News Corp courts Photobucket
p2pnet.net news:- They all want one. A pic app.
Now Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is earnestly courting Photobucket, “Where 41 million people are,” the site boasts, going on:
Photobucket is the web’s most popular creative hub, linking billions of personal photos, graphics, slideshows and videos daily to hundreds of thousands of web sites, including: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, eBay, Craigslist, Blogger and Xanga. In addition to linking, Photobucket users share their personal digital media by email, instant messaging, and mobile devices.
It recently launched a beta of a web-based video remix and editing technology powered by Adobe Systems. With it, “Photobucket users can now combine images, videos, text, and music to create personalized videos or ‘mashups’ of content from their Photobucket albums, without requiring any additional downloads,” it said.
Photobucket is, “by far the No. 1 online photo-sharing site,” says US Today a few days ago. “But if you’re not a MySpace user, you’ve probably never heard of it.
Its 41% share compares to 10.2% for Yahoo Photos and Flickr, according to Hitwise, says the story, adding:
“By appealing to the same young adult audience as social-networking sites MySpace and YouTube, Welch hit on a winning formula that has fueled massive traffic and membership. ‘They are riding the coattails of MySpace, says Hitwise general manager Bill Tancer.
“And like MySpace (snapped up by 20th Century Fox owner News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million) and YouTube (bought by Google for $1.7 billion last year), Photobucket could be on the auction block.”
They go that right.
The deal hasn’t been finalised but, “the parties have ironed out major issues and are focusing on finer points,” according to a source who said the price could be as high as $300 million, says The New York Times.
Also See:
US Today – Photobucket snaps a portrait of success, May 3, 2007
The New York Times – Fox Interactive Nears Deal to Buy Photobucket, May 8, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 8th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Kind of funny seeing Myspace looking to buy Photobucket when a while ago Myspace was blocking the video and remix thing from Photobucket.
I guess they figured if people are gonna use it might as well make money off them too. Pretty soon Google and News corp are gonna own the internet.