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« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »
User-generated content is king in 2006
Aissetou N'gom
Fastest growing online brands in UK - 2006
1. YouTube
2. Flickr
3. MySpace
4. American Express
5. Photobucket
6. Mozilla
7. Vodafone
8. Bebo
9. Odeon
10. B&Q
2005
1. Piczo
2. American Greetings
3. Shopzila
4. Starware
5. Limewire
6. Odc
7. Wikipedia
8. Skype
9. Nickelodeon
10. Blogger
More at:
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
TechCrunch's Arrington shares his winners and losers
Dan Farber, ZDNet
TechCruncher Mike Arrington opened the second day of The Future of Web Apps Summit with his picks of Web 2.0 winners and losers and gives advice to wouldbe startups. He also announced the next blog in the TechCrunch family, which will cover enterprise products.
Winners (got acquired): Writely, del.icio.us, Userplane, Flickr, Weblogs, Inc., Myspace, Bloglines, Truveo, Grouper, Skype, Newroo
Very good bets: Digg, Facebook YouTube, Photobucket, Zoho, Stumble Upon, Popsugar, PlentyofFish, Netvibes. Mike said he could be an executive at any of the companies, it would be Digg, which also drives 20 percent of TechCrunch traffic.
Ones to watch: Jobster, Riya, Zillow, Flock, Sharpcast, Rocketboom, 1-800-FREE411, oDesk, Second Life, WordPress
More at:
Social sites make up 5 out of 10 fastest growiing UK brands
Staff, Tech Digest
Five out of the ten fastest growing websites in the UK between January and July this year are social networking / Web 2.0 based - in other words they're built on user-generated content.
Top of the pile is YouTube, followed by Flickr in 2nd and MySpace in 3rd place. Photobucket comes in 5th, with Bebo in 8th.
More at:
Photobucket has been listening to you. We have heard the opinions and views expressed around the newest release. We are working on a compromise that will make everybody happy. It may take a few days to happen but here is what will be coming.
There will be two new 'options' listed in the upload panel. They will be 1MB max (for free account holders) and 2MB max (for Pro account holders). These will have no pixel restrictions, so that if you choose these options when uploading, your images will not be resized unless they are over the MB max allowed and in that case, the old resizing method will be used. As mentioned, it may take a few days so your patience in the meantime is greatly appreciated.
One other clarification, if you have an image that is 300x1000, and you have selected 1024x768, the image will not be squished or resized. We will always keep the aspect ratio of the image.
In addition to the resizing changes, here are a few other things that will be done in this upcoming fix.
1. Resizing resolution mentioned above
2. Upload multiple images via URL
3. Add descriptions on upload via URL
4. Fix animated gif resizing/thumbnail issue
5. Allow 20 image uploads at once again
We have also resolved some of the widget issues with Internet Explorer and saved widgets not showing.
I want to emphasize that we at Photobucket are continuing to improve the service over time. We realize we can't please everybody all the time but we are desperately trying :)
Thanks for listening and giving us feedback.
Alex (Photobucket CEO) and the entire Photobucket Team!
I wanted to shed a little light on today's release. Over the years, we have continued to look at the everyday usage of Photobucket. Believe it or not, the resizing of images has been the #1 complaint for a long time, and trust me, with 23+ million users it adds up to a lot of complaints over the last 3 years. The previous algorithm for resizing made an image under 1 and 2 megabytes respectively (free and pro). The biggest issue with this is that depending on the depth and detail of a photo, each picture might have ended up totally different dimensions in your photobucket album. When you upload 10 pictures from your camera, we feel it is appropriate that they are all scaled the same and this wouldn't work w/ the old resizing method. When you post pictures on eBay, a blog or mySpace, it is nice that they are all the same size. We spent a lot of time coming up w/ the new algorithm and rules around resizing. Most people are familiar with dimensions and to help, we give little hints of what is the appropriate size to use depending on your use of the picture. I apologize if you had gotten used to the old method and are unfamiliar or unhappy with the new method but I can promise you that we at Photobucket are listening to you and trying to improve the service over time. We did a lot of testing and I can assure you that the quality of images uploaded are much better now for sharing and printing.
Please also try out the new widget creator, it is very simple to use and gives you many more ways to share your photos both on and off of photobucket.
Have a great weekend and thanks for using Photobucket.
Alex (ceo and co-founder)
Things have been pretty busy in the world of Photobucket and we've worked to make a number of significant changes that we hope will really support our users. That's not an easy job with around 22 million users, trust us.
But still! Wow!
Some cool stuff that we hope you'll like.
First off, you should notice that the upload images function is quite different when you log in to your Photobucket account.
This is not only a cosmetic change but a functional one that we hope will make our users pretty happy.
Uploading images or videos is not only faster, but there are a lot more controls associated with how images will be resized.
Don't forget to check it out after you sign in to your Photobucket account.
The next big change involves how we organize Bucket Features. Widgets.
That's right! Bucket Features are now Photobucket's Widgets.
Organized in a way that makes it easier to create image slideshows, collages, stamps or strips in a variety of sizes.
