When you host your stuff on a Web site that’s free and that you don’t control some nasty crap can happen. Yesterday MySpace started blocking Photobucket stuff.
My blog is hosted on WordPress.com and I have the same issues the MySpace folks are seeing (the free service where my blog is hosted right now, which is different from the software that you host on your own servers).
The thing is when a company is hosting your stuff for free they need to see some way to make money off of the service. This isn’t going to be free with no ads forever and ever. And, it certainly would piss me off if I worked on WordPress.com if someone came along and made money from my user’s photos and videos.
If you want to avoid these issues there’s really one choice: pay for your site’s own hosting and build your own traffic. One reason to join services like MySpace and WordPress.com is that there’s a built-in level of traffic — the home page on WordPress.com regularly drives hundreds, if not thousands of visitors to even new sites every day. If you go off and build your own site you don’t have those advantages, but you’ve got to live with when they pull down parasitic services, which is what Photobucket is.
This will chill investment in parasitic services for MySpace, though.
What do you think?
Oh, and I’m very happy with the deal I’m getting here at WordPress.com. Yeah, I can’t run every gadget, or do advertising, and there are some other limitations, but overall the service is really great.
“Photobucket was funded to the tune of $10.5 million by Trinity Ventures.”
sent and sent, thanks.
“Photobucket was funded to the tune of $10.5 million by Trinity Ventures.”
sent and sent, thanks.
Are you using the “standard” free WordPress hosting or did you get a special deal. Seems like I remember there was something special about it (I’m not a WordPress user).
So, how does WordPress make any money off your blog. Considering the traffic you probably generate they would definitely have some expense associated with it.
I think the Google model for Blogger, and some of their other things is (so far) goodwill based. Having a lot of things I do all in Google is a convenience as they (the various features) begin to work together more and more. Yahoo, on the other hand seems to put ads on everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were to run ads on top of other ads.
But how does a specialty company like WordPress monetize?
Are you using the “standard” free WordPress hosting or did you get a special deal. Seems like I remember there was something special about it (I’m not a WordPress user).
So, how does WordPress make any money off your blog. Considering the traffic you probably generate they would definitely have some expense associated with it.
I think the Google model for Blogger, and some of their other things is (so far) goodwill based. Having a lot of things I do all in Google is a convenience as they (the various features) begin to work together more and more. Yahoo, on the other hand seems to put ads on everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were to run ads on top of other ads.
But how does a specialty company like WordPress monetize?
I guess Paypal would be a parasitic service in your mind Robert?
>seshadri: I assumed that Viacom was right in its suit against Google and would win. Still do. But that win will prove to be expensive for Viacom because it puts their growth in a box. It’s now a brand I won’t see as “new media.” Yeah, I’ll watch lots of “old and big media stuff” but that’s not where the growth in the industry is going to come from over the next decade.
>macbeach. WordPress doesn’t yet make money off of my blog. I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing ads at some point, though. That’s part of the implicit agreement you make when you go with a free hoster.
I have a special deal in that I got a custom template. Now that’s possible on their VIP program.
I guess Paypal would be a parasitic service in your mind Robert?
>seshadri: I assumed that Viacom was right in its suit against Google and would win. Still do. But that win will prove to be expensive for Viacom because it puts their growth in a box. It’s now a brand I won’t see as “new media.” Yeah, I’ll watch lots of “old and big media stuff” but that’s not where the growth in the industry is going to come from over the next decade.
>macbeach. WordPress doesn’t yet make money off of my blog. I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing ads at some point, though. That’s part of the implicit agreement you make when you go with a free hoster.
I have a special deal in that I got a custom template. Now that’s possible on their VIP program.
Ro: yes. Paypal was definitely parasitic on eBay. That one worked out well for them. Which is why VC firms throw money at business plans like this. It probably will still work out well for Photobucket. They’ll survive on their own, even after the blood supply from MySpace was cut off. In fact, growth might even go up as MySpacers use Photobucket just to “spite” the corporate suits who screwed them.
