no, they haven't truly relented. they have new management, a severely downsized workforce and just reduced their price by 95%. peeps get access to the pix again but hosting/sharing starts at $2.49/month subscription. they still seem to be all over the map b/c various peeps report that some pix are working again while others are not. just click on some of the threads i listed. they're still down, but random Photobucket pix seem to be working here and there. their coding must suck.Originally Posted by Zincubus
this is was their Twitter announcement awhile back: https://twitter.com/photobucket/stat...22642924576768
the announcement and that pix they use is hilarious. they don't seem to be getting alotta love jugding from the likes, re-tweets and comments.
anyways here's some articles: https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/n...-millions.html
Photobucket drops pricing that angered millions (and new CEO hopes to unbreak the internet)
Photobucket’s experiment with being a $399.99 premium service is over, and so too is the tenure of the CEO who led it. The Denver-based photo storing service on Thursday revealed it has slashed its prices and restored millions of photos around the internet hoping to mollify millions of customers it angered last year.
“It’s the first step of many to restore the trust of customers,” said Ted Leonard, Photobucket’s new CEO.
He became CFO at the 15-year-old company in October, after it surprised users worldwide by starting to charge $399.99 for hosting a large number of photos and being able to post them on third-party blogs, ecommerce sites and elsewhere.
John Corpus, Photobucket’s CEO at the time, defended the change, saying a subscription model was necessary given the disparity between the online ad revenue Photobucket’s website generated and the expense of hosting billions of images its 90 million customers stored with Photobucket.
But the pricing, especially the $399.99 a year service that enabled posting images on third-party sites, didn’t convert a meaningful number of Photobucket users into paying subscribers, Leonard said Thursday.
“There’s not a one-plan-fits-all approach to image hosting,” he said. “We can build a subscriber-based business without charging more money than the perceived value of the service.”
Leonard became CEO in March. The company has spent the weeks since them coming up with new pricing and strategies to make 90 million customers happy and generate revenue.
The new prices start at $1.99 per month for 10 gigabytes of images stored and rise to $3.99 monthly for 20 gigabytes and $8.99 for two terabytes of storage. All the plans enable third-party hosting for a $2.49 monthly add-on price.
Photobucket on Wednesday also turned back on millions of users’ images that were still linked to around the web.
The move allowed the images to reappear in place instead of the stock speedometer image that had replaced them last summer. Leonard ruefully joked that speedometer might have become the most viewed image in internet history, though one linked to users’ anger with the company.
“This was weighing on us,” he said. “We wanted to see the images replaced and the internet to be put back together in a sense.”
A pair of Level 3 Communications engineers, Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, formed Photobucket in 2005 to help people to store and use digital photos. Photobucket became the fastest-rising photo storage startup as it grew in parallel with the popularity of MySpace, the first widely-popular social network, where many users of Photobucket posted images.
Fox Interactive, a division of News Corp., bought both MySpace and Photobucket in 2006, envisioning something that presaged Facebook and Instagram. But Facebook soon dwarfed MySpace, and photo-filtering apps took on prominence as smartphones supplanted desktop computers.
News Corp. sold Photobucket in 2010, making an independent, Denver-based company again.
It employed 120 people in downtown’s ballpark neighborhood at its height. Welch, its co-founder, returned to Photobucket at one point after it purchased his photo-sharing app company, but he since left the business.
Today Photobucket has 10 full-time employees and is based at a downtown co-working space.
More: https://www.denverpost.com/2018/05/1...hosting-plans/
Photobucket restores photos “taken hostage,” hopes to lure back customers with cheaper plans after last year’s $399 debacle
Long-time Denver photo site reorganizes with new management and much cheaper price plans
Photobucket is back! And so are all of the photos that disappeared after the Denver company decided last summer to charge up to $399 for hosting images.
The company, which became one of the nation’s largest photo-sharing sites in the early 2000s, said Thursday that it has rejiggered management and wants to do “the right thing for customers” and dropped hosting fees to $2.49 a month or $24.99 a year, though for a limited time, fees are $1.99 a month, or $19.99 a year.
“Our focus since I took over has been customers first,” said Ted Leonard, who joined the company last fall as its finance officer and became CEO in March. “Two months later, we’ve turned back on the images. It’s an important day. Millions of images were restored that were lost forever. Our mission is to bring back customers and regain customer trust.”
For years, Photobucket users could store photos on the site and then link to them on message boards and other third-party websites for free because advertising supported the service. But as advertising dwindled, the company looked for new revenue sources, such as hosting fees. Last June, the company began telling its 100 million registered users that it would soon begin charging $60 to $399 a year to those using the site to host photos.
When the new fee kicked in, millions of images were replaced by a notice that required the image owner to “unlock your account” and upgrade to the new $399 plan.
Customers balked and publicly complained that Photobucket had taken their photos hostage. A Change.org petition attracting 3,663 signatures to demand that Photobucket reverse the fee. At the time, then-CEO John Corpus said that it wasn’t an easy decision and there was no way “to make 100 million global people happy.” Corpus is no longer with the company.
“Anytime you lose a user, whether they’re a paying customer not, it’s tough,” Leonard said. “We took a step back and looked what mistakes were made. But we didn’t spend a lot of time on what went wrong in the past but going forward, what kind of services will be offered. They (customers) want an improved experience and a perceived value of reasonable prices.”
The new price plans will replace the old prices, which are still posted on the site but will be updated as the company rolls out a new website in upcoming weeks. The new plans are:
-- Free: Photo sharing and ad-supported storage only. No third-party hosting.
-- Basic: 2 gigabytes of photo storage and ad free hosting for $2.49 a month
-- Intermediate: 20 GBs of photo storage for $3.99 a month
-- Expert: 2 terabytes of photo storage for $8.99 a month
-- Add third-party hosting to the intermediate or expert plans for $2.49 more per month
The limited time offer plan for $1.99 a month includes 10 GBs of storage and third-party hosting. When the offer ends — and no date has been set as the company is monitoring customer response — users who choose to stay with the company must pick one of the other plans. Annual plans will be discounted.
Leonard said that the 10-person company, which moved out of its Ballpark neighborhood headquarters for smaller digs in RiNo, will continue to offer free advertising-supported photo storage plans and will continue to look for new opportunities to grow revenues.
“We really believe this is the revival of Photobucket. Right now, there’s 10 of us. As we grow and get more competitive, we’re look at different areas for business and places we can expand. I’m a Colorado native and I take a lot of pride in being part of a Denver business.”
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