Saturday, April 12, 2008

MediaMax is dead, long live TLU

Late to the party, but I'm probably not the only one that missed the announcement of MediaMax that V6, which is called The Link Up, will go live on april 25 at which time V5 will be discontinued and news like that deserves it's own topic.

I and others have been, and still are betatesting TLU and I will admit that, so far, it has been very stable. If it remains this way will become clear on 25 april I guess. Personally speaking, I'm a little worried and think we're a little to early. For one thing, a key element, the sharing part, isn't really working as it should at the moment, but I assume that can be fixed before the 25th. More dissapointing to me is that a couple of features that either we have even in V5 or that were talked about in the demo that was shown last year are not present (yet) in TLU. Now I know that it is not to be expected that every wish we had for the new system will be granted in the first release but that's not what I'm expecting. A few things though I had hoped to see in the first public release and frankly, if that takes another month of coding / betatesting, MM should have taken this month. After all, some people have been waiting for a fix since octobre 2006 so what's one more month and wouldn't it be better if you had your first release with a bit more bells and whistles?

There is also confusion about what kind of grandfathered rights we're going to take with us from V5 to TLU to which MM needs to make a clear and proper statement as to what kind of rights our accounts have after april 25.

Unrest also about MMs plan to convert only files that have been uploaded after july 1, 2007 and give people a tool so that they can decide which (if any) older files they also want to convert. I understand MM wants to take this opportunity to see if they can clear some dead weight from their database, but I'm a little worried on how well the auto conversion and this tool will work, because lets face it, MM and conversions haven't been exactly on good standing over the years. As Shamana in the previous thread already pointed out most people will have files and folders of mixed dates lumped together and usually in an organised structure. Will that structure be preserved or will we find one giant lump of files in our new TLU account for us take sort out from scratch again? Also what about certain structures that don't exist in TLU (for instance there is no more inbox and saved attachement folders). Files that currently reside there, often out of neccesity because of V5 bugs, what will happen to them?

I also understand people that use MediaMax as a backup / archive and just want to get all their files converted no matter if they are dormant or not. The purpose of an archive IS to provide backup in case you loose something so even when the tool that we are to get can still get every (working) file over to TLU it's still somewhat vexing that we have to be put through this. Like I said, I understand MM wanting to try and clear up their database, but I'd like to get some good answers on the questions above and sure hope MM really has this down to the numbers, because I see a huge potential for some major catastrophes here and like this is not something they can afford again.

I'm hoping John Hood / Steve Iverson will adress our concerns and will manage to amaze us with a conversion that does NOT look a traffic accident like we experienced in the past. Time will tell.
Speaking about telling. Since this is major news for all current MM account holders (freeloader or not) I'm somewhat amazed that a public notification hasn't been send to all accounts about this. Especially for people that have turned freeloader awaiting better times MMs upcoming conversion plan can have drastic and unwanted effects and some early warning for them probably is a good idea.

Constructive critism, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.

54 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fact that they've told no-one is foreboding. Either it's the first sign that the juggernaut is about to jack-knife again, or that they are going to miss the deadline. I hope it's the latter.

I'm amazed that everyone on this blog is so nice to these clowns, careful to apologize and offer only constructive criticism. I was very happy with streamload, but mediamax has been a nightmare. I don't even want to think of the 'upgrade' itself. But since then, every time I've needed to deliver or transfer a big file, the site's been totally down or it's taken days - on one occassion almost a week - to process the files. And all this year, customer services has been in melt-down. Most of my enquiries have been ignored, and one came back with a cheerful one line - three months after I sent it in!

Hood and his hoods really should know the pain they are inflicting. Mediamax is an outright joke, and survives only through our inertia. These guys need some good old-fashioned UN-constructive criticism. We really need to let them know and feel our frustration so that they take just a little care not to cause it all over again in the very near future.....

WillTRiker said...

MediaMax has been nightmare, no ifs and buts, but I'm just getting a little tired of messages like "MM is scum yadda yadda". People are unhappy, mad, dissapointed and fill in whatever suits your mood. Point is. WE KNOW, it's what founded this blog. However your point has been taken .... many times so no need to restate the obvious yet again.

