News Corp to Purchase Photobucket

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.'"

Comments

Buying their way in?

[HalifaxRage]

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?

[Ngarrang]

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:Buying their way in?

[neoform]

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..

Re:Buying their way in?

[vboulytchev]

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?

Re:Buying their way in?

[mgblst]

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?

[jimbojw]

> 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.

Re:Buying their way in?

[Ngarrang]

"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.

Re:Buying their way in?

[webrunner]

I don't understand what people are saying here.. Photobucket was never particularly good, it was just there when you needed it.

Re:Buying their way in?

[KillerCow]

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?

[HalifaxRage]

Yay! My first 5!

Re:Buying their way in?

[watchingeyes]

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:Buying their way in?

[mshurpik]

>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.

Re:Buying their way in?

[damsa]

You are mistaken. Myspace was never really that good.

Re:Buying their way in?

[Breakfast Pants]

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.

Twofo Frosty GNAA Piss

[Anonymous Coward]

University of Warwick file sharing faggots.

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Goodbye, Photobucket

[daeg]

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

[Joebert]

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:Goodbye, Photobucket

[Sosetta]

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.

Re:Goodbye, Photobucket

[DJCacophony]

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.

Re:Goodbye, Photobucket

[CastrTroy]

Personally, the best and easiest to use site that I've ever found is Dropshots. 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:Goodbye, Photobucket

[CastrTroy]

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:Goodbye, Photobucket

[DJCacophony]

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".

Re:Goodbye, Photobucket

[Fex303]

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.

Re:Goodbye, Photobucket

[Anonymous Coward]

They do? Then why does my photobucket account still contain a shitload of porn in a folder quite simply called "porn"?

The Pokey Mon Effect

[postbigbang]

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:The Pokey Mon Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Chachink-chu!

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Well, he did get his billions *somewhere*! Unless you're Ted Turner, it's hard to see where you're in a position to criticize his business acumen.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[postbigbang]

Ted Turner at one time had a huge fortune, mostly divested.

In terms of acumen, if Fox News thrills you, perhaps you're right about Murdoch.

The emo-Web is a nice place to play. Yet the value of a photo site is fairly dubious except for affinity-ad revenues. Few have broken that trend. Does Flickr make money? I don't think so. Even the revenues from GooTube are suspect. Adding a non-producing asset to a non-producing asset seems like an outcome of a non-producing asset.

If that's acumen, I'll cite that Pokey Mon was great for a while, too. Sitting in a closet upstairs are dozens and dozens of relic decks. There are the Beanie Babies, and other passing fads. They make a few short term dollars. Then they're a recycling problem.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[DJCacophony]

Before Google's buyout of Youtube, the site still managed to make enough revenue to cover their $1,000,000 a month hosting charges. I think you are severely underestimating the moneymaking power of ads.
With 41,000,000 people registered, and each one with many friends who probably browse their page once in a while, with each page displaying an ad and a probable ad response rate of 10% with a dime per response, it's still enough to make hundreds of thousands of dollars daily.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[postbigbang]

And the window of opportunity for YouTube is like that of the photo sharing sites: short. Should we now start to list all of the trendy sites that *haven't* survived 24 months? YouTube is an interesting phenomenon. It's championed a genre that seems to have staying power. It lacks so many things, but now has a nice parent that will go to court to keep things interesting both in content and in financing/business ecology.

It's my belief that your optimistic revenue projections are a bit silly, frankly. It's a bit like the blather of blogs: I don't really care that someone had a tunafish sandwich yesterday, and I'm loathe further to click on a SunKist Tuna ad that was coughed onto the page like some sort of ad-phlegm. I recognize that there are those that do. Your Madison-Avenue optimism about the revenue potential, IMHO, is out of place.

Murdoch's bought bad bait before. I fervently hope that it hurts his Neo-Con wallet.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of acumen, if Fox News thrills you, perhaps you're right about Murdoch.

I get my news mostly from the BBC, although other parts of News Corp. do indeed "thrill" me. But the issue was Murdoch's ability to make profitable, sustainable acquisitions, which seems like an objective fact, not how happy he makes me personally.

Ted Turner seems like a loathsome individual, but his ability to make money is indisputable.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I don't know if we should be accepting the advice of someone who bought in to pokemon and beanie tabbies. I think it might be a better idea to go with the billionaire that doesn't invest in stuffed animals.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[postbigbang]

Ah-- wait: we both entertain children. I knew both the cards and furry things would be useless in several years. Murdoch doesn't seem to think so.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've been using Photobucket for over 2 years, so I think I'll keep it, unless it gets ruined somehow.

Re:The Pokey Mon Effect

[jZnat]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Strange coincidences?

[sethstorm]

Given Fox's history of practicing and favoring "private entity censorship", is it quite strange of a coincidence for another article to be close to this one?

Re:Strange coincidences?

[maxume]

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.

Re:Strange coincidences?

[roboninja]

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

Re:Strange coincidences?

[sethstorm]

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.

God Save the Queen !! Please, Save Her NOW !!

