I just got into Dallas, had a few minutes to check TechMeme, and see that Photobucket just got sold to MySpace for $250 million. That’s about 10x more than Flickr went to Yahoo. Calling Kristopher Tate. Calling Kristopher Tate! (He’s the founder of Zooomr, who probably will get all the funding he wants now).
I wonder how the world will change on our next flight. See ya in four hours in San Francisco to find out!
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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May 7th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Flickr went to Yahoo!
May 7th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Jeez … what is up with Scoble these days getting his Web 2.0 mixed up ???.
May 7th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
You think his sleep deprivation’s bad now!? Wait ’til the little Tike arrives (’course Patrick’s already given him a taste of THAT!).
Funny thing is we don’t hear IACI nabbing any of these guys up. Rupert’s group (NEWS) is smart… For the long haul I’m thinking I’d put my money on Barry’s group though. They’re FAR more efficient and focused in their M&A… Appears “local” is their next round of plays.
May 7th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Err… didn’t Flickr go to Yahoo, not YouTube?
May 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Scoble, I am wondering what you’re thoughts are regarding the situation regarding Mix07 and the attendance of Wired’s “Fred”?
After all the fuss you made that a developer should be kicked out to make room for Fred (who was tardy in signing up before it sold out) because Wired is oh so important for getting Microsoft’s message out to developers, Channel 9 members voted to let Fred in (a MS employee gave up his spot), but then Fred didn’t even bother to show up.
You’re being called out towards the end of the Channel9 thread:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=303144
May 7th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Does Photobucket have some nice patents?
Not so long ago there were access problems, thus it is quite possible the deal process started then.
May 7th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I’m actually surprised. I’m shocked.
May 7th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
MySpace’s stance on peripheral services has always been to threaten, attack and attempt to shut down. This reversal is going to fuel a lot of sh*t as far as startups wanting to leech again.
May 7th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
I sense a foto bukk-it! php script bonanza coming soon, and a lot of bandwidth sold on godaddy. Call me nuts, but every time something sells way above it’s real price, it happens. Can’t help it.
May 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
This is my last comment. I found a pattern.
Find a large site with user created content.
Get users to spam the website with media from yours, not necessarily like youtube.
Then put harmful and or annoying JS codes in your media.
Before you do this, make sure your service is used by enough of the leech host site’s most vocal members, so that when they filter the URL to your leech, they start complaining everywhere.
Rub in that there is an element of their site, that they never asked for, that is completely out of their control.
Win at Web 2.0 user created!
I’m off to make a million and I have an 8000 member head start! I am thinking out loud so others may benefit.
May 7th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
What are they serving on those Mexico-US flights these days?
May 7th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
I had literally two minutes to get that post out before I was gonna get kicked off the flight. I have no idea where I got the YouTube from. My mind is pretty weird sometimes.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Macbeach: not much. You gotta buy your own sandwich. Pretty crappy food.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
@Robert - sometimes? ;)
May 7th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Wow, they got how much for that piece of crap service? Flickr is nice, Photobucket is well… the MySpace of photosharing.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
@15
I know I said my last comment was the last one.
Do you understand what photobucket did?
They were there back in September of 05 when everybody started cloning social networking. Before youtube even started. Ever since they have been getting users to invade myspace and put links to their site all over the place. On millions of profiles.
They had been sucking up bandwidth charges for years now, all leading up to this quintessential moment when they were going to cash in on it.
Much like youtube was loosing 1M per month and sinking fast until they hit their moment.
None of these services is worth anything in the sense of a traditional business with sales and expenses. They exist for one purpose only.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
That someone paid so much for such a crappy service tells me that Web 2.0 is heading for DotCom Crash 2.0.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Remember, Photobucket also hosts tons of videos in addition to the photos. It also supposedly has 40 million registered users.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
If you head over to Techmeme, the story you get is not that Photobucket is getting acquired by MySpace. Instead what you get is that Valleywag took Techcrunch by surprise. Lame.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
@16 “None of these services is worth anything in the sense of a traditional business with sales and expenses.”
Eh? To me, the valuation that Photobucket seems to have achieved looks to be based on absolutely traditional(and solid) business metrics: revenue and growth rate.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Very unrelated to this topic, but I just thought I’d ask how much you have been using your Apple TV these days? It just seems you haven’t been talking about it much these days. In fact, I don’t hear anyone talking about them.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:26 am
A couple of weeks ago, when Scoble reported that MySpace was pulling Photobucket videos, it seemed like a negotiation tactic towards a possible acquisition. It turns out that is was just that.
May 8th, 2007 at 9:18 am
@20
What revenue?
It’s a leech service. They are currently all on the top of alexa.com right now.
People use the service, the host company funded entirely by VC pays out millions in bandwidth, and they get next to no revenue in return, ultimately waiting for that big buy out.
That is the business model, and it has less than nothing to do with traditional business.
May 8th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
FLICKR’ZZZ COOL! ;-)
May 9th, 2007 at 5:49 am
What the number of users comparison, does Photobucket have more then what Flickr did (when it was sold to Yahoo)?
September 26th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
[...] Photobucket sells for 10x Flickr to MySpace « ScobleizerI just got into Dallas, had a few minutes to check TechMeme, and see that Photobucket just got sold to MySpace for $250 million . That’s about 10x more than Flickr went to Yahoo. [...]