Photobucket goes to Myspace

As a last couple of fights the realization that they can not live without it - or a parasite fusing with its host - Photobucket has concluded a sale of Myspace, News Corporation's social network. The photo-sharing service, which has a symbiotic relationship tough, but with Myspace, may announce an agreement as soon as this morning. Since the end of negotiations late last week, Photobucket has called a meeting of staff by 10 am PST this morning. We have no financial details of the agreement, but Photobucket, and its bankers Lehman Brothers, was seeking at least $ 300. Photobucket, founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, took off in 2005 as users of social networking sites like MySpace started using the service to store and display pictures of themselves and their friends.
That has been both a blessing and a curse. The popularity of Photobucket's free service between users of the News Corporation social network took the service to 17m monthly unique visitors, according to Comscore, making it the most popular web site for photos, ahead of rivals such as Yahoo from Flickr.
However, the company increased bandwidth costs have eaten up most of its revenue growth, according to people close to the operation. And administration of claims - that users' loyalty is the site that hosted the photos, not the place where they were displayed - were always a stretch.
A reminder of the balance of power between Myspace and Photobucket came last month when the social network of users found that it could not show videos hosted on Photobucket. Myspace claimed the Photobucket was partially blocked for technical reasons alone, but the movement serves as a warning to Photobucket not to be too sure of an independent future.
Lehman Brothers - the search for a valuation of $ 300 for a company that only $ 6.3m in revenue last year - spoke of the possibility of a bidding war for Photobucket. However, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, the parent of Myspace, was always the most likely buyer. And shoving between the two companies - Myspace of bullying, and Photobucket public protest - were always part of the negotiations.
What does the agreement to set up a company that had other piggyback on Myspace? On the one hand, it is encouraging. For a company so dependent on him, made a strong multi Myspace. But Photobucket is the largest of the "widgets," to companies that depend on some of the properties of the larger sites, instead of drawing visitors to their own property. If you still can not develop an advertising business, prospects are dim for other widgets.
Photobucket trying to be a cause for celebration for Alex Welch and his associates, and Trinity Ventures, which invested $ 10.5m in the company last year. But, for other widget makers, which marks something of a ceiling on their potential output.
Update: Michael Arrington, citing "senior" people in Photobucket, said the purchase price was about $ 250 million.

Newscorp shot Photobucket

The layoffs keep coming at News Corp interactive devices. Just a week after MySpace announced plans to cut workforce by 30% - or about 425 employees - Fox Interactive Media unit Photobucket have let go a third of its employees - or about 35 employees.
The cuts, first reported by industry blog BoomTown will affect about 75 FIM employees - the rest of whom resided in various other divisions of News Corp. unit, including IGN video game and entertainment division.
"As part of our ongoing review of each of the FIM business units, employees were informed of the job cuts today in several of our sites," according to a FIM spokesperson. "We've made these cuts to ensure that our resources are properly aligned with our business goals, and on a scale that will enable us to function as efficiently as possible."
Last week, the "restructuring" plan on MySpace crossed all U.S. divisions of News Corp.-owned social network. "MySpace grew too large, given the realities of today's market," said Jonathan Miller, News Corp. 's executive director of Digital Media and the first chief digital officer. The move marked MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta's first major move since replacing MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe in April. "In short, our staff numbers were inflated and hampered our ability to be an effective and mobile team-oriented company," said Van Natta.
Largely in an attempt to enhance MySpace and other properties, News Corp. paid $ 250 million Photobucket in May 2007. So, is best known for helping users post images on MySpace member pages, Photobucket rose to prominence as a one-stop shop for uploading digital photos and videos online. But MySpace's star has fallen in recent years, Photobucket's have inevitably followed.
Today, social media king Facebook has over 200 million users compared to MySpace's 130 million, according to comScore.

MySpace to acquire Photobucket?

It takes some effort to keep up with Photobucket and MySpace. Back in early April, Photobucket and MySpace have been feuding for the second time (the first time in 2007) after MySpace blocked Photobucket videos and remixes to view video profiles on MySpace. Two weeks after they were friends, and now the latest news is that MySpace has agreed to acquire Photobucket.
This puts a new meaning to that "if you can not beat them, join them." Photobucket has been very successful with their media services, and clearly did not want their MySpace taking over their territory.
Valleywag reports that the announcement could come as soon as this morning, and not financial slipped out. Photobucket founders were initially seeking at least $ 300 million for the services has exploded in popularity with the help of social networks. Although MySpace was probably hoping to be able to live without Photobucket, they could not.

MySpace block Photobucket videos and remixes.

Photobucket is an image hosting services that have been posted on the Photobucket blog MySpace is preventing users from viewing videos and remixes of the page is hosted on Photobucket MySpace. Image hosted by the prosecution. Photobucket recognized. real feel if a MySpace blog overview, the following is extracted from the Photobucket post. This action by MySpace means that all videos and remixes you created will not appear on your MySpace profile and comments section. Especially if you try to add videos or remixes to your profile will be deleted.
We are not happy about this and we're sure that you are not happy. Thank you for investing millions of hours of editing and mixing tools and management features of Photobucket. Especially because you have all been very comprehensive video Photobucket - Video to 50,000 downloads per day. Rest assured that your content will be stored securely in May if you Photubucket album disappeared from MySpace.
We think you can limit your personalized web page with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting. Very personal beliefs and social media. MySpace is a success because of your creativity, because it offers users and a forum for self expression. Severely limited by this freedom, MySpace shows that we consider the property as they wish to remember. The rest of Photobucket MySpace MySpace Post asked users to write and send statements MySpace. Is this the updated noon Photobucket video to post on the blog, not MySpace or YouTube profile comments. Robert Scoble, Don Dodge noted the scope of a free hosting service. TechCrunch is a blog associated with millions of videos hosted on MySpace Photobucket, but no YouTube videos are blocked. Valleywag comments to the Chief Executive Alex Welch Photobucket May this action of MySpace when they say that Fortune Photobucket fashion is proof. Welch said that if the social network sites will disappear and move around a bit the user of the content, but they are on Photobucket. "Additional coverage in the top story on Techmeme.