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Photobucket is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Photobucket once hosted more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members. Links from personal Photobucket accounts were often used for avatars displayed on Internet forums, storage of videos, embedding on blogs, and distribution in social networks. Images hosted on Photobucket were frequently linked to online businesses, online auctions, and classified advertisement websites like eBay and Craigslist.
 | |
Type of site | Image hosting service |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Photobucket Corporation |
| Created by | Alex Welch, Darren Crystal |
| URL | photobucket |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional (required for uploading files) |
| Launched | May 8, 2003 |
| Current status | Active |
The website was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures.[1][2] It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007. In December 2009, Fox's parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Ontela then renamed itself Photobucket Inc. and continues to operate as Photobucket.[3]
In late June 2017, Photobucket dropped its free hosting service, and started requiring a US$99 annual subscription to allow external linking to all hosted images, or a US$399 annual subscription to allow the embedding of images on third-party websites, such as personal blogs and forums. This policy change, enacted with minimal advance notice, has been highly controversial. Even years after abandoning free accounts, Photobucket keeps sending email "offers" that variously attempt to cajole or threaten users to switch to the paid plan.[4][5][6]
At its peak, Photobucket employed 120 people and accounted for 2% of American internet traffic. In 2019, the company employed 10 and ranked approx. 1,500th according to Alexa.[7][8]
Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures.[9][10] It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007.
In December 2009, Fox's parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Ontela then renamed itself Photobucket Inc. and continues to operate as Photobucket.[11]
In 2011, Photobucket became the default photo sharing platform for Twitter.[12] At that time, according to a report by Sysomos, 2.25M images were shared on Twitter daily, which accounted for 1.25% of all Tweets posted.[13]
On November 15, 2012, Photobucket announced the availability of "Photobucket Stories" which enables the user to combine photos, videos, and text into complete, sharable narratives. [14]
On June 28, 2017, Photobucket changed its Terms of Use regarding free accounts and third party hosting (hosting on forums, eBay, etc.). Only the most expensive plan, at US$399.99 per year, permitted third party hosting and linking to forums.[15][16]
In 2017, Denver Better Business Bureau gave the company an "F" rating, the worst they issue, citing fifteen complaints related to the change in terms and no response from the company.[5][17]
On May 17, 2018, Photobucket introduced new plans, including US$24.99/year that included 3rd party hosted images.[18]
In 2019, they introduced two plans that include 3rd party hosted images, US$29.99/year with 2 GB or US$69.99/year with 20 GB.[19] Effective June 1, 2019, free Photobucket and the "beginner" paid plan accounts were restricted to a hosting bandwidth of 25 MB per month.[20] Free accounts who use more than 25 MB of bandwidth will have all of their hosted photos watermarked and blurred.[21]
Photobucket offers subscription based accounts.[22] Photobucket supports video uploads of 500 MB or less, and 10 minutes or less. The following video file types are supported: 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, avi, divx, flv, gif, mov, mp4, mpeg4, mpg4, mpeg, mpg, m4v, and wmv. All video files are converted to mp4 format after uploading.
On February 6, 2013, Photobucket announced a partnership with Aviary, an image editing application suite.
Photobucket has three privacy options for albums: public, private, and password-protected privacy. Only public albums display in Photobucket or web search search results. Photobucket does not allow sexually explicit or objectionable public content.[23]
Fuskering
Although it is possible to set Photobucket albums to "private", this does not prevent the photos within being accessed by someone who knows or can guess the URL. Programs called fuskers exist, which can test for likely photo URLs. This has led to "private" photos on Photobucket being downloaded and distributed elsewhere on the Internet without the consent of their uploaders.[24][25]
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