Photobucket Wants $$$ for Hot-Linking Images Here

[Cadillac Jim]

Photobucket has announced that they will start charging $399/yr for accounts that allow hot-linking, which is how most photos are posted here on Caddyinfo.  I don't know when support for hot-linking will end, but when it does you will see a broken image icon instead of images, such as my avatar and signature photo.

I for one have no intention whatsoever in paying Photobucket to host my photos.

How is Image Shack doing?  Anyone recommend another reliable source for uploading albums of hot-linked photos?

EDIT:  In posting this Topic, I see that my signature photo is now blocked by Photobucket.  My avatar is OK; I must have uploaded that to Caddyinfo.

[BodybyFisher]

Hi Jim, I also posted a notice of this move by Photobucket in the 19th hole.

Very upsetting, any photo I linked here is blocked and our threads have been damaged.  

They shouldhave grandfathered existing links

[Cadillac Jim]

Your photos are still there and the hot links have the file names in them.  If we can re-host the photos in another service, we can fix things easily enough.  But Photobucket is dead.

I don't think that there is anything that Caddyinfo could have done to foresee or prevent this.  The whole WWW was blindsided by this.

[Cadillac Jim]

If anyone needs an image from one of my posts before the images come back, send me a PM and I'll figure out something.

[babylon_nl]

Unreal.. I would think most internet based services are abondoning the idea they're God's gift to the internet, photobucket reinvented the wheel so it seems...

[Cadillac Jim]

My theory is that people don't go do a web-based business with significant investment (huge storage, fast fixed IP hookup) without a plan to have an IPO and cash out big.  That thinking is what led to the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990's, and the money-hungry behavior you see from some web sites and businesses, like Adobe.  But once you sell shares and have a Board of Directors, you have investor pressure for return on investment.

I keep getting e-mails from Photobucket that tell me that 100% of my photos are "third party hosted" which means that they are embedded in other web pages (not strictly true, but I do us Photobucket primarily to post scans and stuff on Caddyinfo), and that I need to buy their "Plus 500" plan that costs $40/month or $400/year.

The thinking that people who come in from outside and analyze such sites see that Photobucket has 15 billion images and 100 million accounts and they want to monetize that database and customer base.  I figure that they have been analyzing the photos, customers, and usage for years to pay for the site and I expect that.  What I didn't expect is for them to decide that I was making money on other web sites where the photos were posted and want a cut.

I don't make money from my web presence and I always say NO when someone tries to extract a credit card number for something that I don't need or already own.  When I get around to it, I'll close my Photobucket account.  I don't need the cloud for my photography, and I don't get paid for posting photos or pictures anywhere.