Blog.Photobucket.com

Gigaom - Year in Review

GigaOM Year In Review
Jackson West, GigaOM

It’s always fun to take a look at the stats at the end of a calendar year. For instance, it turns out approximately 86% of GigaOm readers visited using cable, DSL or corporate broadband connections, with only 7% using dial-up and 7% unknown. With an audience so thoroughly saturated with broadband access, it’s no surprise that the top three posts and three of the top ten search terms were related to video!

2006 was definitely the year that online video, gaming and productivity applications went totally mainstream. Below, we list the top ten companies or product search terms.
1. youtube1
2. stardoll2
3. videora3
4. photobucket4
5. amazon s35
6. guba6
7. meebo7
8. cyworld8
9. zillow.com9
10. skype symbian10

More at:

 http://gigaom.com/2006/12/31/gigaom-year-in-review/

Mashable - Bebo Launching Ad Widgets

Bebo Launching Ad Widgets
Pete Cashmore, Mashable
Mashable was the first to cover the launch of Bebo Widgets, the service that lets Bebo users put content from Photobucket, RockYou and Slide.com on their profiles. But now there’s a development to that story that’s worth mentioning: next year, they plan to add advertiser-supported widgets that act like interactive ads. The first of these will come from the American Legacy Foundation, allowing users to express their dislike of smoking.

More at:

http://mashable.com/2006/12/28/bebo-ad-widgets/

Web Host Industry Review - Functional Hosting Has Been a Hit; Could Situational Hosting Be Next?

Functional Hosting Has Been a Hit; Could Situational Hosting Be Next?
Isabel Wang, Web Host Industry Review

A few months ago, in response to Trinity Ventures' $10.5 million investment in Photobucket, Tier 1 Research wrote that "the growth in functional hosting represents a growing threat to shared hosting providers."

Photobucket has grown rapidly since then. It had 15 million users back in May but recently passed the 30 million mark. Other functional hosting services - such as YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn - have also enjoyed unheard of momentum (and valuations!) in traditional web hosting. In contrast, GoDaddy is just now entering the photo hosting market. I'm sorry to say that I don't think its Online Photo Filer will *ever* reach 30 million users. It offers too little, too late.

More at:

http://www.thewhir.com/blogs/Isabel-Wang/index.cfm/2006/12/28/Functional-versus-Situational-Hosting

Adweek - Bebo to Roll Out Ad Widgets

Bebo to Roll Out Ad Widgets
Brian Morrissey, Adweek

NEW YORK Bebo is readying the launch of its first advertiser widgets, small Web applications users can embed in their personal Web pages.

The social network last week began allowing users to embed miniature Web applications into their profile pages, letting them choose from three photo-sharing widgets from Slide, Photobucket and Rockyou. Bebo plans to build a collection of widgets users can choose to add to their profiles.

More at:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/iq_interactive/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003525703

Sharing to Bebo

Without a doubt, today is an exciting one for news and one of our partners, Bebo is certainly making headlines.

Check it out! Bebo was listed as the TOP search term on Google for 2006. 

This is great news for Photobucket too, as we've recently partnered up with Bebo to make creating and sharing slideshows/widgets even easier to their growing community.

Check out this tutorial: Sharing a Slideshow with Bebo.com to learn how!
It's easy, quick, and cool.

Red Herring - Photobucket: Picture Perfect

Photobucket: Picture Perfect

Alex Welch, powered more by intuition than experience, knows about photo-sharing.
Adena DeMonte, Red Herring

Alex Welch, 30, got his first taste of business at a rafting photography company in his hometown outside Denver, Colorado. “We took pictures of boats as they floated by, ran up the hill, jumped in our cars,” Mr. Welch begins. From there it was a case of speeding to the lab to process the pictures to get them to the rafters in hopes of selling them prints.

More at:

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20355&hed=Photobucket%3a+Picture+Perfect#

Additional Tweaks 12.18.06

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

We've made some additional tweaks since last week and hope that this will improve the experience on Photobucket for our users.

