Imgur, nifty service, lasted this long, amazing. Simply I e'er wondered how whatsoever of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth (reminds of the other various ones like TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter). I mean, I have a gallery of images in there, privately stored, straight linked to hither and there around the net, without paying for anything for years. I retrieve at ane point I can't even recall now I did pay them a small fee and then they removed that option to go it lonely with ads and refused to 'have my coin'. Which seemed crazy and still does. Does the pocket-size imgur community (Which exists every bit a baroque as well-ran of Reddit) sustain them plenty on ad views?
My gauge is PR.
Regularly, on imgur, you lot encounter a pic in involvement for a celebrity, a rich person, a moving picture. It looks organic, merely if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things most it. Then it disappears equally all of a sudden as information technology arrived.
I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.
Information technology's probably the same for a lot of communities with a potent influence on trends, similar popular sub reddits or hacker news.
At that place is no ameliorate ads than the one you don't see. At that place is no better slogan than the i you repeat to your friends every bit a catchphrase. And at that place is no better propaganda than the i based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.
I in one case posted an anthology on Imgur of my hobby project. I was hoping information technology would do well on the niche subreddit information technology involved.
It did ok on reddit (100 upvotes) but a few thousands upvotes on Imgur and made the front page with hundreds of thousands of views. I was shocked since I didn't fifty-fifty know that was a matter. But my judge is popular with people who are on their telephone a lot, are not as tech saavy, or international.
For the uninitiated, this is a meme reference to a clip from the TV show Arrested Development, popular on Imgur every bit a reaction to show back up for someone else who expresses a sense of loneliness in their appreciation or affection.
A version of this: https://i.imgur.com/pgXjbNy.gifv
No at that place's plenty, HN but has the kind of people who need to loudly proclaim they don't appoint with <insert pop thing>
That wrongly creates the impression that there are simply a few HN users engaging with it.
I used to in higher. Extremely bad addiction, was piece of cake to spend 4+ hours at that place just hit the right arrow.
Same. I stopped when I realised it was passively pedagogy me glory gossip, which I never wanted to know.
Information technology's so easy to absorb 'celebrity' gossip, I always wondered if it'd exist possible to practice the same with say science or maths, if it was presented in the same kind of format.
I think the hardest function is the rigour. Math and science build on concepts over time, and mastery is easier with more hands-on experience. Just presenting it to someone in a feed might be waaay too passive for absorption.
Easy manner to find out. Remove the pictures from glory gossip posts, and see how much you remember.
I recall beingness in high school (effectually 2013, 2014) and some of my classmates would browse imgur while slacking off from work. Not sure how big it is these days, but I think some people apply it the same fashion you'd browse r/funny on reddit, or iFunny. Except there isn't really a topic, it's simply images of whatever people recall is interesting.
Who doesn't? Information technology's the all-time source of about everything. Perfect mix of culturally important twitter and news screenshots and entertaining gifs.
I scrolled through it for five minutes simply now. Advice animals, rage-bait about politicians, political cartoons, cute animals—this is consummate garbage.
Absolutely this. imgur.com is the only reason I can pretend to be "down with the kids".
Oh yes also all the skilful/important tiktoks end upwardly on there. I don't even have tiktok and am conversant in all the memes.
7/7 would recommend
Huh wow, y'all weren't kidding!
I remember going on the forepart page of Imgur one time a couple of years dorsum and information technology seemed less entertaining and more than rage-baity than now -- remember I'll revisit that determination...
The way some of the replies talk about the front end page of imgur (huge fourth dimension sink, insightful, entertaining, keeps yous in the loop) is the same way I'd talk virtually the FYP on tiktok.
People that subscribe to default subreddits and click the Youtube "Featured" section.
I only at present learned that it has such a matter and decided to see information technology, and I am very confused past the lack of advertizement on it indeed.
But who are these companies that successfully provide this service?
Information technology's simply an educated guess, so I don't know.
Besides, such company would do its best to stay discrete, by design.
