SAN FRANCISCO, 11:24 PM, SAT JUL 19 | 0 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@valleywag.com | RSS
Posts Tagged “

Photobucket

”
Photobucket's privacy problem finally solved Photobucket has finally stopped allowing strangers to peek at users' private pictures. Byron Ng, a Canadian sysadmin with a penchant for finding Web security holes, found that knowing a photo's file name and the Photobucket link would be enough to expose the pics. This oversight allowed script kiddies to "fusker" — hacker slang for using an utility to extract images based on an identifiable sequence in the file name — to find uploaded naughty pictures or other interesting bits that weren't intended for public consumption. [News.com]

3 comments

Latest to adopt "Tom Sawyer" strategy: Photobucket Photobucket, the News Corp.-owned photo-sharing site, is introducing an application programming interface, or API, in an effort to catch up with Yahoo's Flickr. One of the benefits, Photobucket CEO Alex Welch implies, will be having independent developers do Photobucket's R&D for it and come up with new ways to line Rupert Murdoch's pocket: "If we see a noncommercial application that's doing something clearly in our commercial terms of service or doing something very creative, it's our responsibility to go out and figure a way to partner." [News.com]

Comment

breaking

CNET sells Webshots for $45 million

CNET has sold photo-sharing site Webshots to American Greetings for $45 million — a website it spent $70 million on three years ago. And this in an age when MySpace bought Photobucket for hundreds of millions. An internal memo reads:
Today, Webshots was sold to American Greetings for approximately $45 million. This was a tough decision but the right business decision. Selling Webshots allows us to focus our efforts against long term strategic goals, and concentrate on the passion-based categories we believe offer the most promise for CNET Networks.

We are pleased that Webshots can become an important ingredient to American Greetings' business, and we are committed to making this a successful transition over the next several months.
The full internal email from CEO Neil Ashe is after the jump: More »

1:54 PM on Thu Oct 25 2007
By Megan McCarthy
641 views, 4 comments

Latest by n/a: "focus our efforts against long term strategic goals"? I love corporate doublespeak, in which the word "against" has come to mean its opposite! more »

self-referential

Valleywag now optimized for "webcam sex" search

Readers, you amaze us. And fascinate us. And very occasionally, disappoint us. Our corporate overlords, who are all afroth about search engine optimization these days, sent us a list of the top search terms people use to find posts on Valleywag. Photobucket, whose sale to MySpace we broke exclusively, ranks highly, as does Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Fake Steve Jobs. But "webcam sex"? "Lick it"? "Hot Asians"? Really, people. Behave yourselves. The full list, after the jump. More »

3:52 PM on Mon Aug 27 2007
By Owen Thomas
1,264 views, 2 comments

Latest by Owen Thomas: @Nick Douglas: Sadly, the list is no doubt highly similar. more »

online advertising

What's Fotolog worth, and why does it matter?

Some observers think that Fotolog's rumored sale price, at north of $100 million, is too rich. After all, the photo-sharing site has a mere 10 million users, putting the price on each user's head at $10 and up, while Photobucket, with 40 million users, reportedly sold to MySpace for an amount in the range of $250 million to $300 million, valuing its users at $6-$7.50 apiece. But that facile analysis ignores two important factors — factors which tell us much about the changing market for Web companies. More »

1:34 PM on Wed Aug 22 2007
By Owen Thomas
946 views, 3 comments

Latest by Jeremy: @waynelambright: They are known to people in the photo industry. more »

rumormonger

Fotolog sold for $100 million-plus?

A source close to the company tells Valleywag that Fotolog, the social network and photo-sharing site, has been sold to a large Latin American company for an amount over $100 million. Fotolog CEO John Borthwick, who's on his way to Italy for a family vacation, hasn't returned a request for comment. Update: "As if," emails Fotolog cofounder Scott Heiferman. Still, the rumored sale, if true, makes eminent sense for Fotolog — and for Borthwick. Fotolog, though based in New York City, never took off in its home market. But overseas, especially in Latin America, it's huge. The site, which asks users to post a single photo every day, now counts more than 10 million members. While clearly successful, Fotolog is just one of many ventures for Borthwick, a former executive at AOL and Time Warner — and a sale would free him up to pursue those. More »

10:57 AM on Wed Aug 22 2007
By Owen Thomas
2,249 views, 1 comment

Latest by Trackback: Fotolog, a popular photo-sharing service, has been bought by France’s Hi-Media for $90 million, GigaOm reports. more »

Fox Interactive completes the acquisition of photo-sharing site Photobucket, two months after Valleywag broke the news. [Photobucket Blog]

Comment

feuds

Which rivalries are real?

Ever caught yourself saying you Googled something, then realizing you were talking to a Yahoo developer? Or wondered whether it's okay to talk about iTunes to a friend from Microsoft? Obviously, not everyone gets worked up over corporate rivalries. (Most, but not all, of my Yahoo friends don't give a damn about whether I like using Google.) Here's a guide to which feuds are real and which are trumped up, by rating each rivalry on the 5-point tension scale. More »

9:30 PM on Thu Jun 7 2007
By Nick Douglas
3,404 views, 11 comments

Latest by einnocent: yeah, i second cal v. stanford. thats a bitter one. what do you give it, nick? more »

feuds

That bastard did what to whom?

NICK DOUGLAS — It's springtime for Hitler on the Internet as erupts (okay, continues as usual) in war. Let's run through who's been stomping on whom (MySpace on Photobucket, the rapaciously opinionated blogosphere on Kathy Sierra), and whether any of the aggressors have been brought to justice. (Hint: no.) More »

2:18 AM on Tue Apr 24 2007
By Nick Douglas
2,194 views, 4 comments

flock.com

Blading for dollars

One of the most annoying myths of start-up culture is the notion that big explosive "deals" are sealed anywhere — like over a game of Foosball or a milk shake at Denny's. Or — in the case of Flock.com's deal to market a special version of its social browser through photo publishing service Photobucket — broached while blading. How wacky. More »

12:35 PM on Fri Jan 12 2007
By bschiff
104 views, 2 comments

myspace

Oh no you di-in't! News Corp exec says MySpace runs Web 2.0

A news site quotes News Corp COO Peter Chernin saying Flickr, YouTube, and all the other popular content-sharing sites from the last few years are just suckling at the MySpace teat. More »

8:59 AM on Wed Sep 13 2006
By Nick Douglas
176 views, 4 comments

alex welch

Click three times: Chin up, Alex Welch!

Wallowing in the muck of Silicon Valley makes everyone homesick from time to time. A reader says they saw one startup chief reach that moment in public. More »

3:19 PM on Fri Aug 18 2006
By Nick Douglas
220 views, Comment