Blog.Photobucket.com

Photobucket to Offer Metro Style Photo Application in Inaugural Windows Store

World Leader in Photo and Video Sharing Selected to be Part of Windows 8 Launch

Denver, CO. – Feb. 29, 2012 – Photobucket Corporation, the world’s leading dedicated photo and video sharing service, today announced that it is one of an exclusive group of companies hand-selected by Microsoft Corp. to be part of the launch of the new Windows Store for Windows 8 apps.

“Once installed, the Photobucket App and Windows 8’s Metro style user interface provide a powerful way to showcase Photobucket’s functionality combined with the key features of the Windows 8 operating system. As part of the launch of the Windows Store, Photobucket will be able to deliver access to a leading platform for saving, sharing, and socializing photos and videos to Windows 8,” said Tom Munro, CEO of Photobucket.

The Photobucket app was specifically designed for the touch-driven Windows Metro style user interface and includes the following features:

• Category browsing and full search of the nearly 10 billion photos hosted on Photobucket.com
• Photobucket’s full album and photo management experience through a new user interface optimized for Metro style
• Ability to capture and upload photos directly from Windows 8-based PCs
• Integration with Windows 8 File Picker, giving consumers easy access to Photobucket images for general platform use
• Social features, including commenting, liking, and sharing out

“With its extensive user base and rich feature set for managing photos and video, Photobucket was a natural choice for the Windows Store preview,” said Aidan Marcuss, senior director of Windows Core Marking and Ecosystem at Microsoft. “We are extremely pleased to have them as an app in the photos category.”

The new Photobucket App for Windows 8 is available to those who have downloaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, at no cost, in the Windows Store.

About Photobucket

Photobucket is the world’s leading dedicated photo and video sharing service. With over 100 million registered members, Photobucket users upload over four million images and videos per day from the Web and connected digital devices. Photobucket hosts, preserves and protects photos and videos while bringing members the very best browsing, sharing and editing experiences. In addition to uploading and sharing with friends and family on the Photobucket site, users can also instantly share memories across all of the most popular social networks, instant messenger applications, through email, and from their mobile phones. Photobucket’s headquarters are in Denver, Colorado with a regional office in San Francisco, California.

For the latest feature announcements and news, please visit the Photobucket press blog at http://blog.photobucket.com/photobucket_press.

To create a free Photobucket account, users can visit http://photobucket.com, or find the Photobucket Mobile Application and Snapbucket app available in the app store on all major smartphone platforms. Photobucket supports Mobile Web, iPhone, Android based devices, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7.

Straight Talking with Photobucket CEO Tom Munro

Did you miss Tom Munro’s live interview with Inc.com on Wednesday, October 26? Tom sat down in the hot seat to field questions from Inc.com viewers to talk about the future of online phone and video storage management and how he and the Photobucket team are always updating the user experience to address and anticipate users’ needs and to make sure each experience is optimal.

For those of you not familiar with the Inc.com interview series, every Wednesday Inc does a live chat with CEOs to discuss their business and allow viewers to ask questions of CEOs. In addition to talking about the industry as a whole, Tom recapped some of the recent Photobucket stats and they are truly unbelievable - if we do say so ourselves. We host 9 billion photos – the nearest dedicated photo sharing competitor is Flickr who hosts 5 million photos to put it in perspective. We serve 3 billion photos a day and receive 65 million unique visitors to our Web site each month. A big thank you to our users who are just as passionate about photos as we are!

For those of you that missed the chat, we have summarized Tom’s interview and included a few highlights below:

How did you reinvigorate the culture at Photobucket?

This was certainly my #1 challenge – culture is always hard to change and it takes dramatic effort and action. I changed about half the team in order to reinvigorate our culture and made sure that every employee understood the Photobucket vision and what we want to convey around the user experience. We are all very passionate about what we do and truly have the desire to drive Photobucket to the next level.

Where do you see photo hosting in 5 years?

Right now, a huge number of photos are being uploaded to Facebook each day. But what’s important to note is that most people don’t upload ALL of their photos to Facebook, it’s only the few they want to share with everyone. And Facebook isn’t the only social network where people are uploading photos. Google+ and other sites are starting to become more popular. The common theme here is that users don’t have one place where all their photos reside and that is what Photobucket is trying to resolve. We are the place to store and have a record of ALL your memories through photos and videos.

How do you differentiate from Flickr?

We want photo storing and sharing to be free to a majority of our users – so that we can be the place where it’s easy and free to store all of your photos and videos.

Are there any challenges with Photobucket’s business model?

Really the most challenging part is balancing the user experience and the ads. The ads are what drive revenue for our site and allow us to keep accounts free, but I have had to pull down some ads in the past that have hurt our user experience. Our first goal is create a great user experience and to keep the site mainly free.

