to upload it to a host site first. Then we would want to put it on the website that we would be sharing it on, that way, it is securely on a safe site, rather than on a site who routinely deletes profiles and pictures with no warning. It just makes sense.
Will this effect Myspace traffic? Personally, we doubt it. Although some people may stop using Myspace over this issue, the vast majority of users will continue using Myspace to chat with friends and other such things. However, our guess is that this will take a toll on Photobucket, but who knows? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Personally, we have not logged in to our profile for a few days, and this Photobucket news has not motivated us to visit it.
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