[Anonymous Coward]

God Save the Queen !! Please, Save Her NOW !! Bush made her out to be 250 years old !!! God, save us all, too !!!

Forgetfullness

[Joebert]

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:Forgetfullness

[HalifaxRage]

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.

Re:Forgetfullness

[The-Ixian]

They must be gimick accounts....

Re:Forgetfullness

[zenslug]

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

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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.

First the .com bubble...

[ArchdukeChocula]

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!

Re:First the .com bubble...

[youthoftoday]

yes they are.

Well I think..

[Anonymous Coward]

PENIS penis PENIS penis PENIS

8========D~~~~` --- spooge!

Re:Well I think..

[Anonymous Coward]

You mispelled 8==D

HisSpace to acquire Profitbucket

[AHuxley]

Alex: What happen ?
Darren: Somebody sold up us the out.
Operator: We get video conference.
Alex: What !
Darren: Main lcd turn on.
Murdoch: How are you gentlenerds !!
Murdoch: All your images are belong to us.
Murdoch: You are on the way to assimilation.
Alex: What you say !!
Murdoch: You have no chance to profit sell your site.
Murdoch: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Alex !! *
Alex: Take off every 'Dig' !!
Alex: You know what you doing.
Alex: Move 'Dig'.
Alex: For great justice.

Re:HisSpace to acquire Profitbucket

[Goffee71]

Surely this is just so Rupert can get cheap topless page three pics for the British tabloid Sun "newspaper" All-your-nipples-belong-to-him-now!

You FAIL 1t

[Anonymous Coward]

and hIas instead [nero-online.org].

Sure Evidence....

[Chineseyes]

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.

Re:Sure Evidence....

[Hijacked Public]

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.

Re:Sure Evidence....

[anoopjohn]

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:Sure Evidence....

[shotgunefx]

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.

this is a bad lesson to future generations...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who watch hundreds of millions going to mediocre entrepreneurs and see that "success" isn't about invention, discovery or research, but spending a few hours knocking up some primitive scripts and heaping on the marketing.

Whether it's Google who did little more than refine a search algorithm and revert to the clean page design of 5 years previous (and this is the high end of the innovation stakes) or MySpace living it large as a scaled-up version of "that friends database I did in school", watching these basement mouth-breathers receive a windfall is the geek equivalent of teenage girls seeing Paris and Britney make their millions by flashing their meat. You can get rich by doing what's easy, and what's been done before, but it's no challenge, and it's neither helpful to the advancement of humanity nor worthy of congratulation.

Once upon a time, we had entrepreneurs like Hewlett and Packard. Oh well, best of luck to China, they're learning from where we fall short.

Noooo

[Anonymous Coward]

they be aquirin' my bucket

(take that obscure slashdot meme posters!)

Re:God Save the Queen !! Please, Save Her NOW !!

[froggero1]

I don't get this troll... can someone please explain it?

That's a lot of money

[tb3]

If wonder if that's why this deal fell through. (Bubbleshare was subsequently bought by Kaboose for $2.25 million.)
Obviously, News Corp wants an established photo-sharing site that has an established audience and name-recognition, not just a plug-in for MySpace.

The .acquisition bubble...

[Nymz]

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

Re:The .acquisition bubble...

[ArchdukeChocula]

$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:The .acquisition bubble...

[Nymz]

$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?

Screw Newscorp.

[k1e0x]

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

I think them buying anything is bad.. and really wish they didn't buy Myspace.

Re:Screw Newscorp.

[Rachel Lucid]

I so misread that as reading "RuPaul supporters".

Probably to the same effect though.

Re:Screw Newscorp.

[k1e0x]

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.

[Rachel Lucid]

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:Screw Newscorp.

[k1e0x]

>> 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.

Re:Screw Newscorp.

[WilliamSChips]

Ron Paul is to freedom as those fad diets are to nutrition.

Nothing good can come...

[MsGeek]

...of Rupert Murdoch buying your company. Heh, my pic of Dick Cheney as Darth Sidious will probably be taken off my Photobucket. Just watch.

Re:Nothing good can come...

[KillerCow]

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.

Internets have changed in the past 5 years

[Mike Savior]

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!

Overpriced?

[Bearhouse]

250M? The exact price for Flickr when it was sold to Yahoo was never disclosed, but estimates were in the 20M ballpark...

Murdoch will never get away with this...

[stud9920]

McGyver won't let him.

Re:Murdoch will never get away with this...

[WilliamSChips]

MacGyver has been dealing with aliens for the last ten years. He has bigger fish to fry than Murdoch.

Re:God Save the Queen !! Please, Save Her NOW !!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Bush was introducing HM Queen Elizabeth II the other day, he goofed up when mentioning that she had visited during the USA's bicentennial in 1976 - he said 1776 by mistake, then quickly corrected himself.

Anybody notice how quickly Photobucket caved

[Master of Transhuman]

on their dispute with MySpace (over cutting off its users access to Photobucket), once money was tossed Photobucket's way?