So I’ve used Webshots for almost 8 years now to store/backup my photos – but I’ve hit the end of the road with them. Some interesting stats with them though:

• 1200 photos
• 8 years of 29.95 payments
• 800,000 page views
• 125,000 of my images downloaded for screensavers
• Top photo (Tanzanian Storm) was downloaded almost 40,000 times – I actually feel bad about that one because I remember it was before I even had any notion on retouching a photo meant. I butchered the photo 15 different ways and never saved the original so it just kept morphing from the last catastrophe.  If you “really” want to see this photo, click HERE, but remember, I warned you.
• That’s one tip I’d give to any new photographer out there: Your photo tastes may change over the course of your photography and if you don’t have the original, with the original name (i.e. IMG_2828) somewhere in the filename, you don’t know when it was, where it was, or how it started. Keep the original and then just rename if you want to modify/process the photo. You’ll thank me later.
• 97 fans
• 1100 comments

All-in-all the thing that ultimately made me decide to leave them was 2 fold.  They’ve switched to complete java-script so people have to really work to get to use my photos, can’t right-click and save which isn’t cool because I’m always  happy to share.  Only “friends” can actually save my photos unless they want to use the proprietary Webshots software, which is somewhat 1998-ish still.

But the kicker is the backups.  The more time that has gone by, the larger my base picture size is.  When I had that 1.3 megapixel camera in 2000, Webshots was perfect.  My backups stayed 1600×1200 and I was cool with it.  But when your camera size increases, Webshots isn’t changing with you.  They keep their backups at 1600×1200 even if you uploaded at 3500×5000.  I want a service with all the things that Webshot isn’t anymore.  Not that it’s not a great service, but not a great service for me anymore.

I have all the photos still and use Amazon S3 to backup my photos, and the ones that I DO want to share are on Facebook, so I’m still covered, just not publicly tossing everything out there anymore…