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Posts Tagged “
Photobucket
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venture capital
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]
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]
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]
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.The full internal email from CEO Neil Ashe is after the jump: More »
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.
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 »
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 »
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 »
Fox Interactive completes the acquisition of photo-sharing site Photobucket, two months after Valleywag broke the news. [Photobucket Blog]
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 »
feuds