MM also knows that this will be the very last chance they will get. Most diehards I know (including me) have renewed their accounts for the last time if they fail again.

Anonymous said...

Again, I'll say that I have no idea why people are so polite about this service, and above is further proof. If I ran any aspect of my business as badly as these morons, I wouldn't need an upload site. I wouldn't own a computer or a house - I'd have been fired long ago and would be living in a cardboard box! You may have heard it all before. But I haven't said it all before. I hope you respect my freedom of expression:

Mediamax is a disgrace!

Anonymous said...

The main problem about this upgrade is the "old files", some of them uploaded before 2002... If the transition goes badly for those and/or the new system is full of bugs, it's time to to buy a new HDD and leave MediaMax !

Anonymous said...

I've now had a few days to think about this nutty Link Up plan. I think that we're all so dazed and exhausted from years of mediamax hell, that we'd probably just be relieved with anything that worked. But, we really need to take a look at what's happening here. The good folk at MM are going to try to combine file storage and social networking. But have they really looked into the issue of whether anyone actually wants to combine file storage and social networking. I use Facebook for social networking. I use MM (when it works) for the rather unglamorous business of delivering and receiving big audio and video files, and for streaming my showreel. I don't want to direct my clients to a poncy social networking site for this purpose. Remember all that Locker and photo gallery nonsense in MM that no-body used and was dropped. File storage and hosting is very basic by definition. These bells and whistles are a distraction. I don't think that I would feel comfortable pointing a major film company or a newspaper web division to the new social networking site to deliver or pick up work. So, reluctantly, I have to conclude that it's time to finally go...

Anonymous said...

I agree with WillTRiker on all those questions.
Furthermore, MM absolutely MUST give GOOD and CORRECT responses to those questions especially about grandfathered rights especially about storage for example I still have unlimited storage from Streamload, will I lose that and 2/3 of my archive with transition to the Linkup? Furthermore most of my files uploaded from August 2006 (move from Streamload to MediaMAx) are in Saved Attachments folder simply because I cannot move those files because of the bugs. What will happen to those files?
We need to have at least 2-3 weeks notice if answer to both of these questions is Negative. Because we would need to immediately get those files on hardrive. I know that I and many other users will get REALLY upset if we would first loose storage space AND most of the files from 2006 and up and this year would certainly 100% be our last on Linkup.

So JohnHood we need those answers immediately so that we could have at least some warning before something drastic happens with our accounts!!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said..

"most of my files uploaded from August 2006 (move from Streamload to MediaMAx) are in Saved Attachments folder simply because I cannot move those files because of the bugs. What will happen to those files?"

Anonymous, you've already lost them! MM have already said they are not fixing bugs in the existing system

Anonymous said...

I didn't say I lost them. I said I LEFT them in Saved Attachments folder AS IS. I couldn't move them to FILE MANAGER to their respective folders because I was afraid I'd lose these files along with my already existing archive. Move bug only activates when you attempt to move or edit files, I didn't do neither. However as a result almost all new files I have gotten from August 2006 onwards are in my Saved Attachments folder which by now has thousands of files. Since WillTRiker says this particular folder won't exist in Linkup, what will happen to all these files?

Anonymous said...

Whats a 'Saved Attachments' folder. I dont see anything like that on my MM screen.

Anonymous said...

Who ever is that men and women behind the curtain working their database programming magic, should NOT attach these old files to the new database or their new service at all. Version 6 is a chance to start a clean slate and retrieve lost business.

The major problems have been with the V5 system and creating an conversion tool will only add to the headaches of both V5 AND V6 users. Porting accounts and space quotas are the ONLY thing that should ooze its way into the new V6 system.

If anything, an FTP EXTRACTION tool would be nice. First bust down the V5 database to ONLY LIVE FILES. As much as it pains EVERYONE to see file names disappear, that's all they were just NAMES link to some unknown void. Once the V5 system is down to their barest of essentials, the extraction tool will allow you to get your files OFF of V5 and into your OWN hands. Then you can decide if you want to upload them back to the V6 system.

