The founders of photo sharing site Photobucket, Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, are leaving News Corp./Fox, we’ve confirmed. The two sold Photobucket to Fox Interactive in May 2007 for around $300 million. Welch and Crystal will leave the company at the end of August.
Photobucket attracted 53 million worldwide visitors in June (Comscore worldwide) and remains one of the most popular photo hosting sites on the Internet. The site first launched six years ago.
The two aren’t commenting on the timing of their exit or what they plan to do next. The earnout on the acquisition ended in May 2009, and it isn’t unusual for founders to leave once the acquisition has been fully paid out. Given their history, I’m sure they’ll be starting something new shortly.
Nice job my friends!
I met Alex briefly, a few years ago. Seemed like a very solid guy, was generous with his time and ideas, and I’m glad he’s had so much success with Photobucket. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
with about $150M, there will be plenty of cash available to start a new venture
They’re smart guys. Can’t wait to see what they do next.
I 2nd Josh, they are both smart and great guys.
Will love to see what they are up to next!
Alex is one of the most down-to-earth, humble guys you’ll ever meet; not to mention super smart.
One thing he and Darren know how to do is scale enormous systems and networks; don’t know what’s next but I do know that it will be huge and they won’t need a fail whale.
Stoked they found their way out of the mothership. Congrats guys!
Eager to see what comes next from these two.
And I’m glad News Corp hasn’t ruined Photobucket, yet.
Good guys getting just rewards. Congrats.
BTW, what’s up with photobucket lately?
Seems like photobucket has difficulties or/and doesn’t have enough storage, there is some change going on, photobucket is massively changing original users images, blatantly reducing their quality. All in iorder to reduce storage.
Anyone can comment on this?
Anatoly-
What makes you say that? I have noticed no change.
I’ve noticed it on my images, and I have a premium (paid) account.
Photobucket: http://i178.pho...h1/lastcall.jpg
Original file: http://i32.tiny...com/34s07s9.jpg
It’s most pronounced on the red areas — compare the reddish hair of the character in the first box and the reddish skin of the character in the fourth box. The colors are muddled and not as sharp.
Both files were uploaded from the same source on my harddrive and Photobucket’s copy was originally identical to the source file, but after some period of time, Photobucket has been downgrading the image quality of uploaded jpegs.
It’s a very slight difference, but to a digital artist like myself, it’s very upsetting.