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News Corp to Purchase Photobucket 78

Posted by Zonk from the not-bad-as-buckets-go dept.
DJCacophony writes "Reuters is reporting that Newscorp, having already purchased Myspace, is purchasing the image hosting site Photobucket for between 250 and 300 million dollars. The story details how Photobucket and Myspace, which have previously had disputes over advertising on each others' sites, will now be integrated with each other. The deal is still very much on the table, apparently, and may yet fall through. 'While hardly known outside the youthful world of social network sites, Photobucket has become wildly popular with users for providing free, online storage tools for multimedia self-expression, from photos to videos to digital slideshows. Site builders turn to it for images to decorate their sites. The four-year-old startup, based in Palo Alto, California, has signed up 41 million registered users, up from 32 million at the end of last year and 2 million in 2004. It now hosts nearly 2.8 billion images on the site.'"
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News Corp to Purchase Photobucket More

News Corp to Purchase Photobucket

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  • Buying their way in? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HalifaxRage ( 640242 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:08AM (#19050571) Journal
    The funny thing about big corporations buying up successful websites, they never seem to be "as good" as before, and they just drive entrepreneurs to create the next "fad". Soon we'll be left with billion-dollar websites that don;t *do* anything.

    • Re:Buying their way in? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ngarrang ( 1023425 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:24AM (#19050709) Journal
      Yes, buying in. Companies have been doing it for ages. Sometimes, it is cheaper to buy than build your own. It seems like this activity is expected in day and age of dot-coms. Investors are looking for these big buy-outs. Why did Google go public? Because their initial investors were pushing for it. Google was doing just fine as a private company. MySQL is going public for the same reason.

      And beyond going public, getting bought is a huge pay day for those stock holders (or just the initial investors if the company is still private).

      I feel sorry the employees at these companies, though. After this purchase, Photobucket may "reorganize to make its operation more efficient."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mgblst ( 80109 )
        I understand this premise for something like myspace, or youtube, but surely myspace could have just started offering an easy interfact to upload pictures, and they would have taken over from photobucket? Or is photobucket used in so many other places? (I see imageshack everywhere, not photobucket)

        • Re:Buying their way in? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ngarrang ( 1023425 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @09:41AM (#19051607) Journal
          "I understand this premise for something like myspace, or youtube, but surely myspace could have just started offering an easy interfact to upload pictures, and they would have taken over from photobucket? Or is photobucket used in so many other places? (I see imageshack everywhere, not photobucket)"

          Think about your own use of internet services. When Google bought blogger.com, if you were a google user, did you switch? Over a billion images are hosted on PhotoBucket. Okay, so MySpace kludges in a picture feature, too. But, PhotoBucket still has those billions of images. Are users going to go through the effort of moving those pictures? Even if MySpace made it one-click? Probably not. That would mean having to re-edit links on pages, e-mail your friends of the change. Blah, blah blah. I think you see where I am going with this. MySpace could certainly try and grow their own photo storage, but this deal gives Newscorp billions of images NOW.

          Users tend to stick with what worked for them yesterday. Switching is a pain.

          • >this deal gives Newscorp billions of images NOW.

            Well, for 10 cents an image, he actually bought the walls of the museum the images are in. So presumably the images themselves are worth even more.

      • > And beyond going public, getting bought is a huge pay day for those stock holders (or just the initial investors if the company is still private).

        Everybody knows that getting bought out is the new IPO. You can't have a bubble without air.

      • Yes, buying in. Companies have been doing it for ages. Sometimes, it is cheaper to buy than build your own.


        I'm pretty sure that I could build photobucket for less than 250 million...

    • Re:Buying their way in? (Score:5, Funny)

      by neoform ( 551705 ) <djneoform@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:28AM (#19050733) Homepage
      What do you mean? Hotmail is totally as good if not better than when they were bought out.. ..

      Ahahahahahahaha, man I needed a good laugh this morning..
    • YES! THANK YOU! AWESOME NEWS!
      this finally will motivate me to move my 2 lousy avatars from photobucket to picasa.
      poor photobucket. that site will get cold-fusioned in a heart beat, just like myspace, and wont be available on nights and weekends, when 16 year old emo *&^#$%s are finger-blasting each other. I presume finger-blasting is in the Webster... ya?
    • I don't understand what people are saying here.. Photobucket was never particularly good, it was just there when you needed it.
    • Yay! My first 5!
    • This isn't always the case. For instance, I still find Flickr useful, even after the Yahoo! aquisition. Myspace is still growing at a nice clip, even after the News Corp. aquisition.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by damsa ( 840364 )
      You are mistaken. Myspace was never really that good.
    • MySpace was bought for around a billion and signed a billion dollar advertising deal with Google within months of selling. I'd say NewsCorp did alright.

