Many auction sellers found their auction images vanished on Friday when the PhotoPoint site went down. This impacted their sales, since buyers rely heavily on product photos to make their purchase decision. The PhotoPoint image-hosting site has yet to resurface, and users are bewildered about its disappearance.

PhotoPoint began charging users in June, and in July the site was repurchased from Sherwood Partners Inc. by the original creator of PhotoPoint, Pantellic Software Inc. of Canada. In July, the The Halifax Herald reported that PhotoPoint was one of the world's most popular photo Web sites with 1.6 million members. http://www.herald.ns.ca/external/photopoint/photopoint.html

Disappointed PhotoPoint users are scrambling to find a replacement image-hosting service. For a useful chart of image-hosting services, try Andromeda Software's "Guide to Online Photo Albums" at:
http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/photo/albums.html
More information:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS.HTM
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0107/01071702photopointbuyout .asp .asp