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Remember, these are just the highlights from the interview – make sure to watch the whole video when you have a moment. You can hear more about why Tom thinks he should really be a scientist and how he can speak fluent Japanese. We also have many exciting products coming out over the next few months, so make sure to check back soon. We are confident our users will be really excited!

Tell Your Summer Story!

You took tons of summer photos, and want to make them look their best before showing off, so today we're going to show you cool ways to Share, Print and Edit your photos with those you care about the most!

Editing:

With a few clicks, you can turn your summer photos into creative projects.  Here's how:

1. Log in to Photobucket and click "edit photos" at the top of the page. Select the image you want to edit, which will then launch the image editor:
   
   
2. From here, you can make your summer photos pop with the "Color Splash" effect, or add a cool summery look with the "Cross Process" effect on the Retro Tab.  Don't forget to take a look at the other tabs on the page, as there are tons of sweet ways to edit your photo!
3. To watch a short tutorial on editing ideas, click here!

Sharing:

Sharing your summer photos or even a whole album is fast and easy with Photobucket! Here's a quick way to share a photo:

1. Log in to your Photobucket account and hover over the image you want to share.
   
2. Click the "Share" button. You'll see some options like these:  
3. Click the option that fits your need. You can share using Facebook, Twitter, email and more.   Add a message and tell your friends and family what your photo or video is about! 
4. Watch a short tutorial showing you how easy it is to share! 

Printing:

Printing photos is a great way to always have your stories with you. From simple prints to fun collages, we offer great options for you to print your summer moments. It's easy:

1. Log in and click "My Home" at the top of the screen.
2. Click "Order Prints & More".
3. We have partnered with the leading printing service, Lifepics, for all your printings needs.  You can order prints, make cards, calendars, photo books, and gifts of all sorts!
4. Click here to get some fun ideas on print projects and learn more! 

We hope you enjoyed learning about the easy and fun ways to share your summer memories with friends and family! Keep an eye out for further features we're bringing you at Photobucket!

Photobucket CEO Tom Munro Interview with Robert Scoble

Hey Photobucket fans,

Check out this great video of Robert Scoble (@scobleizer on Twitter), talking with our very own CEO of  Photobucket, Tom Munro (@tamunro on Twitter) about Photobucket!

 

Here's some highlights for you busy folks:

• Photobucket hosts approximately nine billion photos & videos!
• We serve over three, sometimes four bilion images across the web to about 2.5 million different web sites on a daily basis.
• With that capacity and scalability, Photobucket was an obvious choice for Twitter's photo service.
• Photobucket serves about 25 million photos from mobile alone every month.
• During our July survey, with 2,500 respondents, half of you who responded said you take video on their mobile devices at least once a week, and our trends show even more than that.
• Our new mobile app, Snapbucket allows you to keep your original photo, so you have permanence along with fun filters & effects.
• We're planning on a new release of Snapbucket that will incorporate social aspects as well as video filters & effects.

Thanks to all of you who help make Photobucket great!

New and Exciting Features on Photobucket Coming Soon!

We've got all sorts of cool new features coming soon to Photobucket! You'll be able to explore, find, follow and discover the best of Photobucket!

To get you started, here's two easy steps:

1. Choose a profile pic for your account. (Go to Account Settings under your username and click "Change Image")
2. Check your album privacy settings. (Click the My Home tab, then Privacy).

Remember, the more public photo albums you have, the more you can share with friends and family!

Keep an eye out for more from Photobucket, coming soon!

Photobucket & Twitter - Better Together!

Here's a reminder about sharing pictures with Twitter, powered by Photobucket - a great experience!

Photobucket and Twitter have teamed up to bring you a better photo-sharing experience, using the 140-character Tweets you've come to know and love! Now, whenever you share a photo from Twitter, you get the power of Photobucket to share your pic with the world:

If you don't already see the little camera in your Twitter account, don't fret - it's coming your way soon!

Check out what these reviewers have to say about Photobucket & our Twitter partnership:

GuardianUK: "It was Photobucket's scale that got the deal - 100 million users and 8bn uploads. Given the hysterical reaction when Twitter itself falls over, it's quite understandable that Twitter has chosen a robust, large scale partner over a smaller firm."

GigaOm: “Photobucket just made a major leap forward on the comeback trail. The online photo sharing pioneer confirmed Wednesday its technology will power Twitter’s highly anticipated native photo sharing feature.”

MobileMarketingWatch: “And when it comes to pictures, Photobucket is the sage atop social media’s hill. With 100 million users and more than eight billion uploads, Photobucket has become the world’s leading dedicated photo and video sharing service.”

All Things Digital: “Web turnaround stories and brand revivals are few and far between. But the once-forgotten Photobucket seems to have cemented itself on firm footing with a deal to host photos for Twitter’s new native photo-sharing service.” (Don't forget to check out the video interview with Tom Munro, our CEO!)

