MySpace Is Blocking Photobucket Videos

MySpace has decided to block Photobucket videos and remixes from the popular social networking site. The decision affects any video hosted through Photobucket whether it's in a user's profile, blog or comments section on MySpace.

This isn't the first time MySpace has flipped the switch on Photobucket content. Back in January of this year Photobucket users were similarly blocked, though MySpace later claimed it was just trying to filter for security issues and restored the videos.

Today's outage affects millions of videos, though it would seem that Photobucket hosted images and slideshows are not part of the ban. And videos from Photobucket competitors like YouTube have not been blocked.

Photobucket has gone on the offensive this time, attempting to rally users and encouraging them to email MySpace. A posting on the Photobucket blog says:

We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media. MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.

Although MySpace has yet to respond formally, today's move is becoming a familiar one for MySpace, which often responds to public pressure and restores certain features — usually claiming bugs or security problems were behind the blackouts. And given the notoriously buggy, security-flawed nature of MySpace these explanations are generally believable.

On the other hand MySpace has permanently blocked Revver and other video and widget sites in the past — could they be doing to same to Photobucket?

As Michael Arrington of Techcrunch points out, “today's shutdown of Photobucket comes suspiciously close to news that Photobucket is up for sale.” Could MySpace be trying to drive the price of Photobucket down?

Perhaps the most interesting question is whether users will feel greater loyalty to MySpace or Photobucket? Will users jump the MySpace ship for Facebook and the like, or will they abandon Photobucket in favor or YouTube and other video hosts that haven't yet been blocked by MySpace?

Update: A commenter on Scoble's blog pointed me to this Fortune article on Photobucket from last month. Among other tidbits is this gem from Photobucket CEO Alex Welch: “If one social networking site goes away and another comes up the user just moves, but their content stays with Photobucket.”

But the real zinger — given MySpace's move this morning — is from the Fortune author who speculates:

A recent story on News.com tried to poke holes in the Photobucket, so to speak, by saying that “critics” claimed the business would be at risk if MySpace ever withdrew permission to host links there. But that's about as likely as MySpace simply ejecting members by the millions. If it prohibited their precious links it would face a user revolt.