Thing 27: Photobucket - Photosharing and More

I created a remix of Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies to explore the site.

Photobucket introduced me to many features that were incorporated directly into the product itself. Instead of looking at 3rd party apps after I had used a photosharing tool (like Flickr), Photobucket has some of these features as a part of its service.
It was a nice way to quickly put together a slideshow or create a remix--complete with fade options and even music. Then you could quickly get the code you needed to link it to what ever blog, webpage, or email you liked.
Photobucket is partered with Meez.com to offer avatars. This gave me an opportunity to go back and look at my Meez account that I had made a few months back and really take a look at its features. I've added a Meez Avatar as a widget in my sidebar. I like it much better than Yahoo! Avatars because it's 3D vs. 2D. Plus the animations show up better in the widget.

I don't think I would use Photobucket for personal use because anyone can use photos you post if you make them public. But I would certainly consider using it for PR purposes for the library. If people are incorporating the library into their works then that's spreading the word about what the library offers.

Now Flickr is partnered with Picnik to offer similar photo editing and creation services as Photobucket. In my mind Flickr and Picnik serve different audiences with different purposes than Photobucket. I'd use both, just for each for certain projects.