Photobucket Bought by MySpace

So the big news today is that Photobucket is being acquired by NewsCorp. NewsCorp is the parent company of MySpace. Apparently NewsCorp is paying $250 million for PhotoBucket.

My question is, what exactly do the people over at MySpace think they are doing? First they block PhotoBucket, then they reinstate it. They build their own built in offering that duplicates most of PhotoBuckets functionality. They go out of their way to try to convince their users not to use PhotoBucket, then they buy it. I really don't understand this move at all. It's not like Myspace is going to get anything out of the deal that they don't already have. most of PhotoBucket's users are already MySpace users. So they aren't going to get any new users. They have already built duplicate functionality matching PhotoBucket's functionality into MySpace. So it's not like they are getting new tech or expertise by buying PhotoBucket. So why are they buying it?

The only thing I can come up with, is that they bought it to deny access to MySpace competitors. It's no secret that MySpace has been losing users in droves. most of that is due to poor user management, and too many greed imposed restrictions on what users can do. PhotoBucket has been aggressively marketing itself to other non-myspace sites. So maybe the goal is to lock the photobucket users into MySpace. Granted, most of them are there already, but if Myspace makes it harder for them to move, then maybe it can keep more of it's audience. If that is what they are trying to accomplish, then I think they will fail. Putting up artificial walls does not keep people in. Of course, this is just speculation. So we will have to wait and see what they end up doing with it.

Via TechCrunch: Confirmed: MySpace To Acquire Photobucket For $250 Million