photobucket

Photobucket

Category: Media

Photobucket is a photo-sharing and hosting site. It's become incredibly well known for its partnerships and integration with MySpace, who incidentally acquired the service earlier this year. In addition to photo hosting, Photobucket allows its users to upload video clips, which can be edited with an integrated video remixing tool designed by Adobe. Users also can make their own profiles and portfolios to share with others. The service hosts nearly three billion user photos and is one of the most-trafficked photo services on the internet.

Web site: www.Photobucket.com

Webware coverage: Photobucket CEO sounds off on Fox acquisition ; … Read more

Doodle on and deface your photos with Graphita's Live Studio

Here's a fun piece of Webware that made its official launch last week. It's called Graphita Live Studio, and it's a really fun and well-done Web-based photo editor. Unlike some of the other solutions I've looked at in the past, Graphita doesn't have any grand scheme to replace your favorite desktop photo-editing software. Instead, Live Studio provides users with a way to quickly deface, or "enhance" their photos with all sorts of rasterized stamps and a trouble-making doodling tool.

To get started, users simply need to upload a photo from their hard drive. … Read more

Photobucket CEO sounds off on Fox acquisition

Earlier today it was made official, after much speculation, that Photobucket had been acquired by Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corp. CNET News.com spoke with Photobucket CEO and co-founder Alex Welch on Wednesday morning to hash out some of the rumors and talk about what's in store for the popular image-sharing site.

According to Welch, the company put itself up for sale in order to accelerate growth beyond its current membership base of approximately 42 million. "When we look at Fox, it was really a natural choice for Photobucket because we really want to grow … Read more

Fox unit confirms Photobucket, Flektor buys

It's official: MySpace.com parent company Fox Interactive Media has formally announced its agreements to acquire image-sharing site Photobucket and slide show mashup creator Flektor. Financial terms of the purchases were not disclosed by Fox Interactive Media, which is a division of media giant News Corp.

Both acquisitions had been rumored for some time. The Photobucket deal, originally reported earlier this month, is inarguably the more significant of the two: Photobucket, after all, is the 34th most visited site on the Web, with over 42 million users and 17 million monthly visitors. Its history with Fox Interactive Media hasn'… Read more

Report: MySpace acquires Photobucket [Update]

MySpace has acquired photo-sharing site Photobucket, according to a report on the Valleywag blog.

The deal could be announced as early as Monday afternoon, according to the blog.

Photobucket, the largest photo-sharing site on the Web with more than 40 million registered users, engaged in a public relations battle recently with MySpace.

MySpace accused Photobucket of violating its terms of agreement by "encouraging" its users to post advertisements in the photo slide shows they posted to MySpace.

Note: This post was cross-posted from a CNET News.com story.

Update: The deal has been confirmed, and is now set … Read more

eBay does MySpace-compatible widgets

eBay has a neat new way to promote your items for free. Users can take any item listed on the auction service and widgetize it using a really simple editor. There are three options to choose from: single item, multiple item, and search. The multiple items widget has a scrolling display of item images, and is good for Powersellers, or anyone who is selling a few things at a time. What's great is that you don't even need to sign in to eBay to make one, just an item number.

When you're done creating a widget, you … Read more

Hands-on with Flektor's content creator

Flektor is a new Flash-based content mashup tool. Users can pull in photos from several hosting services like flickr, MySpace, and Photobucket to make slick-looking, embeddable media slide shows for blogs, Web sites or social networks. It's a lot like Mixercast, and other media mashup services like RockYou and SplashCast.

Flektor's interface is drag-and-drop, and has a very short learning curve. To add media to your show, just drag imported media files down to a timeline at the bottom of the screen, where they can be rearranged or removed at any time. There are also "Flidgets" which can be inserted into your show to add live chat, a live broadcast from your Webcam, or cliched film effects like color bars or static. What's really neat is the ability to edit any picture with some easy-to-use sliders that let you do simple, on-the-fly alterations to your photographs--something you'd find on a Web-based photo editing tool like Picnik.

To add a little flair to your show, there are nearly 100 transitions, effects, and filters that can be put on top of or in between your media. You can also edit each effect and change its appearance. Out of the many transitions I've seen on some of these Flash editors (Photobucket's Remix in particular), Flektor has some really snappy and good-looking effects.

The main hindrance in using Flektor is how long it takes to communicate with the third-party services. Flickr in particular takes quite a while to sync up photos from various albums. On the upside, the MySpace integration is very simple; just give it a username and it will pull up photos members have uploaded in addition to any images that have been embedded in user comments. It's also easy to embed your Flektor player on a number of services, with a handy export page that provides special embedding codes for a dozen services (including Google's Orkut).

I've embedded a sample "Flek" I put together using some photo and video clips. For screenshots of the editing interface, keep reading.

[via Mashable]

… Read more

News roundup: MySpace, Yahoo, Amazon

MySpace and Photobucket make amends. The block on videos from Photobucket for MySpace users was lifted yesterday. According to a post on the Photobucket blog, "open lines of communication and procedures with MySpace" were made to make sure it doesn't happen again. The blockage affected nearly a quarter of Photobucket's 40 million registered users. Related: MySpace launched a version of its site today for Latino Americans.

Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service. Yahoo Music users will now be able to pick up the lyrics to their songs after a deal was made with digital media company Gracenote. … Read more

Meez teams up with Photobucket

Photobucket members will discover a new option when logging in this morning. The company has partnered with Meez, the 3-D avatar service to give Photobucket members a place to store and host their 3-D avatars. We don't normally cover personal avatar services, but when they partner with sites with over 40 million users, it's worth noting. Meez has approximately a million users (which in and of itself is no small feat), and the service has apparently seen quite a bit of growth in the last few months.

Users can pick from a ton of options to make their … Read more