Photobucket comes out of nowhere to pass Flickr

If there’s one reason to believe that Photobucket will succeed in a crowded photo-sharing world, it’s not because they just passed Flickr. Their 26 million users are still dwarfed by the hottest social photo app, Instagram, with over 65 million. No, the reason that Photobucket may succeed is because the decade-old company already has a foothold when it comes to generating revenue while Instagram is just getting started.

Back in May, at a news conference in New York, Yahoo unveiled a revamped version of Flickr that gave users 1 TB of free storage and allowed them to upload full-resolution photos. “The look and feel here is about photos and being unbounded,” Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer said at the time. “Photos make the world go round. We want to make Flickr awesome again.”