MySpace has sunk to a new level of low; while recent events are still unwinding, it seems as though MySpace has gone ahead and blocked all user submitted videos and slideshows from Photobucket on their own user’s MySpace pages. But does MySpace have any good reason for this action? It’s possible, but looks to be more as an exercise of power.

The social networking site, Myspace, surely enabled the video and photo hosting site, Photobucket, to reach a level of success that would not have been obtained otherwise. But it certainly isn’t fair for MySpace to imply, “hey, we made you; we can break you.”

“We are not happy about this and we’re pretty sure you’re not happy either,” said Photobucket on their official blog. “We appreciate that you have invested hundreds of thousands of hours using the editing, remixing and management tools and features available only on Photobucket. In particular, you’ve all been really embracing videos at Photobucket — to the tune of 50,000 video uploads a day, which is great. Rest assured that your content is being kept safe in your Photobucket album even though it may disappear from your MySpace pages.”

MySpace claims the reason for the blockage was due to Photobucket’s usage of ad-sponsored slideshows appearing in comments and descriptions on their member’s pages, noting that it was a violation of the MySpace terms of service (TOS).

MySpace made claims to the fact that they had no method to distinguish between the ad-sponsored videos/slideshows and the ones that weren’t; so they simply blocked them all.

While this issue is yet to be rectified, many MySpace users are extremely angry about this; many people have spent a good deal of time building their profiles based on the Photobucket service, and can only hope that this situation rides out as soon as possible.

Photobucket added, ”We were not contacted directly by MySpace about this action, so we do not have any insight into their reasoning behind their actions. Limiting users’ ability to post their content would seem to be contrary to MySpace’s mission and certainly to ours.”

But MySpace claims that they spoke to the company about their actions, and they refused to respect their terms. “We had no choice but to disable their service,” said MySpace, in a statement.

The entire situation is simply based on money; MySpace doesn’t want  other corporations, specifically Photobucket, to capitalize on their success, and with good reason. Unfortunately, actions like these are all at their own member’s expense, and this was certainly a step that should not have been taken by the social networking giant.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 5:23 am under Online video.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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