I'1000 aware of one such visitor that uses Imgur like that and that deals with celebs. Imgur isn't their primary target, it's just a handy layer of brainchild away from the real target so the content tin't TRULY be taken downwardly on the target site. Plus, it shows yous how many impressions y'all get for free. That way they can gather upwards their campaign prototype urls and views at the end of the contract and prove hard results without the demand for a fancy, paid analytics dashboard or entrada tracking system.
> Paying us money doesn't entitle yous to anything except owning less money
Brilliant
Agreed. It's delightfully funny without going overboard, or being too cheesy like nearly bigger companies who try to be cheeky.
I'm signing up.
The trick is to actually not care about whether people purchase your stuff! Hard to pull off when you're trying to make money, but easy for me.
While that may be true, yous actually seem to accept genuine talent for comedy. I'm inclined to pay for IMGZ for that reason solitary, even though I may never really use it.
I pay for SourceHut, not considering i get a lot of value from the service, but as a way of funding Drew DeVault's crazy ranting.
Simply in all seriousness, so you have an actual privacy policy and such? I like the pricing and practice take images I demand to host!
No, unfortunately not. I can give you an breezy ane, that I will not sell/give away/etc your information, won't rails you, etc. I likewise only utilize CloudFlare, so your information simply goes through them.
If your site ever get hacked, we will never know if its your sarcasm OR it is truly hacked :)
Browsing imgz felt like watching a fun film, I dear the compages too ( ... we dont accept this...LOL )
BTW, I am (Perhaps I should say WE are) too building a epitome hosting service. https://host.pics (Pre-Alpha)
I would have giggled slightly more if you had "Nearly Popular" instead of "OUR CHOICE" on the "Purchase THE SITE" selection.
The fact that "Our Choice" is besides definitely true though made me express joy a second time.
This website is great, I have no use for an image sharing site but in tempted to sign up but to assistance run across it get successful. And backside all the humour there is actually a very sensible concept: pay a reasonable amount of money to get an actual service and non some advertising infested crap. Also I love
> If you're expecting professionalism, call Oracle and enquire for a quote of Oracle Avant-garde Image Sharing for Hadoop or whatever crap they sell
> Let'south talk money. Equally y'all may have noticed from the subtle but effective messaging, this service isn't free. That'due south because nosotros want to avoid having to sell photos of your vagina to shady Russian oligarchs to pay for our servers and cocaine.
You weren't kidding. Astonishing.
The meme marketing is funny, but the meme license is less so. Would you consider using a more well-known and established license? The Parity license looks similar Open up Source/Free Software, merely it also looks very vague and hard to interpret, and has not been evaluated by the OSI or FSF, which makes it needlessly difficult to comply with, or to do things like brand packages or contributions or derivative works. If you want copyleft, consider the GPL family unit, or MPL?
I didn't mean it every bit a meme license, but I might change it to something similar the GPL 3 or AGPL, thanks!
Nosotros feel personally attacked at our startup by some of the stuff you wrote on your blog especially the thing most writing in plural
I love your marketing patter! Cracking upwardly reading some of this.
If I stop upwards stealing your style for something, I owe you lot a beer.
> We have CDNs and Rust and all that fast crap.
Lol! Haven't used the service, but the website is fun.
In case you didn't see it: They explain the reasoning behind the "steal button" in the FAQ and on the About page.
I emailed ane of them 12 years and four months ago to ask how they paid for everything. This was dorsum in 2009 when the internet was nevertheless small plenty that companies would respond to random emails. They responded to say they had funding covered. They close down a few years later.
The domain is there, but it simply says "ImageHost.org is closed" with a Google Analytics tag.
> But I always wondered how whatsoever of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth ... reminds of the other diverse ones similar TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter
Paradigm hosting is relatively cheap, then y'all can accept good margins if you can go a lot of use and fill the ad inventory. The fashion you do it, is past running as sparse of an performance as possible.