Another suggestion would be that the MediaMax programming team, if they want to still go ahead with the conversion,they should create a limbo like storage tank for your V5 items. Its just a virtual list of LIVE links from V5.. and thats it.. You can then choose for V6 to do a webload type grab of the file (like they did previously with their site-ripping feature) or allow for a download of the item.

A time limit placed on these files will make sure the V5 database's demise will be swift and with the least headaches.

Anonymous said...

what kind of bothers me the lack of info and the amount of testing done.
I too want to know more about these storage based plans.
Up till this week there have been fixes. Not really a big point, but release date is scheduled in 2 weeks already. Have not been able to test
big downloads so far because there seems to be a limit (probably for testing purposes)
BTW there are 2 folders for sharing , received so that's your inbox and sent

Anonymous said...

Still no offical e-mail on the upgrade. Surely only a handful will have heard from the Blog. If they leave it too late, there'll be a huge rush on the servers and.... we all know what happens then......

Anonymous said...

Yeah the whole deal kind of sucks, my plan I've had since 2002 now costs $2.00 more, yet is horribly downgraded!

Let's see my new limits compared to my old:

Old bandwidth: 25 gb / month
New bandwidth: 2 gb / month

Old Storage Limit: Unlimited/250GB
New Storage Limit: 75 GB

Old File Size limit: No Limit
New File Size Limit: 2 gb

Old price: 9.95 / month
New price 11.95 / month

Man, I had high hopes for this new site, but they're being crushed.
It seems to me like I am paying more, but receiving less.


Do I have my facts in order here?
Maybe I am reading the linkup subscription page wrong.

Anonymous said...

I tried their MOVER tool. It doesn't work it just says "0 file(s) were extracted from your MediaMax account on 1/1/0001. Extract again? You have no files to migrate"
I know for a fact that MOST of my files are older than July 2007, and many are still viable (just downloaded some of them a day ago).
So that means their tool is not working. If they are only be processing the files once per day, its means there is less than 1 day left.
And JohnHood, still no answer regarding what will happen to Saved attachments file which many of us can't move to main folder because of the move bug??

Lugus DC said...

How do you get this mover tool?

Anonymous said...

Go to official MM blog - http://mediamaxblog.blogspot.com/
they have link to their new site and mover tool (that apparently doesn't work right now)

Anonymous said...

Do I understand it right?

You will be able to download only 2GB per month?

Anonymous said...

anonymous-

We know and feel your frustration. We feel it too. We have accounts too. We are not living in a bubble. No one wants this to work more than I. Well, maybe my landlord does.
I can understand your frustration with MediaMax but it's totally different system in every way from TheLinkup. They share nothing. Hardware, software, and the team that designed it are entirely different.
I'm, of course, disappointed in the level of customer support also, but we did the best we could with the resources we had battling the the tide of inquiries. The majority of our customer support folks have been around between 2 and 6 years. That kind of tenure is extremely rare in ANY kind of company. They care about our customers and have done an admirable job considering the circumstances.

willtriker- yup. last shot. couldn't have said it better myself thanks for your support and feedback!
I'm pretty pleased with how it's going so far and not everything will be perfect from Day One but I'm confident in our long term future.

anonymous- i can respect that. i have no problem with you venting your frustration. and i'd just ask that you kindly read our responses. we're doing our best to be straight forward with people.

anonymous- i beg to differ. Streamload and MediaMax users have created dozens of forums that already exist where users congregate. Most of these forums have thousands of members with the largest having 50,000 members. We are trying to enhance their experience, not replicate anything that even remotely resembles MySpace, et. al., as we have mentioned in both of our blog posts announcing this change. Further, no one has to join any of these groups and that includes you and your customers. Nothing changes in the way you share files with them.
I do, however, agree with you about the lockers for videos, etc. Companies are supposed to anticipate what customers will need, not tell them what they need. That's a basic rule of customer support, marketing and product mmgt that we failed at.