LifeHacker: “Twitter is partnering with Photobucket to host these photos but you don’t need a Photobucket account to use it. And photos are only visible on Twitter, and not on Photobucket’s image sharing site. Beneath every photo is a “powered by Photobucket” note.”

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UPDATE  8/10/11:

All Twitter users should now have access to the photo sharing service! Check out these great reviews:

Twitter Photo Uploading Now Available For 100% Of Users

‎TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/09/twitter-photo-uploading-now-available-for-100-of-users/

Twitter's in-app photo sharing comes to all users

‎VentureBeat: http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/09/twitter-photo-sharing-rollout/

Twitter rolls out photo sharing feature, mobile still to come

‎Examiner.com: http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-national/twitter-rolls-out-photo-sharing-feature-mobile-still-to-come

Twitter Rolls Out Photo Sharing to All Users

‎Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/08/09/twitter-photo-sharing-all/ 

Twitter integrates photo-sharing, plans galleries

‎ZDNet UK: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/twitter-integrates-photo-sharing-plans-galleries-10024033/

 

Photobucket now has unlimited storage!

The web’s premier photo and video site on the web, Photobucket.com is now giving unlimited storage* for all users! This means that free users get all of the below:

• Unlimited photo storage
• There will be a limit of 500 videos for free users
• All storage for free users will be resized (we will not keep originals)
• Bandwidth restrictions will remain at 10GB/month for free users

Now’s the time to sign up for an account with Photobucket and upload all your photos and videos to share with family and friends!

And if that’s not enough great news, if you Tweet, post on Facebook or email your friends with the news, you could win an iPad 2! So what are you waiting for? Get your upload on with unlimited storage at Photobucket! Click here to learn more.

 

*Photobucket reserves the right to limit excessive use and the unlimited storage offer pertains to non-commercial use only.

*Updated* Site Changes

As a lot of you saw, we made some big changes yesterday. We have been working on this for a few months, and many of the changes are a direct result of the comments and suggestions from our users. We continue to listen to your feedback and have made some updates today:

• We have added one-click copy to all link codes. This means that you can click any link code on the site and the code is automatically copied - No right-click or CTRL/CMD + C required!
• We have restored the ability to upload more than 2 files by URL.  We do recommend that you check out our Firefox plug-in if you love uploading by URL. The plug-in allows you to right-click on any photo on the web and then upload it directly to your Photobucket album. Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10035/
• We have changed the Sub-albums panel to show all sub-albums, sorted alphabetically

We have an amazing community of users, and we appreciate all of your feedback. We are listening and will continue to enhance your Photobucket experience.  Thanks again for your comments.

Your Photobucket Team

New Great Changes Coming Soon

We've collected your feedback and are making some changes we think you'll like! We are really excited to share with you some sneak peeks of upcoming changes:

New design:

• Sleek, new design to complement your albums
• Redesigned page layout for optimal use of your browser size
• Improved account settings for a customized user experience

Improved uploader:

• Use the  button to easily upload from anywhere on Photobucket.
• Save time by adding tags, titles and descriptions as your photos and videos are uploading
• Automatically share your photos and videos to your favorite sites when you upload.

Easier navigation:

• Quicker access to any page with our improved navigation bar
• Faster browsing in your albums and search results
• Effortless album management and customization with our new ‘album options’

 

Let us know what you think! We will keep you updated on when you can be on the lookout for the changes in your album.

iPhoto Plugin

We are excited to launch a new iPhoto plugin that easily lets you upload and manage your photos. Some of the features include:

• Control where your images go
• Upload to any of your Photobucket albums Change the destination album anytime
• Create new albums for your uploads
• Manage your uploads
• Resize images before uploading Include titles and descriptions
• Add tags to images

Download the plugin and learn more!

 

Introducing Facebook Connect

Now you can login and sign up for a Photobucket account using your Facebook login credentials. In a few simple steps you can easily start sharing your Photobucket albums on Facebook, commenting on your favorite photos and more.

 

Easily log in in a few simple steps:

If you don't already have a Photobucket account, you can easily set one up with your Facebook credentials and start sharing your favorite albums and photos .  Learn more here!

New Album Options

Thanks to all your great feedback in our User Forum, we made some changes to the album set-up. Now you can easily make your albums private or public with a few simple clicks. Some new changes:

New Album Settings: When you set up a new album, you can now select whether you want it  to be public or private. If you choose private, you can set up a unique password for that album to share with friends and family. 

 

New Icon of Album Edits: You can now click the lock icon at the top of the album to edit your existing albums' privacy settings, as well as the album name.

   

For more information about  album privacy, head over to our help section.