Ro: yes. Paypal was definitely parasitic on eBay. That one worked out well for them. Which is why VC firms throw money at business plans like this. It probably will still work out well for Photobucket. They’ll survive on their own, even after the blood supply from MySpace was cut off. In fact, growth might even go up as MySpacers use Photobucket just to “spite” the corporate suits who screwed them.
Didn’t MySpace promote their “300″ photo campaign a month before the film was released? This was a huge improvement to their previous limit which I believe was under 20.
Of course different people’s usage will vary, but 300 images at 5MB limit is a significant amount of image storage – especially when its free!
If we are talking about content blocking as a whole, then I think MySpace has a real issue on their hands.
On the one hand, the “free” and “wide-open” principles of media sharing is what made MySpace the darling of social networking sites.
You could host your webpage on MySpace, run a blog with that might be read by millions of other MySpacers, leave an image comment on a friends profile, and even share the lastest and greatest videos circulating online in the Forums.
This community portal aspect went hand in hand with the idea of members contributing, sharing, and evolving the whole online social networking scene.
Eventually though, MySpace hit a serious roadblock with troublemakers and kids who were all too willing to discover the latest and greatest MySpace exploit.
Spammers began by exploiting their bulletin posting system last summer. The assualt then lead to bot-flooders wrecking their own brand of havoc on the MySpace Forums.
Malicious scripting has an even longer history on MySpace, which many believed evolved from MySpace layouts being freely distributed for use, and acting as the trojan horse for external site tracking, and eventually evolving to the scale of being embedded not only in members profiles, but within image comments, the videos being shared, and also being distributed through a number of inbuilt messaging channels through the MySpace site (ie. friend requests, event invites, blog subscription invites, etc).
If MySpace used the same philosophy as eBay once did when it pioneered online social networking, and that philosophy was based on this notion that people are generally good, then MySpace had to learn the hard way that, yes, there are some good people out there. And then there are those that need to be kept honest.
With regard to blocked content, if MySpace didn’t filter flash content, phishing scripts, images from external and non-trusted sites, then it could well be blamed for not doing enough to ensure its staying power.
In the case of MySpace, being fooled the first time may well have been enough.
Didn’t MySpace promote their “300″ photo campaign a month before the film was released? This was a huge improvement to their previous limit which I believe was under 20.
Of course different people’s usage will vary, but 300 images at 5MB limit is a significant amount of image storage – especially when its free!
If we are talking about content blocking as a whole, then I think MySpace has a real issue on their hands.
On the one hand, the “free” and “wide-open” principles of media sharing is what made MySpace the darling of social networking sites.
You could host your webpage on MySpace, run a blog with that might be read by millions of other MySpacers, leave an image comment on a friends profile, and even share the lastest and greatest videos circulating online in the Forums.
This community portal aspect went hand in hand with the idea of members contributing, sharing, and evolving the whole online social networking scene.
Eventually though, MySpace hit a serious roadblock with troublemakers and kids who were all too willing to discover the latest and greatest MySpace exploit.
Spammers began by exploiting their bulletin posting system last summer. The assualt then lead to bot-flooders wrecking their own brand of havoc on the MySpace Forums.
Malicious scripting has an even longer history on MySpace, which many believed evolved from MySpace layouts being freely distributed for use, and acting as the trojan horse for external site tracking, and eventually evolving to the scale of being embedded not only in members profiles, but within image comments, the videos being shared, and also being distributed through a number of inbuilt messaging channels through the MySpace site (ie. friend requests, event invites, blog subscription invites, etc).
If MySpace used the same philosophy as eBay once did when it pioneered online social networking, and that philosophy was based on this notion that people are generally good, then MySpace had to learn the hard way that, yes, there are some good people out there. And then there are those that need to be kept honest.
With regard to blocked content, if MySpace didn’t filter flash content, phishing scripts, images from external and non-trusted sites, then it could well be blamed for not doing enough to ensure its staying power.
In the case of MySpace, being fooled the first time may well have been enough.
[...] poco por la pelea MySpace-Photobucket y esa “denominación” de servicio parásito que le daba Scoble, me quedé pensando si realmente se pueden considerar parásitos a muchos proyectos de internet [...]