anonymous- (there's lot of anon. folks this round. My apologies if I've missed anybody.) No one is going to lose any storage capacity. This is explained in detail on our latest official blog post so I won't go into great detail here. Here's an example: if I have the exact same copy of a 100MB file that 100 other people have in their accouts we each are dinged for 1MB. No one takes on the burden of entire file against their storage limit unless they're the person who has it. We expect very little issue with this because of th viral nature of our site. We'll also try to provide solutions for the few users who may be effected.
Saved attachment
and inbox files from v5 will show up in v6's MyFiles.

jack- not true. see above. that's a bug that's specific to moving files within v5.

last1- thanks for your thoughtful suggestions. I'm pretty sure it's way to late to implement any most if not all of them but I'll pass them on. thanks again!

jd- we've communicated everything there is to know. if there's a question we haven't answered just let us know.
again, no one will lose any storage capacity.
you're correct about the current folder structure.

anon- as i mentioned in a response to a previous post, those notifications started going out in the couple of days and will continue to distribute to all 4 mil plus users.

ff8-

Yup, it costs more. That reflects higher storage costs as we turn to an outside vendor for the first time. You're trading cost for much better stability.
I'm not sure where you're getting your other facts from, but let me say that:
1. There are NO download bandwidth limits in v6. Zip, zero, zed, nada.
2. That number is for unique files. Almost everyone our site shares files with someone else on the site. This means the file size is shared between several if not thousands of accounts. Virtually no one will suffer from storage issues. We will make every accomodation possible for those few who might have issues.
3. I've been with the company 3 years. Our official upload file size limit has always been 2.2GB as reflected in the T&C of both v4 and v5. It will continue to be so in v6.

anon- I answered your saved attachments query above.

As for the tool:

Click “extract again” and then come back the next day when your account has been “extracted = pre-migrated = ready to use the mover tool”. About half of accounts are currently “pre-migrated/ready to use this tool”, but if you click “extract again” it will bring that account to the top of the list to “pre-migrate”.

Once you click extract again, you can’t log back into the mover tool until the account is ready.

Anonymous said...

What causes confusion is that on the
Subscription Plans page in the Linkup, on the Download bandwidth limit line is written 2gb for all plans.

Anonymous said...

So Am I understanding this correctly.

Files from lets say 2005+ will also be transfered?

Also what's up with the XL program, has it also been updated?

It's not worked well on vista..

shamanana said...

john hood,

Is there a way to check those subscription plans on the uplink page? Clicking on the Read more link doesn't do a thing. And I would really like to know the difference between all of them, as mine has suddenly doubled in price! Not like from 9.95 to 11.95... In all these years my account has never gone up in price, download quota perhaps...but price was always the same, be it Streamload or MediaMax.
And yes, I can understand that we are getting a more stable product (I sure hope so) but is it really for double the amount of money?
Thank you :)

Anonymous said...

JohnHood, I have the same problem as Shamanana, my annual subscription fee doubled! from $63per year to $118 per year. This is not a $2 increase per month, its more than $4 increase per month! And again, even with social storage - 75GB is measly small compared to unlimited storage. My 3-year old computer has more than 3 times as much ROM, and if it was enough for me I wouldn't need an online storage, right?
Also, about the increase in fees, my annual fees are paid thru fall (sept/oct), what do you guys plan to do - charge us the new fees fully again right now thus double charging us or just charge the difference in increase (in my case it'll be 118-63)? This would be unfair even if you refund the leftover amount of of old annual fee. Because we paid for a FULL year of original package - bigger download limits per month and unlimited storage and you're skimping out on that.
The better way would be to wait till each annual fee comes to its renewal date and keep accounts as paid for - unlimited storage and bigger download limits and all, and then charge a new price when renewal comes up. Thats the only fair way to do it.

WillTRiker said...