When the first wave of one-click epitome hosts were popping up back in 2004-2005 roughly, I noticed i called ImageVenue. The founder, Vlad, was out of Eastern Europe somewhere. I emailed him and bought advertising, the price was correct and he had a lot of impressions to fill. Dorsum then he was just ownership tons of $40/month dedicated servers from one specific host, using a img7.imagevenue.com scheme for each auto, and filling upward the boxes. You lot tin can still use ImageVenue.com 17 years afterward, even though the traffic for the service has never been what it was during the early on peak years (tons of image hosting competition swamped the market). I had a running dialogue with Vlad across nigh a year, he also mentioned in discussing Ajax (early on popularity days for Ajax) use at the time, that he wasn't familiar with it and was "only really good with C++ and PHP". And then I assume some of it was built in PHP. He was managing ads in-house, where he handled each sale past email, negotiating impressions and elapsing each month.
And regarding TwitPic, circa 2010: "TwitPic is generating $i.5 to $ii million in ad sales on an almanac footing, with lxx% profit margins, says its founder Noah Everett"
At present that'south a proper name I haven't heard in a while. Yes, funny story, Twitter at that fourth dimension was threatening to cut off our API access due to the states trying to trademark "Twitpic". We had been in the process of trying to trademark our name for many years prior. Our initial application hit tons of hurdles with other Twit* marks (my fault for filing late). Fast forward near iv years subsequently nosotros'd finally worked through all the issues which required us to file a whole new trademark application and this one ran afoul (pun intended) of Twitter's legal. I presume that in 2009'ish when we originally filed, Twitter either didn't care then or we weren't big enough to exist a threat, simply I guess that changed in 2014.
Long story long, I basically ended upwardly giving Twitpic to Twitter (I wanted the photos to alive on). Nosotros were already feeling the squeeze from their ain native image characteristic plus some other compounding events like Google Adsense banning usa out-of-the-blue with no recourse that really afflicted our margins [Hey Google, you lot still owe us $100k+ ;)].
It was one of the best, most educating times of my life. Just thankful I had that opportunity to run Twitpic for those years, God blessed me.
The End.
P.S. I'chiliad still tinkering https://ark.fm
Thank you for popping on. A legendary time dorsum then. And ultimately I'm glad that Twitter kept the photos living on as preservation is so important. But man, whatever insights into the bandwidth imgur must incur to maintain things? They are similar in that for a time they were the defacto image host capability for reddit earlier reddit rolled its own.
I imagine Imgur now is many times bigger than we were. If I think correctly effectually 2009/2010 our Amazon rep said Twitpic accounted for nigh 1% of data stored in S3 at that time and I think our cost was effectually $100k/month. We somewhen got that down to $60k'ish when they gave us "special" pricing and later on on we put bare-metal caching servers in front of information technology to shop/serve hot images which farther decreased it.
Disclaimer: Hopefully I'm remembering correctly, it'southward been a while!
I don't remember it's a large mystery. Bandwidth and ad acquirement scale together. Sometimes the epitome will be embedded, hot linked or the request is otherwise not monetizable, simply yous can assume that those are a fixed fraction. Every prototype clicked on otherwise will generate some advertizement acquirement which is multiples of the bandwidth cost of serving information technology.
Anecdotal and I can't substantiate any of this. Almost 5 years agone my erstwhile boss's wife worked for imgur and it did not sound great. They had constant churn. She was an upper manager of some sort and even she left later on a short time. From what I understood, the company was not profitable and similar many other tech companies relied heavily on investor.
I seriously doubt their community can sustain the costs of the service. In fact, the quality of imgur's service has declined in an effort to make profit. For instance, all images are compressed now. That used to not exist true.
