PhotoBucket has a change of heart...kinda

I was going through the RLD archive doing a bit of organizing and sorting when I noticed that some images hosted on PhotoBucket were showing up. Weird. Especially after the fiasco last year when they took all photos offline from forums and message boards. It killed content all over the internet and took a huge toll on Redline Derby.

Turns out it seems like PhotoBucket has had a change of heart...kinda. When they blew up last year, they said you could pay them $400 to allow your images to be linked in forums. Crazy, right? Well, their new boss changed the fee to somewhere under $50 which can include hot linking in forums like ours.

So while this is far from free, it's a step in the right direction and gives people a reasonable option for image hosting.

If you're looking for an image hosting option, it might be worth trying out. Of course, others like Flickr and ImageShack are options as well.

When Redline Derby relaunched last month, I included image hosting as an option to help avoid dependency on third-parties like PhotoBucket. I think it's worked pretty well so far but even then, RLD is not intended to be a service like those guys.

Just an interesting turn of events...