modelmaker66
Where are all my photobucket pics? Are they out of business? No pictures link to my old posts.
Where have you been for the past two months?
Photobucket announced that they are eliminating free image hosting, and they removed image hosting from all but their most expensive paid account.
For people who were free customers, that means that as of the announcement, back in June, I think it was, the image links that they embedded in posts throughout cyberspace no longer return images. They return instead a logo (the extortion image, I think Stik called it) that says to upgrade your accoount.
For people with paid accounts other than the "Plus500" ($499.99 a year), Photobucket will continue to respond to the link and show the image, through to the end of next year, provided we keep the account current by renewing.
So, there has been a scramble to find other image host sites.
Apparently, PB did this because too many people were using ad blockers to suppress the myriad popup ads that PB started showing early last year. But I think they are now locked in a slow downward spiral--they sold more ads to raise money, but the aggressive ads caused people to look for another host, or to use an ad blocker, which potentially reduces the amount of ad revenue. So, some bright marketing boys say, "Let's yank the free third-party hosting", which seems to be chasing even more people away, not just the ones who used the service free of charge, but those of us who paid to get more storage space. About as bright as those programming execs at Fox who cancelled "Firefly".