I'm also gonna voice my concern about this social storage. Even at first glance 75 GB is next to nothing compared to the unlimited storage capacity we enjoy today. Looking at my own account which I estimate runs at about 10 TB and expands at around 1 TB per year, I can safely say I will be very hard pressed to send that to enough users to keep under that 75 GB unless I send to everyone in my little community (this also assumes that everyone will keep what they got send and not delete it after downloading it and then I still will have to deal with the annual increase in demand of storage space).

I will grant that the social storage system will stop abuse of the system, but I think 99% of the users that make proper use of the system now get punished for a small problematic minority. Also in essence even the social storage system is flawed, because it now becomes a matter of spreading your account over enough people to stay on the safe side. I can imagine people joining together just for the sake of mass spreading their links (that 50,000 people community John Hood mentioned would a good start). Basically it would start an explosion in database links when everybody is trying to spread his stuff around as much as possible. And wasn't an overloaded database not also one of their problems?

I don't really mind the price increase for more stability, but I'll trade download limits in an instant for unlimited storage capacity. Hell, most of the time I don't even use (much) of my allowed download as I'm basically serving as an archive station so others can download using the links I collect (and upload myself).

Besides, the price of storage capacity is going down all the time. It was not long ago that when you bought a new PC a 80 GB HD was pretty much top of the line. Nowadays they often put in a 500GB as standard and it costs even less then the old 80 GB one. I mean, Youtube stores I believe 7 hours of digital footage every second and it hasn't managed to run out of diskspace yet and they don't even ask money. I'm sure with 4 million PAYING users MediaMax can afford a couple more HDs at the vendor they are using to store all our stuff.

In short, give me my unlimited storage back and compensat by reinstating download limits and your higher fees.

shamanana said...

I am totally with WillT on this issue. I count my monthly downloads in MB not GB. I don't use it for months at a time. But I do need unlimited storage that I kept since the days of Streamload.
And as far as I remember there was no change in payment when the Streamload/Mediamax change happened. So why now? And why such a huge difference?

Anonymous said...

Everyone-

1. The are no download limits. Period.
2. No one is going to lose any files because of storage limits. Period. Only 1% of users will be affected by the limits and accomodations will be made for them.
3. Yes, fees are higher. We haven't raised them in years. That's no longer sustainable when a storage company like Amazon S3charges companies like ours 16 cents a GB to store your files. Some user's fees will go up a buck or two a month. I know of no one who's fees have doubled. This and the bandwidth issue sound like problems with the UI. If you have questions about your fees please email me at johnh@mediamax.com.
4. We don't have 4 million paying users. More like the low 5 digits. Most account holders have free accounts. I wish we could waive a magic wand and buy all the hardware we wanted but we're a tiny company with limited resources.
5. Current annual subscriptions will be honored. Monthly subscriptions will adjust at the next renewal date.
6. Because of the removal of bandwidth limits, the majority of user's monthly rate will actually DROP from $9.95 to $6.95 since most people really don't store that much.
7. If you would like to us to move ALL of your files for you can email me johnh@mediamax.com. This service is limited to folks who regularly read this blog so please keep that on the DL as we won't be able to accomodate everyone. WillTRiker and Luzo_Orbit if you could put up a new "useful link" in the right column of your main page I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for the feedback!

-jh

Anonymous said...

Sorry Dave, I missed ya. MediaMax XL is toast as I mentioned in an earlier post. It's too complicated for many users; very buggy and uses too many CP resources. I welcome anyone who would like to build an alternative using our API.

WTR, just a fun fact, at last count we do about four times the upload volume YouTube does a day. They may not charge, but they certainly bombard everyone with ads and they happen to have a parent company with very deep pockets.
Everyone- Hang in there. Transition is always difficult, but we're all gonna make it. We've always been frank with you here in this forum and will continue to be.

Thanks Again!

-jh

Anonymous said...

We can't accomodate everyone when it comes to moving accounts. It's just not gonna happen. We don't have the horses for that. Please keep this to the regular readers of this blog as we are offering this as a special favor to you in appreciation for your feedback and beta testing.

WillTRiker said...

