MySpace to Acquire Photobucket

By the Betanews Staff | Published May 7, 2007, 4:11 PM

After a high-profile spat between the two companies, it now appears MySpace and Photobucket will make up with merger valued at between $250 million. In a peculiar twist of events, it was MySpace's move to block videos from Photobucket that jump-started talks between the two parties. The photo site had been looking for a buyer since March.

Rumors of the deal first surfaced over the weekend on several blogs and were confirmed by Silicon Valley watcher Michael Arrington on Monday. Although the agreement has not been publicly announced, Photobucket executives called a staff meeting late Monday morning Pacific time.

Comments

Thats a given... I was waiting for this to happen.

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Oh great, I guess I'd better make backups of all my photos I was storing on Photobucket now. I know some people think MySpace is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I hate it. I would describe MySpace as "HTML for dummies" because you can create a really crappy homepage without any knowledge of HTML. Every MySpace page I've seen so far has been atrocious. People pick ridiculous fonts, blinding color schemes and list a bunch of boring thins about themselves. Here's the list of my hobbies, some badly resized or skewed pictures of me, and a bunch of links to my "friends" on MySpace. Ugh. Reminds of a similar online networking/socializing idea Google had with Orkut or whatever the heck it was called. Anyway, I have no doubt MySpace will find some clever way to "integrate" their crappy service with Photobucket, in an attempt to force everyone to use MySpace. I have no intentions of ever using MySpace and I'm getting sick and tired of these companies going around buying up other sites and ruining them. Okay, rant over.

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I cant wait till they attempt to buy a game. Like MapleStory or Runescape. That will be the day.

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TomeOne: LOL. Thanks for the apt statement. MySpace really is crap. I signed up for FaceBook this week out of curiosity, and as a web developer, I have a huge crush on Facebook for the simple fact that they are doing so many creative things with their data.

I understand that when a company buys an online service rather than developing their own, the reason is often to acquire a user base and to then redevelop the platform.

I don't understand this deal.

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Nooooo!

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Crap acquires crap. Oh well.

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What is wrong with Photobucket? I'll wait while you fail to come up with anything...

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Ditto above but re search engine-- i'm waiting with baited breath...

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TomeOne is right. MySpace is just plain terrible to use, poorly coded and falls way behind such Facebook and even MSN Spaces! MySpace is one big media buzz of a web service and that's it. As for Spermbucket or whatever they call it, it's "ok".

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One thing I don't like now is the biggest picture you can upload is 800x600.

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I hate MySpace, but Photobucket is actually decent. It's fast, it's free, and you can store gigabytes of your images. I dare you to post a site that's better than Photobucket.

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www.dumpt.com is a pretty nice image host

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M night Shamalan is behind this...

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What a Twist!

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Well that stinks. Guess I'd better get rid of my Photobucket account.

Anyone have suggestions for a good alternative image hosting site?

I know about Picasa web albums. I'm wondering what others are out there, and I don't feel like searching right now.

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imageviper.com has been good for me so far.

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Once that's done, Google will buy the whole enchilada.

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*gasp*

Heaven forbid. Don't even joke about such things.

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lol

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I can't wait until Google becomes the new Microsoft of corporate take-overs. Pretty soon people will loath Google for it's branding of everything web. The courts will have to split Google into different companies to prevent another technological Monopoly.

MySpace, News Corp, ... who will Google swallow up next, and what will be the benefit? None. The Enron's of the future wont be born of oil and commodities, but of Social Networking, and High-output server farms. The CEO's once full on beef from Texas, now will fill their bellies with the digital grains of Silicon Valley.

It appears that the computer has become not a tool, but another product eating away at you soul for profit. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Dell all taking bigger and bigger bites.

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