Photrade Closing It’s Doors

Hope you got your high-res images off the site before you got this email.

“Dear Photrade Users,

At the end of 2008 you were informed by the owners of Photrade.com that they had lost their funding and would not continue to develop the website. And at some point earlier this year, all of the full sized images that had been uploaded to Photrade were deleted. I hope you kept a backup copy of your images.

Last month, MyPhotoAlbum Inc. acquired some of the Photrade.com assets. We will be adapting some of the Photrade.com technology to enhance the MyPhotoAlbum.com service. Please note that we also own and operate dotPhoto.com.

We invite you to try the MyPhotoAlbum photo service and are pleased to offer you complimentary use of our Club Membership subscription service for one year – FREE. Simply sign up for a FREE MyPhotoAlbum account and then drop a line to our Support Team at http://support.myphotoalbum.com, quoting reference PHOTRADE to receive your free upgrade.

Please note that we will be announcing the MyPhotoAlbum Pro Service within a month that will include all of the Photrade services and more!

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me at peter@myphotoalbum.com.

Thanks,
Peter Macnee
CEO, MyPhotoAlbum Inc.”

Oddly enough, I don’t actually remember getting an email at the end of 2008 about them losing their funding. Then again, that means it’s been at least 8 months since I’ve visited the site?

I suppose it’s possible, but a few more reminders would have probably been a good idea. Especially when you consider that social media photographers like Scott Bourne and Darren Rowse were supposed to be on the advisory board. So while they tried their best to pimp the service the droves of cash and creditable photographers just weren’t there.

If two guys, who arguably have more Interweb influence than any other camera toting bloggers, couldn’t drive enough traffic to keep Photrade alive then it must have been doomed from the start.

Better luck next time? Probably not. Photrade was just another micro-stock wannabe trying to compete by throwing a different spin and capitalizing on the blogosphere all while trying to look like they had photographers in their best interest.

It wasn’t the idea, it was the execution. I tried the service to see what all the talk was about, way back when it started, and found the idea to seem solid. I suppose many people did as well.

What I did find concerning were the awful looking borders that encased the images to be used in the blogs. Yuck. I wouldn’t have used them on any of the websites I ran.

So the official goodbye to Photrade is done.

Next question…why is the site still up? Silly.

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