Most platforms y'all are using today cannot survive without advertizement's, because their business model is not i that can brand a turn a profit without a monopoly offset.
took a look at it, nicely implemented resumable uploads/downloads... very smooth.
i find youre using cloudflare to deliver the files on the download side, and im guessing you lot are taking advantage of bandwidth brotherhood and so ingress/egress are basically free - i always thought the biggest cost for something like this would be the storage, eg if yous are letting people ship unlimited <5GB files for free, and each of those terminal for 10 days on what im bold is some kind of object storage/s3-like thing, surely you are paying a fortune in $/GB/month, even if its pro-rated to 1/3 the amount since the files but live 1/3 a month?
I think at that place's a cost to taking money from thousands of people vs taking the coin from an investor or advertiser.
First off there is tax compliance, if you want to exist global it will cost a lot for accountants and lawyers that understand how this should work "anywhere" in the world.
2nd, I know some people that will simply cancel credit cards because they don't desire to brand the side by side recurring payment for a service. Coming afterwards these people is non worth the effort simply hurts the bottom line.
Third, you demand to hire employees to look afterward customer accounts and billing if at that place are any questions.
I think there's other reasons and I know payment processors similar Stripe and Square are attempting to make this seamless, but I'm guessing a unmarried source of funding is still desirable.
Bandwidth is pretty cheap if yous look beyond cloud. At that place are providers that offer magnitudes cheaper bandwidth than due east.g. AWS but you have to set servers yourself.
absolutely not. I don't use fastly, merely i pay 1/10th the rate of AWS and co.
Scaleway, OVH will get you lot that, but at a larger scale just rent blank metal.
At their scale, zilch is inexpensive. Some things are cheaper than others, but even the cheapest option must exist costing a fortune each month.
Right, it'due south the scale and seemingly limitless ceiling.... seems crazy. Obviously there's a lot of depression res tiny images on there etc but there's also not -- and for years and years?
I call up back around 2009(?) ish I had a run a risk to talk to some folks at Justin.tv (now twitch) and they said ane ad on the stream every few hours more than covers all the costs. What changed?
I guess the videos are much more loftier resolution now than the webcam size 320x240 videos back then but has cost gone up that much?
What? They're crazy competitive these days. Every popular ad space online has been bought by the highest bidder. AdWords, Facebook, Imgur, Reddit, companies are dumping cash like mad. The market grew by billions over the past decade.
The advertisement market basically bifurcated. Information technology'due south a land of the haves and have nots
The big ad platforms like Facebook and Google take thrived, of course. And as platforms like Snapchat have aged they've gradually improved the rates they're getting for their ad space (a typical process).
The scale of online advertising today isn't considering the industry'south median or average CPMs went up 100 fold. The book went up dramatically over the last 10-fifteen years with the traffic for the big services. The large advertisers brought billion dollar ad budgets online and handed them to Facebook, not to one-click image hosts.
Your typical 1-click paradigm host is not going to command better ad rates today vs 15 years ago. It's a worse context than it was back so, actually. Back then advertisers were relatively stupid when it came to online ad, today they're a lot more sophisticated, and a lot more strict nigh where they identify ads (eg porn on one-click prototype hosts is a large trouble for advertisers). The big, rich platforms like Facebook swallow a large share of the high paying advert. What'due south left for something similar a ane-click paradigm host, is very, very low paying ads that y'all have to run a trillion of to make money.
I used to piece of work for a company in a niche industry that used to clear 7 figures a year using the online platform I put together back in its heyday. And while traffic isn't quite as practiced as it used to be, it's still at nearly 70%. Their advertizing revenue is today about 1/8th of what they were making back in 2011-2015ish, and they basically take nothing defended staff to the platform. I only do some maintenance and bug fixes for them every calendar month.
But you need to consider that and so have hosting costs-- proportionately as well. Hosting data was incredibly expensive ten years ago. If the math was working and so, it should at least be pretty close to working now.
For some segments that'southward true. Paradigm hosting wasn't incredibly expensive x years ago. Information technology was very much on the lighter side in toll compared to MegaUpload or YouTube type services.
Image file sizes increasing dramatically as smartphones started producing photo sizes that would have been considered massive 15 years ago, saturated much of the gains in cost to hardware.