* We've made the text links and codes more visible with greater color contrasts

* We've modified vertical alignments between sub-album names

* We've optimized the album page so that you can see more of the images in your album at the same time. (4 across)

* Descriptions/titles are moved to the top of thumbnails and given more color contrast.

* There were also a few minor bugs regarding signing in for some of our users involving non standard characters for their username and password. These have all been resolved.

Hope you like these updates!
Drop us some feedback to let us know!

Social Network Awards @ Mashable

Photobucket is proud to sponsor the Social Network awards @ Mashable.

Great Categories: Open Nominations: Hustle there now!

We think that several of our partners are good fits for these categories and we're looking forward to seeing the results!

The categories are:

1. Large Scale
2. Widgets and Add-ons
3. Social News and Social Bookmarking
4. Sports
5. Photo Sharing
6. Video Sharing
7. Startpages
8. Places and Events
9. Music
10. Social Shopping
11. Mobile
12. Niche and Miscellaneous Networks

An Important Message from Photobucket Support

Below are some simple steps to make sure your Photobucket account is always ready for you to share images and videos with family and friends. Please review the following tips to ensure your Photobucket content is safe and up-to-date.

Photobucket Housekeeping 101

Check the email address you have registered in your Photobucket ‘Account Options’ and keep it up to date.
Why? If you need to request your password, it will be emailed only to the most current email address on file in your account. If you do not have accurate registration information in your account, you will be required to answer security questions to prove ownership of your account. If you keep your email address up-to-date, you'll be able to access your account with greater ease.

Don't share or publish your password!
Why? Your password protects all the content stored in your account. If someone else has your password, he /she will have the ability to post and delete content, change your password, change the email registered with your account, or delete your entire account. If you do not have backups of your images and videos stored on your personal computer, your content may be permanently lost.

Always backup your images and videos!
Store them on the hard dive of your personal computer, or burn them onto a cd/dvd. Photobucket offers cd/dvd backups for your account for a small fee. (review Qoop info re: CD/DVD backup options & prices)
Why? Once content is deleted from your Photobucket account, only you can upload it again from the backup files you have in your possession. Photobucket does not maintain backup files of your account content. We strongly urge you to maintain files of your own.

Before you upload content, check ‘Uploading Options’ and select the maximum size that works best for the image you are uploading.
Why? If you upload an image that is larger than the maximum size you selected in ‘Uploading Options’, that image will compress proportionately to meet the size parameters you set. Also, remember that once you reduce and upload an image, it cannot be reverted back to its original size or enlarged.

These four simple steps will make your Photobucket experience easy and enjoyable.

Your Photobucket Support Team

Online Help Center: http://photobucket.com/tips.php/
Support Forums: http://forums.photobucket.com
Support Email: support@photobucket.com
Pro Accounts Support Email: pro@photobucket.com

Mashable - Bebo Launches Bebo Widgets - 100,000 Widgets Created in 12 Hours

Bebo Launches Bebo Widgets - 100,000 Widgets Created in 12 Hours
Pete Cashmore, Mashable!

Widget developers should be deeply interested in Bebo’s latest move. They’ve just launched Bebo Widgets, and they’re reporting 100,000 widgets created by users in the first 12 hours. What’s Bebo Widgets? In case you can’t guess, it’s a service that finally allows some selected developers to gain access to those valuable Bebo profiles.

For now, they’re supporting RockYou, Photobucket and Slide.com, with RockYou offering the most advanced options. Users have a special section in their profiles where these widgets are embedded, and multiple widgets can be added. The move explains why I spotted a Bebo logo appearing on RockYou on Sunday. Users can add the widgets to their profiles by typing their Bebo username and password on the partner site (this uses Bebo’s new widget API), or by returning to Bebo and pasting the code. They also have a viral element: if you see a widget on another profile that you want to post on your own - maybe a slideshow of a party all your friends attended - you can add it to your profile with two clicks.

More at:

http://mashable.com/2006/12/14/bebo-widgets/