Hi John,

thanks for the offer of converting some accounts as a whole. I take it you wanted a link for the MediaMax File move tool added here? It's been taken care off. I've also added the TLU site itself, but not the Blog.

Since you were talking about conversion of our current plans I assumed the same download limits would apply in TLU (on the TLU page itself the read more link for the subscriptions does nothing still). Like I said, for me and a couple of other people that are archive builders / maintainers we really don't download that much and as such unlimited downloads don't mean really that much, but storage capacity does. It's somewhat odd to see that instead of bandwidth we're now paying for storage capacity ... almost a reversal of how things were done up till now.

As for the fees. I'm perfectly willing to pay a little more (you still offer a way better deal then others then), only I'd would have liked to see this increase in your revenue used for keeping intact the unlimited storage capacity instead of cutting it back to 75 GB (base, more if you can spread it using your social storage plan) and allowing unlimited downloads now instead of fixed download plans.
No doubt this is very attractive for new users, but for older users as myself this is troubling regarding the greatly diminished storage capacity. Now that you have guaranteed that this will not be a problem for existing users I'm more at ease at this. I'm still a little puzzled about how the social storage system works though. For instance ... suppose 5 persons have their accounts filled till the point they have all reached their 75 GB mark. Now what happens if one person uploads a 1 GB file ... I assume he can at least upload it and that he isn't warned in advance, but when it is uploaded those 5 will have passed the treshhold. Will all 5 now get a message or just the one that uploaded it? Also if one person leaves the group of 5 by cancelling his account ... how is determined which files will have to go? By your guarantee this is of no consequence for me and a few others, but I suggest you explain the workings of the social storage a bit more elaborate on the TLU site.

8 days and counting.

Anonymous said...

Its nice to get feedback. Thank you.

Two main points:

1. Why has no notification been sent to people about the fact that the old pre 2007 files will be deleted? And the fact that media max is going to be toast soon?

2. Regarding the pre2007 files, is there anything that can be done about this? I understand there is a lot of dead weight around. But I also know I have files there since 2005 for storage purposes.... isn't that the idea of online storage. I am on the road and send photos up there, I was thinking they would be safe. They are, that is from mid 2007 onwards!! Any feedback to these 2 points?

Dave

WillTRiker said...

Dave, in the first reply John Hood said "anon- as i mentioned in a response to a previous post, those notifications started going out in the couple of days and will continue to distribute to all 4 mil plus users."

I haven't seen mine yet and still I think MM is late with these notifications imho. These should have been done at least 2 weeks, maybe even a month in advance so people that people have ample time to catch up on current events (in case they're on holiday or whatever).

As for the pre july 1, 2007 files. You can transfer them to your TLU account using the "Mover"-application. The link for that is the 2nd one in the Usefull links on the main page of this blog.

Anonymous said...

I've not had any luck with the mover tool yet. I'm not sure what the 'you won't be able to log into your account while files are being moved' message means, as I have been able to log into the mover tool repeatedly, getting the same pages every time, and have been able to open my Mediamax account.
Has anyone here successfully used the mover tool?

Anonymous said...

Ok thank you. I haven't received any mail as of yet, and only discovered this was happening by accident the other day.

The mover tool. Does this mean I have to set up a new account with Linkup? I don't get it (sorry). Or is my MM user name ok. The LU site does not seem to be fully functional yet

Lugus DC said...

Hello everybody,

I tried the LinkUP mover right now and it worked for me, when i try to login again appears the message: Unable to continue, data from MediaMax is still being processed.
I think they fixed the problem and now you can use the moving tool.

Unknown said...

John Hood thanks for the offer to move the accounts

uzume said...

Just two questions and I apologize if they have already been addressed:

1 – How will annual accounts paid with paypal be handled in billing? Will users have to unsubscribe to the paypal subscription and resubmit billing information or will the billing system be able to recognize the new fees and apply it to the correct account?

2 - How are duplicate files assessed against the storage quota?

