Photobucket... the land of broken images

The Photobucket image sure to work its way
 into negative memes for years to come.

Photobucket recently announced that they will no longer allow third party hosting of their images unless you purchase the $399/year plan. What that means is, photos hosted by Photobucket but linked to other sites -- like blogs or chatboards -- will now have the "Upgrade your account" image unless the owner subscribes to the $399/year plan.

Uh, no thanks.

For this reason, you may see some broken images in this blog, mostly dating 2012 and before.

I understand the realities of business and I'm not complaining because it's no longer free, but $399/year seems a bit extreme. How many hobbyists and casual bloggers are going to pay that much? Especially considering most platforms now have their own image upload and hosting capability... you really don't need Photobucket anymore.

It seems to me that if they priced it at $25 a year, they'd likely get 50 times more people to convert to a paid plan versus the $399/year.