It'south easier to run a one-click image host (like the early Imgur) as a solo operator today versus dorsum and then. Information technology's not much cheaper when you account for the larger epitome files (unless yous severely limit the file size, which won't be a pop option with users, well-nigh of which just blast four billion smartphone photos, don't think much near image sizes, and want to upload them as is without thinking about any of that).
Bandwidth is a heck of a lot cheaper these days (I call up a previous employer paying $10k/mo for a 100MB excursion in San Francisco 10ish years ago). That said while the prices are much lower, people are realizing that not all bandwidth is created equal, eastward.thousand to go skilful connectivity to some regions tin still exist ludicrously expensive, for case if you want to deliver to Singapore, Commonwealth of australia, etc, or say you expect to get content from the U.s. to South America with reasonable reliability and low latency.
I call up a lot of tech companies see the fate where they go diminishing returns on growth and have to go on hiring and spending a lot of cash to chase smaller and smaller gains. Bandwidth is expensive simply having thousands of highly compensated employees is besides very expensive, probably more then.
Where take you had success with hosting outside the usual aws/gap/etc? It seems like digital bounding main has a bit cheaper bandwidth, but curious if you have a improve recommendation!
Anywhere you rent bare metal. Deject hosting providers always had the worst bandwidth prices, I'm not joking.
My preferred server provider would prepare you upward with a linux machine with SSD with 20TB of transfer on a gigabit port for $130/month and another 100TB on a gigabit port for $79/month
DataPacket has a lot of locations globally (compared to Hetzner), though you're going to need to spend more than a few dollars to get started.
Non just to become started. What costs me €20 on hetzner costs me $800 on DataPacket.
That's quite a departure.
Correct, information technology's non a 'side project' type of vendor, more of an Imgur scale vendor. I love Hetzner, I merely wish they had more than locations than Germany and Finland, which are practically the same in terms of latency if you/your users are from Asia or the Americas.
A couple of friends of mine are the co-founders of i of the big gif sharing sites. I've heard some pretty interesting, and very funny, stories about the sticker shock on S3 equally they grew. Simply it sounds like Amazon has been fairly flexible and provided some decent leeway with respect to giving grace periods equally investment rounds closed.
Imgur for a while had a hugely active Imgur base AFAIK. Folks who just went on Imgur, did things on Imgur, and added to Imgur. That was a meta layer on top of Reddit. The issue was most of those people wouldn't pay for Imgur storage, and didn't view Imgur ads
Their community now though non the size of reddit would exist comparable to something like 9gag or ifunny, arguably larger. It'south become it'south own thing carve up from reddit now.
The whisper founders threatened to default on the debt they raised from SVB, and then used inside money to buy it at cents on the dollar. considering debt is senior to equity, they and so wiped out the disinterestedness raised and kicked sequoia, shasta, and lightspeed off the board. then raised PE to fund a series of purchases of apps such equally kik, and a lot of android apps with churned users with always-on location permissions turned on. They so used that data to build a small ad network.
Buying Kik alone is a really shady movement. Past at present it's famous for being a porn commutation with no enforcement. Darknet Diaries has a long episode virtually it. I now think where I heard from Medialab before.
Holy shit. That'due south a mafia movement against VC.
Pretty much guarantees that these folks volition never heighten another circular from anyone ever again, though.
Way to burn bridges...
Hm. My bet would be that you can now count the number of years until imgur links go dead on one hand.
This prompted me to check whether in that location were whatsoever backup efforts already, and how much data that would involve. Indeed, archiveteam has some good info: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/alphabetize.php/Imgur
> Imgur serves a massive amount of traffic. In 2012 alone, 42 petabytes of data were transferred. Fortunately, the amount of images uploaded is much less, albeit still a lot. In 2012, around 300,000,000 images were uploaded; assuming an average size of 120KB, that's 36TB in one year. As of 2014, there were 650 million images with 1.five meg being added each twenty-four hour period according to ane source. An analysis in 2015 based on extrapolation from a sample of random image IDs estimated almost 2 billion images with a total raw full-resolution image size of 376 TiB.