The Quickest Way to Destroy Your Business: Turn a Symbiont into a Competitor
In biology, a symbiont is a creature that lives within a host animal in a mutually beneficial relationship. Mitochondria, which are the power plants of our cells originated as separate organisms until they found that they were better off living inside …
I think it’s OK for Myspace to block anything they want. If they make a bad decision the free market will sort it out.
I think it’s OK for Myspace to block anything they want. If they make a bad decision the free market will sort it out.
[...] you are a user, and you may want to look at getting your own blog somewhere else, as the Scobleizer recommends. And it’s good for companies to be aware of how much their business depends on someone else, [...]
Good points.
It would be great if you actually got the same WordPress software experience and features in a self hosted version as you get here, but alas, you don’t at this time. That is most unfortunate.
Good points.
It would be great if you actually got the same WordPress software experience and features in a self hosted version as you get here, but alas, you don’t at this time. That is most unfortunate.
I don’t know how wordpress.com generates revenue, but you (Robert) being here is certainly beneficial to them – thousands of people (like me) must have learned of wordpress.com’s hosted service through your blog being here.
I don’t know how wordpress.com generates revenue, but you (Robert) being here is certainly beneficial to them – thousands of people (like me) must have learned of wordpress.com’s hosted service through your blog being here.
Paying for private hosting has many advantages. I am hosting every image, including the layout images, on my MySpace account. It’s much easier to host comments, too. I just upload *whatever I want* to my domain using an FTP client, then copy my self-hosted URL. All this takes less time and effort than the aforementioned parasitic hosting services, plus I get over 5Gb of storage and 200Gb of monthly transfer.
Here is an example:
http://the67show.com/images/Aries2-g.gif
Thanks for the post.
-Kendall
Paying for private hosting has many advantages. I am hosting every image, including the layout images, on my MySpace account. It’s much easier to host comments, too. I just upload *whatever I want* to my domain using an FTP client, then copy my self-hosted URL. All this takes less time and effort than the aforementioned parasitic hosting services, plus I get over 5Gb of storage and 200Gb of monthly transfer.
Here is an example:
http://the67show.com/images/Aries2-g.gif
Thanks for the post.
-Kendall
To say that the relationship between photobucket and MySpace is parasitic is to imply that MySpace doesn’t get anything out of the relationship. Photobucket brings users, content, and value to the table. Symbiotic is a more accurate description.
To say that the relationship between photobucket and MySpace is parasitic is to imply that MySpace doesn’t get anything out of the relationship. Photobucket brings users, content, and value to the table. Symbiotic is a more accurate description.
[...] MySpace’ers learn harsh reality [...]
[...] [via Scobleizer] [...]
[...] MySpace’ers learn harsh reality When you host your stuff on a Web site that’s free and that you don’t control some nasty crap can happen. […] [...]
Social networking limitations are everywhere…what widgets you can use, whether you can get paid for the eyeballs you bring, who can see your personal content (bosses/predators/recruiters?), moving friends and content between sites, and some sites don’t even let you put HTML on your profile.
Minggl solves all of these problems TODAY and MySpace cannot block the content it serves—check it out!!
Social networking limitations are everywhere…what widgets you can use, whether you can get paid for the eyeballs you bring, who can see your personal content (bosses/predators/recruiters?), moving friends and content between sites, and some sites don’t even let you put HTML on your profile.
Minggl solves all of these problems TODAY and MySpace cannot block the content it serves—check it out!!
At least with hosting my own blog, should I ever piss off Kathy and Bert, Maryam, or even the all fired up Tim O’Reilly, the demise that met meankids and unclebobism won’t land on my doorstep.
However, I agree with you. When you go to someone else’s house for supper you get’s what you get’s….
At least with hosting my own blog, should I ever piss off Kathy and Bert, Maryam, or even the all fired up Tim O’Reilly, the demise that met meankids and unclebobism won’t land on my doorstep.
However, I agree with you. When you go to someone else’s house for supper you get’s what you get’s….
I agree wordpress is a good deal to reach out to other readers. Unlike blogspot..that hosting site doesn’t do shyt. I’m glad I moved away from it.
