MySpace Blocks Photobucket Videos and Remixes

Posted on April 11, 2007

Photobucket, a popular image hosting service, has posted a message on its blog that says MySpace is preventing Photobucket users from posting videos and remixes hosted on Photobucket on their MySpace pages. Images hosted by Photobucket are still accepted. That would have been a real shocker if MySpace had blocked images as well. Here is an excerpt from Photobucket's post.

This action by MySpace means that all of the videos and remixes you created will no longer show up on your MySpace profile and comments section. More specifically, if you attempt to add new videos or remixes to your profile, they will be removed.

We are not happy about this and we're pretty sure you're not happy either. We appreciate that you have invested hundreds of thousands of hours using the editing, remixing and management tools and features available only on Photobucket. In particular, you've all been really embracing videos at Photobucket -- to the tune of 50,000 video uploads a day, which is great. Rest assured that your content is being kept safe in your Photubucket album even though it may disappear from your MySpace pages.

We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media. MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.

The rest of the Photobucket post asks MySpace users to write MySpace and to send out MySpace bulletins. An update at noon said Photobucket videos could be posted in MySpace blogs but not in MySpace profiles or comments. Robert Scoble and Don Dodge both noted the limits of using free hosting services. TechCrunch says MySpace's block involves millions of videos hosted on Photobucket but that no YouTube videos have been blocked.

Valleywag comments that Photobucket CEO Alex Welch may have been brought on this action by MySpace when he told Fortune that Photobucket was fad-proof. Welch said, "If one social networking site goes away and another comes up the user just moves, but their content stays with Photobucket." More coverage on Techmeme where this is currently the top story.