3 posts tagged “photobucket”
Confirmed
It's been confirmed. MySpace has indeed acquired Photobucket, giving them the $300 million price tag range they've been valued at. Someone at Photobucket is getting a bonus today.
Why Is This News?
After all the bad blood between the two companies, they're now part of the same family. That's partially what makes this acquisition so surprising: MySpace recently cut off Photobucet, rendering their video widgets useless on the biggest social network. After talks regarding the regulations of MySpace widgets, Photobucket videos were allowed to come back. And now Photobucket is "back" in a big way.
While it's common for some larger companies to buy their competition outright, MySpace has always been rather strict when it comes to parasite companies that get too big. This was seemingly the case with Photobucket, whose photo widgets were not removed during the brief Photobucket video ban, causing some to speculate a conspiracy on the part of MySpace.
What it Means for Web Companies
So what does this mean for MySpace, Photobucket, and the rest of the world? They've not got a built in widget system for media sharing, that offers more variety than what they've got in house. That's always been key for MySpace users, as they crave variety and personalization. It also means that hundreds of parasite companies are now more hopeful than ever that they'll get acquired by the MySpace machine, instead of shut off.
Other MySpace acquisitions include Newroo, which became MySpace News.
In other Photobucket news, they are now supported by Snap, the website preview service. Photobucket users' account images can now be viewed using Snap, enabling them to see images without navigating away from the current site. via
Image from Mashable.com
via
So MySpace won't let you post your Photobucket videos and remixes anymore. That's no fun. While Photobucket has formally acknowledged that
some of their services have been blocked from use on MySpace, the
social networking giant has not said anything regarding the matter
quite yet.
We're all sitting on the edge of our seats awaiting a reason for blocking Photobucket videos and remixes. Why not block everything, photos and all? Does MySpace admit that blocking photos as well would really piss off their users? Or do they just not care? Photobucket seems to know that MySpace could become a pretty dull place without their slideshows, and since the rise of this whole online video thing, MySpace has been pretty sensitive about who gets to show clips.
Arrington
aroused speculation that MySpace, notorious for cutting off widget
makers, is taking a preemptive strike against Photobucket in the event
that they be bought by a rival. Wouldn't that be a replay of the
GooTube drama? Or maybe MySpace has some new video remixing widget
player they'll be releasing tomorrow, via SpringWidgets?
No? Well, whatever the case may be, I'm sure we'll hear from MySpace sooner or later, and they'll say that there was some technical/secuirity/whatever issue with Photobucket's video and remix widget player. I refuse to believe that MySpace doesn't have some line of communication with a good portion of widget makers out there. Especially the big ones, like Photobucket. Jay's got some pretty interesting thoughts regarding the MySpace widget existence, so be sure to look out for that soon.
And yes, MySpace is abandoning their roots, and their users are upset. But the users keep on coming! MySpace has yet to fall from grace when it comes to the public at large. And when you're that big, you tend to do whatever you want until you actually can't get away with it anymore. Taking away so many key privileges for users, though, is heading in the wrong direction.
Photobucket is supposedly set to announce their partnership with PumpAudio, a music licenser service, in order to offer music to be included in Photobucket's new media mixing features. The mix capabilities are powered by Adobe, which is posing itself to really allow widgets to power to the next level in terms of creative license, image faculties, sharing capabilities, and overall aesthetics.
This is all very important, as the realm of widget-ry will get incredibly competitive in the year 2007. The look and functionality of widgets will be ruthlessly judged by the consumer base, and those with the most desktop and mobile phone compatibility will probably overrule most others.
So if I can add music to my Photobucket slideshow now, will that interfere with the music that's already annoyingly playing on my profile?