  • Goodbye, Photobucket (Score:5, Funny)

    by daeg ( 828071 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:10AM (#19050593)
    Goodbye, Photobucket. We had some good times, shared some good pictures, but we're moving in two separate directions. You, to a mega corporation with draconian views on privacy in pursuit of only the next dollar, and me, to hell in a handbasket for the photos we shared. You can keep the ring. It's not real, it's just some piece of glass I found on the sidewalk.

    • Re:Goodbye, Photobucket (Score:5, Funny)

      by Joebert ( 946227 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:25AM (#19050713) Homepage

      You can keep the ring. It's not real, it's just some piece of glass I found on the sidewalk.

      They know, someone uploaded a photo of you picking it up.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sosetta ( 702368 )
      Photobucket already 'censors' content. Anything not okay for prime time TV gets deleted.

      This isn't a bad thing. It's what keeps photobucket from being a free porn hosting site. It also helps to catch people who do things that ought not be done (think of the children). The bar for what's okay and what's not okay might move with News Corp, but make no mistake, there's been a bar for a while.

      My significant other does content moderation for them.

      • By taking the initiative to filter their site, they assume responsibility for doing so, always. If they simply took a hands-off approach, then they would be protected by the communications decency act, which states that an interactive website is not responsible for user-provided content.
        • You can still take down the questionable content without being responsible for it. It's like removing graffiti from a building meaning you are reponsible for the graffiti. If I own a photo hosting site, and I don't like the pictures that are being put up, I should be able to remove them, without feeling that I will get arrested if If some of the photos don't get removed.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by DJCacophony ( 832334 )
            You should be able to, but unfortunately that is not the case. If you start removing pornographic images from your image-hosting site, you then assume responsibility for continuing to do so. Any defense that says "I can't be bothered to do it all the time" will be overruled by the argument "but you did it here, here, and here, so you know it's wrong and you frequently act upon it".
    • Personally, the best and easiest to use site that I've ever found is Dropshots [dropshots.com]. Extremely easy to upload pictures. Just drag-and-drop them from your explorer window into the system tray applet, and it's done. Great for when you have lot upload lots of pictures. Just as a disclaimer I don't work for them, and am not affiliated with them in any way. I'm just a happy user.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fex303 ( 557896 )

      You can keep the ring. It's not real, it's just some piece of glass I found on the sidewalk.
      You know you've been playing too much Nethack when you think 'if I were photobucket I wouldn't put on a ring without having identified it'. Perhaps this was a Cursed Ring of Buyout.

      I'm sick of picking up worthless bits of glass too. I can never get enough scrolls of identify.

  • The Pokey Mon Effect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:11AM (#19050599)
    In three years, your MySpace and PhotoBucket and Flicr and FaceBook accounts will be like PokeyMon cards.

    Kinka-chu!

    Just a prediction, but I've yet to see Murdoch turn his purchases into anything but short-term banalities.

    Mod me troll, but it's like Yahoo! buying Broadcast.com (Mark Cuban's org). $2B was spent-- in cash-- and does anyone buy mp3s from Yahoo?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
      Yahoo sells MP3s? I was under the impression they rented DRM-infected WMAs (except for that one time they sold that customised song).

      Maybe in the future they will once iTunes Store is selling uninfected audio files...

  • News Corp (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just when they thought it couldn't be done, someone finally has a monopoly on stupid.

  • Strange coincidences? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sethstorm ( 512897 ) * on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:14AM (#19050617) Homepage
    Given Fox's history of practicing and favoring "private entity censorship", is it quite strange of a coincidence for another article [slashdot.org] to be close to this one?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      Is there some important parallel? I can see where Fox has to meet a higher standard because they are a public broadcaster, but there are dozens of free file hosters, and companies like Dreamhost will sell you terabytes of bandwidth for $10 bucks a month.
      • Is there some important parallel? I can see where Fox has to meet a higher standard because they are a public broadcaster, but there are dozens of free file hosters, and companies like Dreamhost will sell you terabytes of bandwidth for $10 bucks a month.

        They're a signal to jump ship from what they buy out - what has happened previously with other buyouts has only confirmed that should you fall foul of their "message control", that's the best course of action.
    • So the long and short of this is, do not expect your "GW Bush as a monkey" pics to be available from Photobucket in the future

  • Forgetfullness (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joebert ( 946227 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:22AM (#19050675) Homepage

    has signed up 41 million registered users, up from 32 million at the end of last year

    Ok, that's a little hard to believe, there's no way 9 million people forgot their passwords last year.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HalifaxRage ( 640242 )
      You forgot the people who create throwaway accounts because they either (a) only used the site once, then used it again months later, or (b) signed up ages ago and forgot, then signed up again.
    • They must be gimick accounts....

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by zenslug ( 542549 )
        ALL sites inflate the number of accounts they have. At least they are happy to give out the big number, but the one that counts is the number of active users (and what they define as active). If they claim 41 million users, I'll guess that the number of active users (logged in within the last 6 months) is about half that, ~20 million.
  • If he buys it I will be leaving. The guy is a leech who's got so fat he falls on things and leechs off them while destroying them. I don't wish to support such a creature by any name.
  • Now the New Corp bubble. Or maybe it's the Gootube bubble. Or the Yahoo/MSN bubble?