Besides makes me recall near whether/how much I currently link to imgur in various places on the internet, and whether there's anything that I should gear up to supplant. Do people accept suggestions how to best approach this?
Huh, all of Imgur costs only +/- $2000/calendar month to store on Backblaze.
That'due south not that bad.
I would change whatever links you have pointing to Imgur. But as for storing the contents, wasn't it just a site for memes? I can't recall a single time over many years seeing anything worth preserving that wasn't essentially throwaway content.
Well, one (semi-)frequent use case for me would be creating some graphic (east.g. a nautical chart or a UI proposition) that I would share in some community (e.1000. forum). Unlikely anyone looks at them once again a decade subsequently, but those embeds volition all the same rot away...
That is an incredibly narrow view of what imgur is used for. Over on the Something Awful forums there is a _ton_ of astonishing content with all of the images hosted on Imgur. Stuff like woodworking and other craft blogs, video game playthroughs, collection photographs, musical instruments... I'grand sure many other online communities use it for the aforementioned purpose. When imgur dies (this annunciation is a very loud death knell) it's going to be a huge, huge loss.
Tons of amazing one-off web log posts told with images as the focus has been posted through Imgur.
Things like "how I renovated my firm" or "how the circuitry of this gadget works" told through pictures with supporting texts lives solely on Imgur.
lxxx TB racks run for around $1500 each. And then just a one fourth dimension payment of $5000. Not every calendar month.
Medialab'south other things include like, Genius (ok, fair enough, sustains itself / useful/ well-used I'yard bold)....and Kik? The teen messaging app from similar 2010 that no 1 uses anymore? hm
Had to look a fleck harder to fifty-fifty find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding company of consumer internet brands' heh, sheesh, yes that'southward non sketchy.
>Had to look a bit harder to even find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding visitor of consumer net brands' heh, sheesh, yeah that'southward not sketchy.
I notice information technology curious that in that location's no page well-nigh who owns/runs MediaLab. Not even a single blurb about their executives/management!
To relieve others looking it upwards: `.la` is the ccTLD of Laos. They're using it here to mean "Los Angeles", of course, but I hadn't seen that one before :)
MediaLab probably got Kik at a pretty big disbelieve. There were kid grooming issues, and at ane indicate they did an ICO and afterward got fined past the SEC.
They were also indirectly responsible for the whole leftpad disaster lol.
Are you talking near NPM leftpad that bankrupt Node? Is there any identify where I can read more than about this claim?
After reading this, it's articulate everybody knows (multiple legal challenges, involvement past MS...) and nobody with actual ability wants to crack downward on information technology. Safe haven or not, when government want to destroy a sketchy business, they accept a number of weapons at their disposal. To me, it all suggests Kik (and by extension, maybe, Medialab) might well be some sort of law-enforcement front at this point.
1/3 American Teenagers use the app according to Kik... I have a feeling they're non counting right considering that doesn't sound right to me.
>Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore?
It's not "none uses anymore" anymore, it's widely used for nefarious and degenerate sexual solicitation and shit like that.
Hey, before y'all judge them, note that their stated goal is: "to enrich and empower consumers in their everyday lives...through expansion and acquisitions."
All I can think of is that silicon valley tech disrupt bit. "We're making the earth a amend place...through paxos algorithms for consensus protocols."
Simply a note, we're getting close to fiscal twelvemonth terminate (nine/30) for a lot of companies. Maybe totally anecdotal but I've noticed in the past that I run across a lot of these kinds of announcements this fourth dimension of year presumably to get these done earlier the next fiscal year.
Kik'south the website that had a serious kid porn and child sexual solicitation problem. I retrieve they've tried to exercise something near that in the last couple of years but from a quick Google search it's not clear it's really worked.
The fact that Imgur doesn't care to link to Medialab in their argument makes it even more sketchy.
Normal procedure seems to exist that each company links to the other companys argument on the bargain.
