Sometime around 10:30 pm PST tonight, MySpace began blocking videos embedded on MySpace pages that originate from Photobucket. This is a major blackout, affecting millions of embedded videos. Photobucket images and slideshows are not affected. Videos from competitors like YouTube are still working fine.
As with previous outages, embedded videos work fine until the user makes any edit to their profile. At that time, links to Photobucket are automatically replaced with “…” or removed, causing the embed to fail.
Photobucket has north of 40 million registered users.
This is turning into a habit for MySpace, which usually claims bugs, security issues or terms of service violations were the cause of a shut down. In January MySpace mysteriously shut down all Flash widgets on the site for 2.5 hours. An Imeem blockade came next. Vidilife, Stickam and Revver have been permanently banned.
Today’s shutdown of Photobucket comes suspiciously close to news that Photobucket is up for sale (Fox, MySpace’s parent company, was notoriously rumored to be furious when YouTube sold to Google). It seems that just when a company starts to break out from the pack, MySpace finds a security breach and shuts them down. Even though MySpace has flat out denied it to us, it is our belief that these blockages are meant to send a clear message to widget companies - don’t forget that MySpace is in charge.
More as this develops. I have a request for comment into MySpace PR, but I don’t expect to hear back from them until the morning.
Update: see The Photobucket blog for more details (read the comments to that post - Photobucket users are really angry.
Update: Photobucket CEO Alex Welch just sent me the following email:
Mike,
Tonight MySpace took the decision to prevent Photobucket users from posting
certain types of media to their MySpace pages.This action by MySpace means that millions of pieces of content created by
our users may no longer be available on MySpace. This content represents
hundreds of thousand hours of effort on the part of our users – hours
invested using the editing, remixing and management tools and features
available only on Photobucket. Conservative estimates put one in every two
page views on MySpace containing content from Photobucket users. This step
will have a drastic affect on the usability and appeal of MySpace.More importantly, by limiting the ability of its users to personalize their
pages with content from any source, MySpace, is contradicting the very ethos
of personal and social media. MySpace became successful because of the
creativity of its users and because it offered a forum for self-expression.
By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers
its users a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.Faced with the prospect of recreating their content using only the limited
resources available on MySpace, we believe users will vote with their feet
(and their keyboards) and turn instead to the other sites that Photobucket
links to on a daily basis. Photobucket users link to 300,000 different Web
sites every day from their Photobucket albums – MySpace is just one of those
sites. This action by MySpace in no way affects Photobucket albums. The
content remains available in user albums for linking to other Web sites,
discussion boards, forums, e-commerce sites and blogs.At Photobucket, we’ve seen a steady and growing trend by users towards
linking to a range of social networks – not just MySpace. If MySpace
persists in blocking Photobucket and other personal media sites, users will
transfer their loyalties to a combination of these networks. Photobucket’s
business model is built on allowing users to support multiple identities by
providing a central resource for creating, enhancing, managing and sharing
their content. Our business is in no way dependent on being able to link to
MySpace alone.We believe this action by MySpace is a retrograde step in the evolution of
the Web and an unacceptable attempt to limit the freedom of the very people
who are its lifeblood – its users.-alex
Any thoughts on the connection between this and Livejournal’s recent announcement that it’s even easier to use LJ and Photobucket together?
I work for myspace, I love to delete people’s account. For example I deleted Bobbi Billard’s myspace just last week. She’s our top Myspace Gal. She’s hot and brings alot of people to our site, but hey, who cares. I love to delete accounts.
Just curious if you want to help me out..since you love deleting accounts and all
There goes the Web 2.0 business model.
Better get back to basics. Depending on a free ride from another company is not a good idea…my 8 year old could figure that out. Same goes for mashups…if you plan to build a company on someone else’s back - you better realize that you will be bucked off the minute the smell of success is in the air.
This is just common sense stuff…no MBA required to figure it out. If you cannot see this kind of thing coming from 100 miles away - you chose the wrong path IMO.
Myspace is going down.
And what about google? The give out Map API’s and companies like Frappr start and become successful and then they wait look at what all the API developers are doing, take all the best features, then compile them and do it themselves. Rendering the sites they help create useless.
Then Friendster patenting “the social network”…..
All these people are greedy!
2005
myspace
thighspace
unzip-your-flyspace
2006
friend-space
trend-space
why won’t you spend-space?
2007
mock-space
lock-space
3rd-party block-space
2008
faux-space
blow-space
where-did-they-go-space?
I’m seeing a big influx of members on NewBlog.com - another blogging/social networking site.
Protectionism never works, in any scenario. See how old media companies are doing now. See how the United States did in the early 1900’s.
They’ll learn fast or they will end up like any other “fad”.
@DotPoet
2009
Murdoch’s race-space
Slows its pace-space
Pie in his face-space
Om’s now reporting that it turns out that Mr. Welch has apparently been withholding the complete story (i.e. lying) from everyone…namely that the FIM folks asked him to abide by their TOS/TOU and remove the advertising embeds they were trying to sneak onto MySpace…
MySpace is right, PhotoBucket is wrong. Not a popular opinion, but go ahead and sell ad space on a sign and walk it around Disney World. Mickey would be up your *ss so far that you’d grow wiskers…
First things first — I understand where Rupert is coming from here. He has more than the integrity of his user’s to maintain. He has a responsibility to see that his businesses are maximizing all of their opportunities for financial growth. Publicly traded companies do not have the luxury of simply embracing “social networking culture as it relates to their user base” as the determinant for these decisions. MySpace deserves to receive adequate compensation for being a part of the distribution of this content.
