Photobucket--the janky-looking, but still widely-used image-hosting site once owned by News Corp--is debuting a serious overhaul for the first time in years with an emphasis on taking control of the lifecycle of your photos and videos, CEO Tom Munro told Betabeat. With a significant redesign and new privacy controls, Photobucket hopes to best Facebook, Flickr, and the like as your default storage space to organize and share photos and soon "tell stories."

Photobucket lurched towards a comeback last year when Twitter decided to use its technology to power native photo sharing. However, consumers might be more likely to associate the service, which launched in 2003, with eBay sellers or their LiveJournal or MySpace account. (The company claims that currently Photobucket, which has 10 billion photos, is second only to Facebook in terms of uploads.)

The changes couldn't have come a moment too soon. Just last week, Buzzfeed, Gawker, and even CNN delved into the "dark art" of "fusking," whereby Photobucket's privacy settings could be exploited to access nude photos of unsuspecting women. Gawker featured one woman's harrowing tale of having her parents find her boobs on the Internet. Fusking programs take advantage of the fact that the URLs you send out to friends, even in private or password-protected album, use the photos actual file names, making it easy to find others in the same ablum.

As we spoke to Mr. Munro on the phone earlier this week, naked images were still being added to the sub-Reddit "photobucketplunder," although the moderators of that sub-Reddit and "requestaplunder" set the pages to private this morning. However, the most damning line in Buzzfeed's investigation might have been, "Remember Photobucket?"

"You may have seen some issues with fuskering? It's kind of a shame in the way it's been reported," Mr. Munro said, pointing out that the exposed photos were predominantly from public accounts and that only 50 private accounts were violated, adding, "But even one is too many." He also said not all the photos on those sub-Reddits were from his site. Photobucket has offered the ability to scramble URLs for years, but in the wake of the controversy, the company is being more proactive, automatically scrambling URLs for new albums, unless users request otherwise, posting an interstitial when users log in suggesting that they scramble the URLs on older albums. "Any fuskering we detect," he added, "We immediately go in and change those settings for the user and we're working with the proper legal authorities when this happens."

UPDATE: This afternoon, The DailyDot reported that those sub-Reddits were taken down after Photobucket issued DCMA takedown requests for violating Photobucket's terms of service.

Mr. Munro said the Photobucket redesign, which has been in the works since before the fusking controversy, were motivated by internal research with users and backed by an external study about photo taking and sharing habits conducted by InfoTrends. "The new Photobucket is really designed to give users secure backup, organization, and easy access, which maybe to you and me sounds like everybody should have that, but these three things--when we did our research--are really the biggest pain points for consumers, even today," said Mr. Munro, citing a study that shows the average person takes photos on four devices and shares on five services.

"Your photos are fragmented, so backing up becomes pretty difficult. Only about 50 percent of us back-up, which corresponds to why half of us have lost photos and videos," he added.

It's a nagging problem. Currently, Betabeat has photos scattered around Dropbox, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, not to mention an old digital camera. The question is whether Photobucket will be your answer. Facebook is still the biggest player, but newly-minted Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is reportedly taking an increased interest in Flickr, which got a major makeover of its own.

The Photobucket redesign lets users connect to their mobile phone, laptop, and social networks like Facebook. Through the Photobucket mobile app, which has been downloaded 15 million times on Android and iOS, "anytime a photo hits your camera roll, it's uploaded to Photobucket," Mr. Munro said. (Beware the semi-naked selfies!) You can edit, organize and share on the sleeker, friendler new site and Photobucket keeps a copy of the original, undoctored image.

But the company seems to be aware that In the Time of Zuckerberg, you're going to need a little something more to get consumers to choose you as their default. To that end, Photobucket is beta-testing a service in September that emphasizes telling "Stories," by moving beyond the photo-with-comment-underneath structure and into a flowing, multimedia horizontal timeline--shareable with a link to other social networks. (Unfortunately, the word "story" is slightly tainted with an advertorial tinge by Facebook's "Sponsored Stories.")

Mr. Munro showed us a rather compelling video of how one woman used the upcoming Storytelling features to display the narrative of her son's birth, easily sending requests to other Photobucket members to add photos to her timeline and posting comments adjacent to images and videos in the stream.

