goldengod

Shovel & Bucket by Carol Esther

Silicon Valley news site Valleywag is reporting that Myspace has (finally) purchased Photobucket. The News Corporation owned social network made the purchase less than a month after blocking the use of the service on their pages.

Myspace claimed the reason for the partial block was due to ‘technical difficulties’, but it’s no secret that Myspace jealously guards its userbase from plugins trying to make money off their magical goose. Myspace’s creation of it’s own video player, its own Digg clone, and now the acquisition of a photo-sharing service shows that they’re serious about keeping other companies off their turf.

There’s no word on the financial details, but Valleywag tosses a $300 million pricetag around in the article. Despite their low revenue, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like Rupert Murdoch is hurting for cash.

Photobucket isn’t exactly a front-runner in terms of functionality or use by serious (or even semi-serious) hobbyist photographers. That market is dominated by Flickr, with other sites like Zooomr quickly catching up. It remains to be seen if MySpace will decide to leverage their userbase and make a strong push for the hobbyist photographer market online.