Anonymous said...

will-

I wanted something similiar to the link where users could ask for an extension on their billing. Having one for the mover is great though!
Regarding bandwidth if you look at our competitors and elsewhere on the web you'll see that charging for bandwidth is old hat. It's an outdated business model because bandwidth is dirt cheap and storage is where the real costs are. So yes, our business model is the exact opposite of what it used to be.
To answer your question only the guy uploading the file will get a message saying he needs to upgrade.
To answer the second question it will be up to the user in question to either choose a file to delete or upgrade.

Anonymous said...

Dave-

1. We're in the process of doing that. We've got 4.2 million folks to reach. It's not as easy as it sounds.
2. Not sure what you're asking here. Pre-2007 files will not be deleted if you use the tool provided.
3. Your account data will be moved to v6. No need to create a new account.

Anonymous said...

Katie,
I have exact same problem as you. The mover doesn't work for me. I'm not supposed to be allowed to login to mover after clicking on Extract Again, but I can easily do so.
JohnHood, are you sure your mover is working properly?

Anonymous said...

uzume-

1 – This is really a two part question. Yes, our system will be able to recognize payments. However, we can't change the amount of fees your acct sends us so you'll have to adjust that.

2 - Absolutely.

Anonymous said...

katie and anon.- send me your usernames and i'll check into it.

Unknown said...

I cant see my old account files when I log into the Link Up.Am I doing something wrong?

Anonymous said...

kcq71- it only happens once a day. it's done manually. Your's should be done tonight or Sunday. (PDT)

Anonymous said...

One last thing (for now) on the subject of storage. Yes, we are definitely going to make accomodations for the 1% of people with massive accounts. But I want to emphasize that we won't be able to do this for everybody. If you're someone like WillTRiker or davcin who are active, productive members of this community you will have no problem. Hosting your account actually grows the business since you do a lot of sharing or have brought new functionality.
Then there's the other kind of customer. That would be massive multi-TB accounts that a user is compiling for his own use or shares with a few others. Someone like this is going to have some issues trying to hold on to their account(assuming they weren't lucky enough to be covered under Social Storage.) At 16 cents a GB this user is costing MediaMax $163.80 per month to store his files. Yet odds are he's only paying us $9.00 a month. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that no business (unless their parent company is Google) can sustain that.

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for the feedback.

Two more points in regards to moving of files

1. Where do I get the mover?

2. I try logging in to Link up using my media max login and says not recognized?

Dave

Anonymous said...

Hi John Hood, I sent you email with my account name you as you said regarding Mover problem, so I am waiting for your response soon, since I'm running out of time here and there are less than 7 days left.
Question regarding your last comment, considering that Social Storage limits will not kick in till July 2008, Will LinkUP still allow us to move ALL files from MediaMax accounts even if they are more than 75GB allotted? Or is the limit is fixed already? Maybe thats why MOVER malfunctions because my after July 2007 files already account for more than 75GB and it doesn't want to allow me to move anything else further?
So, my final question on storage is, will be 75GB storage limit waived and ALL MediaMAx files allowed to be moved to the LinkUP in excess of 75GB of personal storage at till July so that we could have at least some breathing space to calmly reduce our storage? If worse comes to worst?

WillTRiker said...

For those that seem to miss the link to the mover application in MediaMax blog and in the useful link section here. You can find it here: http://www.thelinkup.com/mover/

Dave, your account is still an MM account. Not until the conversion on april 25 will your MM account be a TLU account. You can use the mover tool (or rather link) now, but not until the 25th of april you will be able to login at TLU and see the contents of your TLU account.

John, just to make sure, you can still use the mover tool AFTER the 25th? So suppose you forgot to move a couple of files then you can add them to your TLU account still?

Those storage cost you mentioned sure pack a punch. I'm still expecting those to go down in the long run though as like bandwidth, storage is also becoming cheaper all the time. I especially put my money on new technology like MRAM and I hope that at that time instead of lowering subscriptions we get increased storage capacity.

Anonymous said...