As always, we're including the tools to make it easier to share and embed these Photobucket widgets into almost any webpage. It works with Myspace, Xanga, Blogger, Blogspot, Piczo, GaiaOnline, and the list goes on and on and on.
Some additional changes include tweaks to our Search functionality, Make Mobile functions, and ability to skin the Photobucket Video Player with your very own images. We think that's pretty pimp.
We hope you'll try the new features out. Send us your feedback and let us know what you think!
Additional information on our the widgets and how it works after the jump.
Continue reading "Just when you thought things were getting quiet here" »
VC-Backed Ad-Driven IPOs Likely to Take Off in 2007
Paul Kedrosky, Seeking Alpha
The summer of 2006 will be seen as the trough for venture-backed IPOs. There are three factors at work:
1. The capital markets finally need new blood: Existing tech companies are doing poorly, long-buzzed turnarounds in old favorites like JDS have fizzled, and a combination of defections and acquisitions has shrunk the pool of public companies.
2. A new generation of tech companies is generating meaningful revenues, and not getting the valuations it would like in private markets.
3. Venture capitalists have capitulated on IPOs, and don't even bother trying anymore. Given a tiny opening, and they'll get one in the next twelve months, they'll unload their entire portfolios.
In 2007 look for IPOs from ad-driven companies like YouTube, Photobucket, and others, much to the chagrin of grizzled skeptics out there.
Here is a graph of some data I looked at earlier today that helped convince me we're set to see an IPO upswing:
The Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by
Richard MacManus.
In this post we profile the red hot photo sharing space, where the blogosphere darling
Flickr is actually trailing in the mass market. Back
in June, Hitwise posted their online photo market
statistics
huge market lead at #1 and Flickr at #6. A lot of Photobucket's lead is due to its high
usage in MySpace pages - 56% of Photobucket's
traffic is from MySpace, according to Hitwise. So marketing and being part of a large ecosystem are crucial. But also important is having simple and easy to use features. So
we present here a feature-by-feature comparison and also highlight areas where particular
services stand out from the pack.
In the table below (which incidentally we did using Zoho Sheet, Zoho's online spreadsheet) we list companies from the Hitwise article as well as some additional 'web 2.0' photo sharing players.
Note that for Alexa rank we highlighted the top 5 scores - Flickr, Photobucket, Webshots, Kodakgallery, Pbase.
|
|
Pros |
Cons |
Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) |
innovative, tons of cool features, drag and drop, sharing, RSS, badges, clustering |
difficult to use for non tech savvy |
simple, limited functionality, badges | perhaps too simple, annoying ads, no sharing and social web features | |
professional interface, targeting main stream |
no sharing and social web features |
|
simple, has all the basic functions, each album has unique URL | no sharing and social web features | |
Pbase (not in the same space) | stunning professional photography, gallery-based implementation, simple | no sharing and social web features |
Picasa (not in the same space yet - owned by | hard to say because it is not apples to apples, but editing photos is nice | basically not (yet) in the same space, not really web-based |
music associated with albums, lots of badge options | unbearably annoying ads during sign up, clubs instead of groups, does not seem | |
professional interface, targeting mainstream | no sharing and social web features | |
Slide (not in the same space) | runs on top of Flickr, Photobucket, etc. plugs into MySpace, blogs, etc. Fills nice | focused on making slideshows (it's a limitation, if you want to consider this service |
professional interface, a lot of album options, well thought through | not free | |
professional interface, targeting mainstream | no sharing and social web features | |
|
has lots of social web photo features |
ads, somewhat clunky, no tags (at least we could not find them) |
|
conceptually interesting, some innovative UI, uses OpenID for login. | confirmation image gives you instant headache; no geography-only tag | |
very well designed, has the most social web features |
somewhat slow, lacks printing ability |
Where's Yahoo! Photos? We excluded Yahoo! Photos from this comparison because we did not have access to the new Yahoo! Photos beta, so we felt it would be unfair to review it based on the old site.
The browser twist The social browser Flock
has delivered two direct integrations with Flickr and Photobucket. What is interesting
(and also somewhat confusing) is that Flock has made a special version to be distributed
to Photobucket users. It is difficult to say what impact this deal has had on the photo
sharing market so far, but it is likely that browser integration is going to play a major
role in the future.
Firstly, we do not have a single online photo market. There is still a clear mainstream market led by KodakGallery and Yahoo! Photos. This market is basically focused on upload/album/print capabilities - and has little to none social aspects.
On the other hand, Flickr is a clear leader in the social photo sharing market. It has unmatched features, usability and community.
However the overall leader in the photo sharing market in general, and a good mix between mainstream and social web, is Photobucket. They have been able to add just enough social features, without getting too complex or fancy, to convert a lot of people from traditional photo sharing sites.
How is it all going to end up and who is going to win in this market? Time will tell, but it is likely we will end up having fewer players - and those that stick around will have a blend of features from the current mainstream and 'social web' camps. As for the bloggers' favorite, Flickr, the road to mainstream acceptance for Flickr is paved with tough competition and the need to simplify.
