Fototime to charge

[BExplorer]

I just received a mail from Fototime that they wil start to charge a fee to store picture to there site. I Here it is: August 1, 2001

Dear FotoTime Members,

We are sending this letter to inform you about an important service change with your FotoTime account. We will continue to provide FotoAlbum free of charge; however, beginning August 1, 2001, we will be adding a fee for storing your pictures on the FotoTime website.

The base price for storage will be less than $2.00/month ($23.95/year). This amount allows us to continue to provide the high level of service you have come to enjoy, while remaining competitive with other photo sharing sites. In order to provide enough time for you to decide whether FotoTime is the best photo-sharing solution for you, we are providing a 30-day grace period before your pictures will be removed. Additionally, new FotoTime customers will receive a free 30-day trial period to evaluate our service.

By changing to a subscription site, FotoTime will be able to continue to provide superior long-term solutions for organizing, viewing and sharing your pictures. We are planning new and exciting features to ensure we reach our goal of becoming not only the easiest and best, but your photo-sharing choice.

It has been the explosive growth we have experienced in the last six months that is forcing us to change our business model. It was always our intent that sales from merchandise would provide the funds to support FotoTime’s growth. Unfortunately, sales have not been able to keep up with FotoTime’s increasing popularity and additional storage costs. We have also decided to continue our policy of not pursuing banner advertising due to the low advertising rates and the distraction it causes to your photo sharing experience.

We are just as passionate about our business now as when we started the company over two years ago. Our goal has always been to provide superior software and services with great customer support. We are financially sound and privately financed with no debt, ensuring a long-term focus while providing great flexibility.

We will provide free upgrades to FotoAlbum and continue with our plans for enhancing the integration of our website and FotoAlbum. For a summary of these plans, please refer to: Dead Link Removed

We hope you understand our position and will choose to continue being a FotoTime customer. If you wish to subscribe, you can view additional details at: Dead Link Removed

If you choose to not continue using FotoTime as your photo-sharing solution, you can find additional resources on how best to retrieve your albums and close your account at Dead Link Removed

Sincerely,

The FotoTime Team

 

[rockymntnhi]

Daaammmmit !!!!!

I was waitin' 4 that .

 

[CBoug76]

Damn!

 

[jimbo74]

those *******s!!!!!

 

[mattadams]

like I said in the other post, I sure hate it when companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars programming software, millions on servers and bandwidth, and then get so greedy as to charge $20 a year (about a nickel a day) in return for their fabulous service! Geez it ticks me off!
You'll find plenty of free photo hosting sites but most like geocities, yahoo, won't let the photos be seen by anyone other then members. And they'll start charging before too long too.
The days of many free internet services are coming to an end as people realize it costs money to runt hese things and services which were previously done for free but paid for by sponsors, well, the sponsors aren't paying anymore.

 

[jimbo74]

i have photopoint that i paid for... i guess i will have to just upload all my fototime pics to it..... errrrrrr

 

[Walrus]

photo server

I don't understand... My ISP includes 20meg of storage as part of my service package. I assume everyone else's isp does likewise (which is probably my mistake...)

My question then becomes... why not store them (your pics) on your isp's server? I have a few photos, documents, etc stored on my isp's server that I share with folk I know (by simply providing them a "link" to the file...). I realize 20meg is not a lot since one pic can easily exceed 1 meg (but in reality, there is no reason for a resolution higher than 72 dpi for internet use...), but how many do you need to share and for how long? Really, 24 bucks/year for file sharing on the internet sounds cheap. Have you considered file sharing software such as MORPHEUS (still free)? Then the files never have to leave your hard disk... Of course, download times for large files can be a serious drawback; however, the actual sharing of files is fairly simple using this type of software...

 

[Robert]

My ISP (Qwest) only offers 6M and besides I get errors every time I try and acess my designated web-page and my e-mails to Qwest go unanswered.

 

[Derrick C.]

HA HA HA

You guys thought you were ssssoooooo cool for going to fototime.com instead of photopoint.com. Now every one has to pay.

 

[DarkFox1]

ok.. well matt you have a point.. but I seriously don't think this is worth it.. they're not going to make any money off of people.. I don't care about people seeing my wonderfully ugly face on the net so much as to pay people to keep it.. I have my own url.. and I hate to waste my space there with pictures, but these companies leave me with no choice.. you'd thikn they'd spam you with ad banners like everyone else does and let the service be free.. guess not.. I know that doesn't give you much to live off of, but I could do w/o the fototime programs and the flash videos and alll.. all I want is a photo dump, that shouldn't be that hard to program

 

[Brian1]

No more of this crap for me! This is the 3rd time in a period of a couple months that the sites I have my pics stored on have shut down or started charging $. I am not going to mess around anymore so I will not have any of my pics on the net except for a few already on my website.

 

[rpenner54]

Damn you people are all harsh! How many of you have jobs? Do you get paid? Why? It sounds like you don't want to be paid right? Holy Jeez it sounds like some of you don't want to pay to have a nice service set up for you! How many of you pay for your ISP, Phone, Cable, Rent? Is it any differn't to pay those then it is to pay for this service? Its a service, not a freebie! Heck even this site has parts that are pay only! Its going to end up being the way of the future for anyone on the net that wants to make a buck or two. It used to be that with film cameras you had to take your film in, into a store and PAY (OH MY GAWD!) to get it developed. THE NERVE OF THE STORES TO CHARGE FOR THAT!

See how silly that all sounds? Man o man... Just use your freaking ISP! If it don't work switch! Holy jeez!

 

[Brian1]

Ryan, i joined all the photohosting sites because they were FREE. If I had wanted to pay something I would have looked around for a pay site. I dont even use the photohosting sites for my own benifit, I use them so others can see my pictures such as the Moab trip pics and CCR pics. I still do go to the store and pay money to develop pictures, I just dont see a need to pay for having my pics up on the net for others to look at. But I guess it is an indivudal prefrence and others can do what they want, but for me FREE is better. Just my opinion.

 

[tac0meat]

Re: photo server

Originally posted by Walrus
Have you considered file sharing software such as MORPHEUS (still free)? Then the files never have to leave your hard disk... Of course, download times for large files can be a serious drawback; however, the actual sharing of files is fairly simple using this type of software...

what is this morpheus? (besides a dude on the matrix) it sounds pretty cool, is it like being your own server? if so that would work great for me, i have cable modem plus my computer runs 24/7. it would have to be idiot proof thouhg because thats what i am when it comes to this web hosting, isp stuff