I agree wordpress is a good deal to reach out to other readers. Unlike blogspot..that hosting site doesn’t do shyt. I’m glad I moved away from it.
[...] 11th, 2007 I was searching around wordpress and ran into this interesting article about the recent ban of all Photobucket images from MySpace. I thought it was [...]
WordPress.com doesn’t directly monetize Robert’s blog, but they do host adsense on many of the other blogs here and have for many months now; you won’t see them if you’re signed in to your WordPress account, but you will otherwise. But I do not know how much money this makes them.
As for MySpace, with the inroads Facebook has been making on them it is slightly to the north of INSANE for them to start making things difficult for their users. Yanking the chain of your customers and hitting them with sticks is not an effective way to make them love you.
God knows, I’ve had my trials with Photobucket over the years. They’re far from perfect. But the fact is, I have perhaps a thousand images stored there and if WordPress were to suddenly disallow embedding those images here in a brazen control grab I would go completely apeshit and so would about 600,000 other people who use this service. And so WordPress does not.
They’re also too smart to disallow Podtech embedding. The PR value of keeping Robert and his fans happy is worth quite a lot, and the boys at WP are smart.
WordPress.com doesn’t directly monetize Robert’s blog, but they do host adsense on many of the other blogs here and have for many months now; you won’t see them if you’re signed in to your WordPress account, but you will otherwise. But I do not know how much money this makes them.
As for MySpace, with the inroads Facebook has been making on them it is slightly to the north of INSANE for them to start making things difficult for their users. Yanking the chain of your customers and hitting them with sticks is not an effective way to make them love you.
God knows, I’ve had my trials with Photobucket over the years. They’re far from perfect. But the fact is, I have perhaps a thousand images stored there and if WordPress were to suddenly disallow embedding those images here in a brazen control grab I would go completely apeshit and so would about 600,000 other people who use this service. And so WordPress does not.
They’re also too smart to disallow Podtech embedding. The PR value of keeping Robert and his fans happy is worth quite a lot, and the boys at WP are smart.
“…and the boys at WP are smart.”
Then why can’t they figure out how to make me a sandwich? The bread is right over there…
“…and the boys at WP are smart.”
Then why can’t they figure out how to make me a sandwich? The bread is right over there…
[...] talks. Om Malik sees things differently and thinks Photobucket practically asked for this blockade. Robert Scoble calls Photobucket and services like it “parasitic.” Nick Carr says this is all [...]
[...] talks. Om Malik sees things differently and thinks Photobucket practically asked for this blockade. Robert Scoble calls Photobucket and services like it “parasitic.” Nick Carr says this is all [...]
[...] talks. Om Malik sees things differently and thinks Photobucket practically asked for this blockade. Robert Scoble calls Photobucket and services like it “parasitic.” Nick Carr says this is all [...]
They can, they’ll get to it once they’ve responded to all these requests for Adsense and Flash embeds…
They can, they’ll get to it once they’ve responded to all these requests for Adsense and Flash embeds…
Hmmm, interesting stuff. I’ve never been a fan of myspace, so this doesn’t really effect me. But I know a ton of people who use it.
-Matt
http://www.mattgunn.ca
Hmmm, interesting stuff. I’ve never been a fan of myspace, so this doesn’t really effect me. But I know a ton of people who use it.
-Matt
http://www.mattgunn.ca
[...] talks. Om Malik sees things differently and thinks Photobucket practically asked for this blockade. Robert Scoble calls Photobucket and services like it “parasitic.” Nick Carr says this is all [...]
I like to keep a blog as a hobby, I don’t make money from it and I have no intention to do so. I’ve used a lot of different services including having my own domain. Of all the ones I’ve tried I like WP.com the best. I paid a small amount to have a domain name here and I would actually be willing to pay for the service. Of course I do like having it free though.
I like to keep a blog as a hobby, I don’t make money from it and I have no intention to do so. I’ve used a lot of different services including having my own domain. Of all the ones I’ve tried I like WP.com the best. I paid a small amount to have a domain name here and I would actually be willing to pay for the service. Of course I do like having it free though.
[...] Cos a major firm can switch things overnight and make or mar the future of the [...]