    The point is web sites are not big trucks that you dump money on!
    • yes they are.

    • Now the New Corp bubble. Or maybe it's the Gootube bubble. Or the Yahoo/MSN bubble?

      I expect to see many more acquisitions and consolidations following either of these two routes.

      1) Old-Media sits on vault of copyrighted material and established relationships, in order to...
      2) Sue any New-Media company that's successful (copyright infringers!)

      or

      1) Old-Media only threatens to sue New-Media company out of existence, in order to...
      2) Gain leverage in acquisition or consolidation agreements

      • $300 million for Photobucket doesn't really apply to either of these models; it's a stupid move no matter how you look at it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Nymz ( 905908 )

          $300 million for Photobucket doesn't really apply to either of these models; it's a stupid move no matter how you look at it.

          Are you sure? Only a month ago MySpace was blocking images from Photobucket, and accusing them of violating their terms of service. Why? because MySpace wants a share of the advertising revenue Photobucket generates, then a month later they get bought up. Coincidence?
  • 200 Million for photobucket? I'd love for someone to give me a valid reason why it is worth that much. This is sure evidence that this is ".com bubble 2.0". Kudos to the guys/gals at photobucket for milking newscorp and cashing out while there are people stupid enough to overpay. A fool and his dough soon split so when you come across a fool get all that you can get.

    • I'd love for someone to give me a valid reason why it is worth that much.


      Because that is what someone will pay.

      And you can keep the love.

    • I dont know if that is overvalued. If youtube went for 1.65billion photobucket can go for 300 million. Companies are really paying for the users not just the application. Youtube and photobucket has comparable number of users. Even if you discount a big percentage of duplicate accounts there still should be enough to repay the 300million through ad-clicks or adviews. If I had the worlds best(est) application and 0 users nobody would pay me that kind of money.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by shotgunefx ( 239460 )
        But isn't photobucket basically just a dump for image files to be posted elsewhere? Myspace sucks a good deal of the time, but the fact the people are there and so are there friends provides a certain sticky-ness that keeps them there. I can't imagine why a user would care whether they get their free image hosting at photo-bucket, image-shack, whatever.

        For a small fraction of that price, they could have just made a much better service and taken the users that way.
  • If wonder if that's why this deal [techcrunch.com] fell through. (Bubbleshare was subsequently bought by Kaboose for $2.25 million. [markevanstech.com])
    Obviously, News Corp wants an established photo-sharing site that has an established audience and name-recognition, not just a plug-in for MySpace.

  • Screw Newscorp. (Score:3, Informative)

    by k1e0x ( 1040314 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @09:14AM (#19051221) Homepage
    I'm not very happy with Myspace's parent company right now and their decision to censor and remove all Ron Paul bulletins.

    See the link .. http://digg.com/politics/Video_MySpace_Censoring_R on_Paul_Supporters [digg.com]

    I think them buying anything is bad.. and really wish they didn't buy Myspace.
    • I so misread that as reading "RuPaul supporters".

      Probably to the same effect though.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by k1e0x ( 1040314 )

        Ya know, people say that a lot.. but I haven't seen RuPaul since like 1985. Did he/she make that big of an impression on you that you think about him/her all the time?

        I think your just trying to make a lame joke.. but who know.. you could be a sicko.

        • Re:Screw Newscorp. (Score:4, Informative)

          by Rachel Lucid ( 964267 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @09:39AM (#19051579) Homepage Journal
          She's had a few endorsement deals that you'd know about if you stepped inside a mall within the past five years, including a relatively recent one with MAC makeup. (the joys of being geeky AND female, eh?)

          So to answer your question, no, she doesn't make that big of an impression; just enough to keep the name relatively fresh.

          She makes more of one than your presidential candidate does though.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by k1e0x ( 1040314 )
            >> She makes more of one than your presidential candidate does though.

            Oh har har.. I guess People just aren't into Liberty and Freedom.. they prefer Bush's fascism more..

            I'm proud to support Paul and be against government oppression.. I'm proud to be supporting the only candidate who voted against the Patriot Act and against Real ID.
  • ...of Rupert Murdoch buying your company. Heh, my pic of Dick Cheney as Darth Sidious will probably be taken off my Photobucket. Just watch.

    • Nothing good can come......of Rupert Murdoch buying your company.


      I can think of about 250 million good things that would come to me if I had sold it to him.
  • I remember when photobucket was a terrible looking hub for low bandwidth image hosting, with a limited account size, and the only snazzy thing about the website was that you can make it look black or grey instead of that miserable brown. Imagine what the websites will look like in another 10 years after the dot com boom rises after this one's fall!
  • 250M? The exact price for Flickr when it was sold to Yahoo was never disclosed, but estimates were in the 20M ballpark...
  • on their dispute with MySpace (over cutting off its users access to Photobucket), once money was tossed Photobucket's way?

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