September 26, 2005
Smile, You're on Photobucket
The WSJ reports on online photo destination site Photobucket.com, emerging as the most popular online photo destination in recent months, drawing more visitors than established sites from companies like Eastman Kodak Co. and Yahoo Inc.
"The company's meteoric rise offers some insight into the changing world of digital photography. Photobucket doesn't sell prints. Instead, it provides so-called "image hosting" by wooing Web users who are less interested in printing copies of photos and more interested in showing them off on their blogs and social-networking Web pages.
Photobucket said it is targeting a younger audience, including teenagers looking to dress up their blogs. Blogging sites like LiveJournal and Xanga don't allow users to upload photos to their blog entries unless they pay up to $4 a month for premium services.
Photobucket acts as a sort of virtual middleman. It provides a free service that lets users store hundreds of snapshots in photo albums on its site and link to them from anywhere on the Internet, from blogs to eBay auction pages. It does this by giving users the Web code needed to insert their photos on other Internet pages. When people visit a blog that is using this code, the images are automatically pulled from Photobucket's stored albums and displayed.
"Young people, in my mind, drive innovation," said Alex Welch, the 29-year-old founder of Broomfield, Colo.-based Photobucket. "Kids are always uploading photos. Every time they take new pictures, they want to upload them."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2005/09/010035.htm