However, this does pose serious implications for Photobucket. The company will suffer a devaluation for any future acquisitions, unless they can work out the appropriate relationship with MySpace — mainly because of the shear size and reach of MySpace. Currently, I believe Facebook and Photobucket would be a much better match because of a few things: 1) Goal congruency 2) Privately held 3) Culture fit 4) and vision
I’d like to see some of these companies just go public because they have such strong brand recognition. This provides an easier way to create new products and services by vertically integrating. Creating newer platforms and distribution channels for people to consume your product. That’s what we’ve tried to do at 20/20. I mean, we want our customers to be able to access all kinds of content, when they want it, and in whatever form they want it. When you’ve worked hard to build a brand, don’t underestimate your company’s goodwill — these intangible assets make it possible to lower your risk on future investments/growth businesses.
Mark, thanks for understanding me. I might get you a job in my empire.
For guys trying to start companies, don’t plan to profit from the back of big players. Any site that tries to violate MySpace TOS will be blocked, simple.
I hope others will learn from this. I have to go now and attend to other serious business. This is a forgone conclusion!
I personally think that Virb is gay.
I’ve said it many times before, any business that is build on the back of another business without any type of partnership or agreement involved is pure stupidity. PhotoBucket and the like are worthless.
eh, there’s always http://www.cavenger.com
To Alex,
There is no cause for concern. I love what you’ve done with Photobucket. I think it is a great business, with a very loyal consumer base. Just keep focusing on building the culture, and growing the quality of users. Don’t let other people’s fear create a barrier between you and your users. It’s our users that are the real heroes of the business.
A misleading quote from the Photobucket CEO in a CNET news article on the subject:
“We’re not expecting to see a significant effect on our business from this,” Welch said. “Only about 25 to 30 percent of our total registered users link to MySpace.”
While at face value this may be true, what he’s not admitting is that 80-85% of Photobucket’s ACTIVE users link to MySpace. Photobucket is way more dependent upon MySpace than they would ever admit or have you believe. Any entity considering buying this company ought to take a good long hard look at their user logs. They say they link to 300,000 websites but 299,999 of them represent 10-15% of their total linking activity. Part of their ad pitch is being able to tell advertisers such as movie companies that their ads will get embedded in MySpace for a fraction of the cost of paying for ads on MySpace…AND they’ll get embedded in the content, an even better value than buying the banners at the top of the MySpace pages. Unfortunately, that game has been declared over by MySpace so now Photobucket is going to have to find another business model. Can you hear that sound? It’s Photobucket’s valuation falling. Photobucket’s exec team may not be biting their nails but the company’s investors sure as hell are…
Here’s the link to the article.
http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-6175272.html
Is it really a suprise to anyone that turning myspace into a corporate money machine was the kiss of death? Who really cares where it goes from here? It was done a long time ago.
I think MySpace is just blocking Photobucket content to show users “who’s boss”. Fortunately, there are alternatives, such as ImageShack and TinyPic. Until MySpace lifts the unfair blockade, keep those sites in mind.
Remember that the next time you click on a banner at myspace, it’s the way they make profit. Please join me in a grass roots protest, stop clicking on any myspace.com banners until they lift this ban against photobucket.com. After all the phishing attacks resulting in spam messages on everyones myspace in the last six months and the known un-patched security holes I think it’s time it’s users sent them a VERY STRONG MESSAGE!
From an IT professional to you, Beware!
MySpace is a silo. Let it crumble as such.
George and Billco, Myspace is not going to go down, and so what if their design sucks. I used to think is would eventually lose steam because of its basic design and limited customization compared to other social networks, but when you look at people’s profiles, you realize that the average joe DOES NOT CARE ABOUT DESIGN. Good design is overrated, especially if you allow people to tweak their profile with CSS. And the biggest reason myspace got so big was because the best alternative at the time, Friendster, didn’t scale well and became so slow that everyone ditched Friendster to join Myspace. I always thought Friendster was a much better site and would still use it if everyone was on there, but everyone is on myspace now so that’s where I am (and facebook). I’m surprised there hasn’t been a massive revolt against myspace for blocking Photobucket like there was when Facebook introduced news feeds. Maybe the majority of myspacers are younger and/or less sophisticated? I did read on Hitwise that facebook users are MUCH more likely to vote than myspacers…
- Grant
Oh ya, and how about Slide? They must be shaking in their boots right now! Slide has gotten incredibly popular on myspace recently, and I imagine if myspace cuts them off too, they might not have enough users to keep the business afloat in the future. I guess anyone who rides myspace’s coattails better read their TOS extra carefully… Best of luck, Max.
Even that companies that not lay 100% in their business on MySpace that more that clever at my point of view, intended to made some workarounds like “MySpace optimized” or something like this to still be available for growth audience of myspace customers. For example one of the indies music stores http://payplay.fm release optimized (cutted down functionality) version of their music widgets.
Here is the blog enrty http://myspace.com/payplay
At any point this moves cost people time and of course money.
get in myspace
http://www.wallpass.net/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.pl
I didn’t think photobucket depended on myspace, but I could see how they would derive a large portion of their income from myspace.
please find out if your man is a real niggia
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