Chp 669. The Blog Dilemma

I have so many topics to blog about right now, ranging from the socio-politico issues back home to the places I've been to recently or the food I recently had, but somehow… I just don't feel like blogging anymore.

All thanks to Photobucket.

For those of you who are unaware, Photobucket is an image hosting website where you can upload your photos and embed them on your blogs and websites. It is used to be a free service. Until last month when Photobucket with no prior warning disabled all third-party hosting to most of their existing user base! Billions of images were affected.

[image source]

I get it, sometimes, you can't just keep giving freebies to everyone, you too need to bring home the bacon. But here's the thing. I've always been a premium member of Photobucket! I was on their $9.99/month plan, paying around 650 rupees every month. Why? Because I have more than 2000+ images embedded across more than 650+ blog posts over the past 13 years. So, even though I had used up only 2 GB of my 10 GB storage allocation, I exceeded the monthly bandwidth limit frequently, especially when there's a popular new post many people were sharing. And that was why I became a premium member many years ago.

So in spite of me being a premium member, why are all the images across my 650+ blog posts still disabled?

Because, apparently, I need to be on a higher tier of their premium membership now!

Yeah that's right. A $9.99/month member is still not eligible to have a third-party image hosting facility! Only the $39.99/month member can avail of this special feature, according to the new rule. That's… around 2500 rupees per month! Daymmm that's cold.

And here's the kicker. If you're thinking, "Hey Kima, if I were in your shoes, you know, I'll probably pay, after all you've been blogging for 13 years now and even though your writings may be mediocre, at least you have the passion to write and it is important to keep such passion burning, so just pay them the damn ransom fee of 2500 bucks!" then you're wrong!

Photobucket had added another new clause in their recent shake up - Premium payment is now billed annually and not monthly, so I now have to make a payment of $399 in one shot to avail of this plan. That's 25,580 rupees!

Yup, this is not just an extortion. It is an exhorbi-tortion.

I mean, come on, I am not even blogging to make money. Back in the days when I was really blogging hard, adsense revenue paid off a little bit. But all that changed once I started becoming more serious on my job and had less time to blog.

Well, why don't you just move all your images to another service provider? Easier said than done. Moving them means I will have to move 2000+ images, PLUS editing 650+ blog posts, line by line, every single "a href" HTML link to the new hyperlink, which will take me weeks if not months to do.

And here's what I have to say about Photobucket. I don't trust it anymore.

$399 may be quite high, but I can afford that, considering the situation I am in right now. But I have lost faith in the brand. Lost complete trust because of the following reasons -

First of all, suddenly announcing this policy change with no prior warning is nothing but total douchebaggery. A little heads-up would have really helped. Sure, there would be a lot of disappointed people, but a vast majority would have understood, or at least be prepared for the upcoming winter.

Secondly, setting the "third party hosting" feature to only the top-most tier of their premium membership package seems truly unfair, but what is even more unfair is about changing the billing cycle from monthly to annually. In a way, one can't help but get the feeling that the stakeholders are trying to make a quick exit, leaving us high and dry.

The third point is, as a loyal and regular user of Photobucket for 13 years, I know for a fact that there is one bug that had never been solved in all these years, and that is the folder management system. I like being organized (maybe a bit OCD'ish). I like to put all the images I am embedding on specific posts neatly arranged in separate folders, but many a times, when I try to "create a new folder", the server would deny me that. I had to retry like 10-20 times, even retrying at different times of the day. And yeah, I learnt that that is a very common issue, and I sucked it up and dealt with it, because I was paying just 650 rupees per month anyway. What assurance do I have that that will not happen again once I pay 25,580 rupees?

And the last point, the fourth point is that, even if I was to pay 25,580 rupees per annum, why is there still a bandwidth allocation limit clause on their new policy? Why is that asterisk there? We all hate privacy policies and terms & conditions, but seeing that asterisk kinda makes me think I will still have to pay extra for bandwidth even after paying the exuberant annual fee of 25,580 rupees. That is not cool bro, not cool at all.

See, how can you trust a brand again after all that?

Right now I am still sitting on the fence about whether to migrate or not. Nobody likes to be held at ransom. At the same time, editing 650+ blog posts is going to be a Herculean task. I hate Photobucket so much right now, I think I'm going to implode. It had completely drained me of all energy and passion to continue blogging. Aaaaarggghhh I wanna wake up from this nightmare!

Angry Mizohican out.