Being one of the moderators of a request board associated with WillTRiker, I leave the comments to him. (Especially as we've 'elected' him our representative. He's MUCH more diplomatic than I who let my anger out very readily when I'm disgusted as much as I have been with MM.)

As with others, I get nothing out of the mover tool. I can log into it, get to where it says "Extract again?", click on that, and it goes to nothing more than a large white screen of nothing. I can then repeat the process. I tried it yesterday and today, no change in results.

I have not received any mailing either. No matter how large a customer base, mails should have gone out with enough time to allow those customers to know what was going on. Since the date is now a week away, the time frame of information sharing is another failure of customer service.

My account is another of those in the 1%, as probably are most of the moderators of WillTRiker's board, and our affiliated boards. So as he has said, we're VERY concerned with what we might be paying in storage. Less than a week to find out the answers is and EXTREMELY poor start to what is touted as an overhaul of the "old ways."

HawkeCrystal

Anonymous said...

WillTRiker thank you.

But like the others the mover tool is not working for me either. I can also login to Link Up with no problems, just no files from my media max account! And I clicked extract again!and again!

Can you or John advise please?

Also, I guess this is a dumb question, but where is best to upload now MM and hope they get transfered or LU?

Anonymous said...

OK, this is where I finally leave the sinking (already totally submerged) ship. I'm not paying one extra dime for this shit service and if I have to manually move my entire archive I might just as well move it someplace else.

Anonymous said...

I am definately in the 1% and I bet I am costing more than I pay. But please consider that I have tried to move files, delete files during the mediamax tenure whithout a whole lot of success. When you have duplicate and triplicate files and highlight one or two files to delete, strange things happen with the selecting and all files end up selected or some selected. I gave up trying to get tech support to understand the problem. Moving files failed more than not, probably because the destination contained a file that might have been a duplicate of one file out of the 100 you were moving, it was a frustrating experience.

I want to reduce my files in my account and I hope LinkUp will contain the tools and the ability to allow this to happen. Perhaps the migration is a chance to remove duplicate files automatically, though it scares me that this is fraught with danger.

Mediamax is not up to allowing me to trim my account in a week, much as I would like to. If John can move my account 100%, and I have emailed him about his offer, and linkup is up to the task of allowing me to reduce my account by removing duplicate files, then maybe we are moving in the right direction finally.

Ian

Anonymous said...

Even now I am trying to clear out the many TB of files clogging my trash and keep getting errors like "HTTP request failed: Unknown (http undefined)". File handling in mediamax is just so frustrating, but will TLU be any better?

Basic functions like deleting files has been hit and miss since mediamax started. I wouldn't mind betting the sheer number of files and size of my account makes the problem worse. I will continue to try and sort and delete, but a week will not be enough while MM is less than reliable.

Ian

Covereds Place said...

the mover isn't working here either
a nice white page with finished is all i get when clicking the choose files.

Been seeing the paying plans for the new LinkUp, and knowing at the moment my account has TB's of files i will never be able to pay let's say a 300 a month and that's just for 2.4TB. That's just insane. lots of people won't be able to pay that amount.

I've been pretty quiet on this blog, but have been reading daily, and didn't feel it necessary to repeat other people's words.

Must say i have lots of concerns how things ae going to work out.
Also the time frame again, next week should be the deadline, but are you really ready for that?

My account is not even transfered yet, and as me been told by Steve mine would be one of the first to move. As reading this blog several people are already there.

Anyway, I don't know where this path is leading, and how sharing is going to work out either. Will see i suppose

Anonymous said...

ok it is over 24 hours since I used the mover, and nothing in my Link Up Account! I tried both methods as mention above several times

So this is an issue as we are all having the problem it would seem?!

I would like my pre june 2007 and post 2007 files moved, I understand post 6-2007 will be done automatically, but this mover tool does not instill confidence here. Like as in being able to see that the files have actually moved!! erm Which they haven't!

Advice please

P.S. (This could not have happened at a worse time as I am trying to sort through 3 years of on the road photos!! While just renting a place for the month to do all this) Arh...

Anonymous said...

Can anyone recommend alternative sites for storage?