New Webcam Feature

Ever in the mood to just have a mini photo shoot with your webcam? Now you can capture pictures with your webcam and directly upload them to your Photobucket account. Here are some simple steps:

1. Log into your Photobucket account.
2. Select the From Webcam option from the More Upload Tools drop-down at the top right of the Upload panel.

If you have a webcam attached to your computer, it is automatically detected. If not, connect your webcam, and click Try Again.

3. Click Allow to give Photobucket permission to use the webcam.

     4.  Click Capture to take a photo with your webcam.

 

    5.  Select an album and click Upload to upload your photo, or click Try Again to take a new picture.   Easily share all your new photos with friends and show off your best modeling poses!

New Features: Orangize Your Photos

We are thrilled with all the feedback and suggestions our users have been providing in our feedback forum, and as a result, have made a few changes to the Organizer. Organizing your albums and media is now easier and takes less time! 

Fresh off the presses, and new to the Organizer:

• The full list of all your albums is on the left side of the Organizer, so it's simple to drag-and-drop your media from one album to another. 
• You can now move entire albums! Say, for example, you have multiple albums from 2010: a few birthday party events and a few random shots. Now you can create a 2010 album and move all those other albums into the main 2010 album. Easy!
• You can delete entire albums WITHOUT individually deleting files in the Organizer or on the All Albums page. Did you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend? No problem. Delete an album with one click of a button and never look back!

You can see all these changes when you log in and click the "Organize" link at the top of your album. Have fun!

New Faster Uploading

We are really excited to announce our new faster uploading process! Starting today when you upload multiple files they will simultaneously upload at the same time making the upload process faster than ever! Upload 20, 50, or 100 photos and watch the status bar monitor the process.

Uploading to existing albums also got easier on the new uploader. Look for the drop-down menu at the top of the uploader to find the album you want to upload to or create a new album.

 

Learn more or log in to try it out! Let us know what you think!

New Color Splash Effect

Try our new Color Splash effect!  Transforming your photos with the Color Splash effect just got easier with our brand new effect in the Image Editor. Color Splash allows you to keep certain areas of your photo in color while the rest is black-and-white. Here’s how it works:

 

1)    Click the “Edit” link on the photo you want to edit. This opens the Image Editor.

2)    Click the “Effects” Tab, and select the first option: “Color Splash”. Your photo turns black-and-white.

3)    Drag the brush (black dot) over areas you want in color. You can select the brush size to apply the effect to both small and large areas.

4)    Click “Save a copy” when you are satisfied with all the areas to create your new Color Splash photo!

Share your fun Color Splash photos in our Color Splash group album, or check out our Color Splash category!

New iPad App

Our new sleek iPad App is here! We are excited to bring iPad users an app that brings all the best Photobucket features to one place. The iPad's 9.7 inch high resolution screen will bring your photos to  life and be a constant source of entertainment. Some highlights of the app:

• Upload photos directly to your account.
• View full-size slideshows of your images.
• Download images directly to your iPad so you always have a cool and unique background.
• Search Photobucket's huge media library
• Browse and discover amazing photos in one of our 27 Find Stuff categories. 
• Create, edit titles, and organize all your photos.

Learn more and download it now!

Give us your Feedback

Have ideas or stuff you'd like to see on Photobucket? We just launched a forum for users to provide feedback and suggestions about what new features they would like to see on the site. Get a sneak peek into the behind the scenes and get involved!  Vote on new features or submit your own!

New One-Click Sharing

Photobucket allows you to set up persistent connections to your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts, if you choose. When you set up a persistent connection, you do not have to re-enter your login information for that website every time you want to share media or an album to that site. Additionally, you can share images and videos automatically upon upload, with a click of your mouse.  

1.       Log into your Photobucket account.
2.       Click New! Auto-share your uploads! in the Upload panel.
3.       Click Connect beside each service you want to connect to, then enter the required info and allow the service to connect.

4.       Click Done to close the Set up box. The Upload panel now shows an Auto-share checkbox and icons for the services you are connected to.
5.       Click the Auto-share checkbox on the Upload panel, then click Upload images & videos.

6.       Choose and upload your media. All the media you upload is automatically shared to the services you connected.

For more information:

Help topics for enabling & disabling the connections:

http://pic.pbsrc.com/help/Content/Sharing/Autoshare/autoShareUpload.htm

http://pic.pbsrc.com/help/Content/Sharing/Autoshare/DisableAutoShare.htm  

Send Photos to Your Phone

Our new Send to Phone option allows you to send your favorite photos from your album or cool images you find on Photobucket directly to your phone. Send photos to your phone to make them your wallpaper, forward them to your friends or make them a contact ID photo. Look for the “Send to Phone” link and blue phone icon on any image to get started. For more information and instructions see our tutorial.