As the company said in a press release notes:

With Photobucket Stories, you can easily create, curate, and collaborate with friends, combining photos, video and text all on a single canvas that can be easily shared. No longer are you confined to sharing images one at a time or in structured album formats; with Photobucket Stories you can tell your complete story with context and meaning.

It seemed like an ideal solution for a cabin trip in the Catskills we went on last weekend that left photos from the trip fragmented across a dozen different smartphones, Facebook pages, and Instagram accounts. Of course, then we'd have to convince those dozen people to sign up for Photobucket, in addition to everything else.

You can see if it's worth it yourself. Here's a an invitation to try out the beta for stories, open to the first 50 people who sign up.

(Photo: Foursquare)

While Betabeat really liked the Foursquare redesign, there was apparently one feature left on the chopping block that had users in an uproar. The "Nearby Friends" feature, which allows users to see what friends in their general vicinity are doing, was knocked out of the redesign, but today benign overlords of Foursquare announced that they've brought it back.

According to a post on the Foursquare blog:

We’ve been listening to all your #allnew4sq feedback, and with today’s update we’re bringing back the most-missed feature: the ability to switch between nearby check-ins and all activity.

Some people use foursquare to keep up with all of their friends, but sometimes you just want to know what’s going on in your city.

Unfortunately for Android users, who are apparently second class citizens and no this Nexus S-wielding reporter isn't resentful about that at all, the update is only currently available on iPhone and Blackberry.

"Android, yours is coming soon!" promises Foursquare. Sure. That's what they all say. :(

(Photo: Kickstarter)

Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen announced today on the company's blog that project pages for the crowdfunding site have gotten a major makeover. Now it will be easier to find information about projects like that sketchy open source game console Ouya. Rejoice!

Though we're no UI experts, Kickstarter's original project pages could be described as "cluttered" and "confusing" at best. Mr. Chen hopes this redesign will make absorbing information about projects you might want to back much easier.

As for the specific changes: Creator info, location and category are all displayed more prominently, and a short summary of the project has been added so that you don't have to watch a potentially poorly edited video to learn that actually, the creators of this project seem sort of scammy. Other changes include the addition of a launch and funding date, a larger space for videos and other various "design tweaks."

We have to admit the new project pages look pretty swag. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they used a screenshot of a pretty book project video to illustrate it.

Foursquare has cleaned up the clutter in favor of just three tabs: Explore, Friends, and your profile. "We took apart the app and completely rebuilt it," the company said in a press release. 

The startup has clearly taken its cues from Facebook Timeline, Instagram, and Path to downplay antiquated badges and mayorships in favor of offering suggestions--like where to get breakfast in the West Village on a Thursday morning--as well as a "likes" and comments option. Recommendations weigh in not just time of day and where you are, but also weather and your friends' activities.

A quick scroll through the "Friends" feed and we've already noticed more people using it to chat while they're out and meet-up. Like Timeline, "Friends" offers a chronological list of large photos (in this case swipable ones) along with likes and tips. Because the comments are right there, it encourages users to leave their own.

The "Explore" tab does a much better of incorporating the "Lists" feature Foursquare launched awhile back. At the top of that section is a Google map with pins showing deals, places your friends have been to, and, yes, locations on lists you follow. The map should also show your friends' faces in terms of where they're checked-in--although it looks like most of Betabeat's friends are still in bed.

Clicking on a venue also now pulls up reviews, menus, and the ability to call--along with the tips option, which, for Betabeat's money, has been the best reason to use Foursquare. Of course, that was before the redesign.

The new version launches in the Android and iOS app stores today and BlackBerry in a couple weeks. Play around and let us know what you think.

(agbeat.com)

Link sharing service Bitly angered the Internet earlier this week with a convoluted redesign that obscured one of its most favored functionalities, URL shortening for Twitter. Even Roger Ebert was really mad about it, and if anyone is an accurate portrayal of the zeitgeist, it is clearly him.

