@torinaura.bsky.social
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torinaura.bsky.social
Today was THE WORST for sugar cravings 😩 My eyes have been opened to how vampires feel around blood. #keto #ketodiet
torinaura.bsky.social
A lil peek of a #birthday treat for a great friend. #art #sketch 🧩🩺🐺
Reposted
sierrabravoart.bsky.social
iiit's update day! everyone's getting along great.

www.hansvogelisdead.com
an out of context comic panel from HANS VOGEL IS DEAD. The leshy keeps watch while behind him, Reineke eats strawberries and Hans looks suspicious.
torinaura.bsky.social
Looking for #tips on how to draw characters consistently - especially male characters. I’m entirely #selftaught so advice is always appreciated! #art #myocs #characterstudy #nivis #sketch
torinaura.bsky.social
Thank you for taking this walk with me and listening to the ramblings of a very tired millennial.
torinaura.bsky.social
In short: Photobucket: a master class on how to destroy your own brand.

Forcing consumers to change their behavior while failing to innovate will always be the kiss of death.
torinaura.bsky.social
In the process, Photobucket drove away the very people who made it a known name.

They tried to force changes upon its user base and make it pay for services that were formerly free.
torinaura.bsky.social
Photobucket didn’t evolve with technology to improve its user experience. It dug in its heels, declined to innovate, and resorted to ill-constructed cash flow initiatives.
torinaura.bsky.social
I don’t know how many people are using this service. It’s no longer relevant.

We have memory cards and external hard drives that store TERABYTES.

Plus there number of websites that have their own, built-in ways to embed images/movies is growing.
torinaura.bsky.social
To date, Photobucket remains a site to securely store your photos and video. But now you have to pay for it.
torinaura.bsky.social
Photobucket also created embed codes so users could quickly share their photos to places like emails, web journals, and personal sites.

For those who knew how to use HTML (or tried to) this was phenomenal!
torinaura.bsky.social
It also didn’t help Photobucket that their services are kinda irrelevant now.

When they began, there were only so many websites to store and share your photos. Most of those sites had some degree of storage limits, too.
torinaura.bsky.social
In addition, Photobucket couldn’t commit to their own changes.

They’d establish new parameters on free accounts only to change them a short time later.
torinaura.bsky.social
At every step, Photobucket failed to listen to its core user base and foisted unpopular changes across the board.
torinaura.bsky.social
As a brand built on hosting images FOR FREE - for over 20 years - Photobucket is such a spectacular cautionary tale to those who may need to change their services for whatever reason.
torinaura.bsky.social
Photobucket is still struggling, and I doubt this service will be around much longer.
torinaura.bsky.social
This heavy handed tactic backfired spectacularly. It alienated longtime users in a way I have yet to see other websites do.

And now, here we are.

Getting emails like this.
torinaura.bsky.social
They locked the service millions had enjoyed for over a decade FOR FREE behind a paywall.

And then continued to punish users who failed to purchase a subscription by further restricting storage data.
torinaura.bsky.social
Why? It’s simple.

Photobucket betrayed its core users the very day they began pushing subscriptions.
torinaura.bsky.social
Did some look into all the amazing “perks” a Photobucket subscription had to offer?

Probably, but I assume not many even bothered
torinaura.bsky.social
Instead, many used the free trial to download their remaining photos and log off one final time.

This was in 2023, mind you.
torinaura.bsky.social
Most likely, their hope was users would be delighted to have one last chance to get their photos back and, while going through them, become charmed by all the perks a subscription brings.
torinaura.bsky.social
In what may have been an attempt to seem magnanimous and persuade users back to the site, they offered a 7-day “free trial” to the users whose photos were still trapped on the site.
torinaura.bsky.social
Poetically, Photobucket’s attempt to raise profits shrank traffic to their own site.

But it gets even worse for them.
torinaura.bsky.social
But, again, Photobucket misread the room.

While some users may have paid up to regain access to years of memories, it seems the majority moved on and cut their losses.