Following the debacle, Bitly took to its blog to defend itself against the hoards of furious Internet types, writing, "We’ve clearly heard the concerned feedback of our users who were used to the old bitly and relied on our service for daily usage....We’ll continue to quickly iterate based on what we hear from all of you, so keep the feedback coming!"

Actually acting on user feedback is typically a sign of a successful startup, so we were happy to see that Bitly already addressed some of the UI gripes its users had. For example, it already added an automatic place to grab the shortlink when you add a new Bitmark, instead of having to blindly click around the site a million times to find it.

Still, we're no UI experts, but we're guessing the new Bitly redesign wouldn't be described as 'intuitive,' since they also took the blog post as an opportunity to explain how to use the site. Hint: if you have to take the time to define new terminology and demonstrate to users how to do something that was previously an easy part of your functionality, you're probably doing it wrong.

Luckily Bitly seems to be very responsive to user feedback. "This is just the first of many changes and enhancements we’re making in the coming days and weeks," they write.

But the blog post's commenters weren't satisfied with this explanation. Retorted one user: "Your site was simple, easy to use and great. Now it['s] just a hot mess."

Foursquare's redesign emphasizes usefulness.

For a long time, the Foursquare website has played a vastly inferior second fiddle to the app's first chair. Which makes sense, right? Foursquare is inherently mobile. Most users rely on the site to see their check-in history and perhaps review their friends lists. But most of the time users like Foursquare because they can passively brag about checking into Occupy Wall Street (99 percent bonus now worth +3), get deals at East Village eateries or find a place to grab drinks in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But it seems Foursquare has been tinkering with ways to make its website more of a draw. Yesterday the startup announced a complete refresh, adding several features that will make foursquare.com much less pointless more useful. "At foursquare we see the website as an integral part of our product and getting the chance to redesign this from the ground-up was a great opportunity, one that the small redesign team has slaved, sweated and poured a vast amount of our effort into over the last few months," writes lead designer Sam Brown.

The new design was rolled out to users in waves throughout the day. Most obvious change: the map. If logged in, the map will show your friends, places that are trending, places on your lists, places with deals running and places that are popular on Foursquare. "And, to make sure it’s useful every time you visit, we also pull out a few results that are perfect for what you want to do next," Foursquare says on its blog. "Load it up at 11:30 and we’ll start suggesting great lunch spots nearby, and in the early evening we’ll switch to places for dinner."

Foursquare also added a tool for discovering new lists, with easy list search as well as recommendations. Place pages also got a refresh.

Words Foursquare uses to describe its redesign:

• brighter
• fresher
• more flexible
• awesome
• bigger
• prettier
• new
• solid
• cohesive
• consistent
• cleaner
• useful
• perfect
• interesting

Promises to bring his own lunch.

Yes, it has come to this. The Great Google Reader tragedy of 2011 has resulted in a welfare state, with individual designers trying to ensure massive corporations don't screw things up beyond repair.

Kevin Fox, Google's former senior user experience design lead--who worked on Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0--is offering to come back to the fold temporarily to help them out in these troubled times.

If you're trying to keep track, Mr. Fox is a different individual than the Google product manager Brian Shih who tried the Socratic method to reason with Google:"When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer ‘stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading’?”

On his blog fox@fury, Mr. Fox paints a picture of a RSS landscape in chaos:

"Now that the Google Reader redesign has gone live, it seems clear that the stripping of social functionality is only one of many significant problems that have come from repainting the product with the broad brush of Google’s new visual style guide. Affordances have gone awry, the relative implied importance of use cases (such as subscribing) have fallen out of balance, and visual grouping of related items has been whitewashed away, to name a few problems."

Before offering some desperately needed design aid (emphasis his):

And so I put my resources where my mouth is. As the former lead designer for Google Reader, I offer my services to Google, rejoining for a three month contract in order to restore and enhance the utility of Google Reader, while keeping it in line with Google’s new visual standards requirements. I will put my current projects on hold to ensure that Google Reader keeps its place as the premier news reader, and raises the bar of what a social newsreader can be.

Just make sure not to sell yourself short for those three months, dude. Since you left, they gave up on aiming for the 80th percentile for employee pay and went right to loading them up with cash.