Also, are nosotros sure they're not "joining Medialab", most Silicon Vally type companies always state that their joining some other company. Non Imgur, nope straight upwardly acquired, which is at least honest.
Wasn't this the visitor that ostensibly began on reddit? Their founder used to post many promises about "not selling out" and the balance.
It literally began on reddit. I remember reading the thread. The founder (of imgur) was sick of all the bullshit that other hosting sites did. Like not merely serving the paradigm. Only instead forcing logins, and landing pages etc.
I remember the writing was on the wall when someone said, making fun of "imgurians" as people who idea of imgur equally "a site to go to" and not simply an epitome host for reddit. It keeps getting more and more user hostile with dark patterns etc. The other twenty-four hours I tried to just get to my page of epitome uploads on mobile and flat out could not. The site would non allow me even though I know the exact url.
It was sorry, if inevitable to watch imgur go the exact same garbage site it was trying to replace.
Time to download my stuff I guess.
I'thousand certain there'southward skillful reasons for this. only I'd exist curious for details.
I wonder if Reddit would exist what it is today without imgur. I started using Reddit shortly before imgur launched, and I can still remember the day that it went live. It was by far the best image uploading experience I'd ever had, and I'd used most (maybe every) major uploader that came before them, between 1995 and 2009.
> I wonder if Reddit would exist what it is today without imgur.
It would probably be different, only non worse or better. I was there when Imgur launched, and at the time nosotros thanked Imgur for dealing with the crap of hosting images (checking for child porn, dealing with DMCA notices and other copyright and privacy issues, etc). Had they not existed, reddit would have just done that ourselves.
Eventually reddit did do that themselves, but by and so Imgur had their own community. I suspect some of those people would even so be on reddit.
My favorite role is that they added 'social' stuff to imgur uploads, so your images (probably) have a separate set of terrible comments you're not even aware of.
They began on Reddit because Reddit was incapable of handling image uploads.
IIRC at the time imgur launched, all of the other free epitome sharing websites were pretty bad. Reddit itself didn't offset allowing uploads until long after imgur.
Holy crap, I take non thought most imageshack for a decade. Information technology was hot garbage: slow, advertizing ridden and if I recall correctly they would disable your hotlinked images if they used besides much bandwidth. Imgur was something of a godsend at the fourth dimension. Now it's commodity unfortunately.
I remember when ImageShack was the best of all the bad options. TinyPic and PhotoBucket were super deadening, and I call back popular forums dorsum so either didn't support image uploads, or they were even slower to load than external hosts. So much cyberspace history has been lost to "this image has exceeded its bandwidth limit" placeholders from PhotoBucket and TinyPic.
Imgur really did alter everything.
The disabled hotlink images are the only reason I know imageshack exists. How's that for marketing?
And now Imgur has disabled hotlinking. Depending on device and/or image.
And has an interstitial ad to look through earlier upload. I don't think even ImageShack thought of that one
It was 1 specific date which imageshack decided to essentially ban all images being linked on Reddit. Imgur filled the void and grew via their own social.
IMO all the other gratis paradigm sharing websites are still bad, i've nonetheless to run across annihilation that lets you -e.g.- make direct links to the images for use in Discord, Reddit, forums (phpbb), etc and non environment them with garbage and images tend to stay around for a long fourth dimension unlike other places where they disappear after a while.
The only matter i found annoying with Imgur is the mobile site not allowing zooming for some reason (tin be bypassed past loading the desktop version but it is still an annoyance).
Not certain if this will still be the case going forward though. I used to like Minus since they immune all that stuff plus had unlimited GIF sizes and didn't reencode PNGs to JPGs (non sure if Imgur does that anymore) but after Minus was sold it went to hell then disappeared completely.
> They began on Reddit because Reddit was incapable of handling image uploads.
I'd argue they largely still are incapable of handling image uploads. Their gallery system sucks and the redesign just makes it harder to even see what was posted.
It's not just a poor design. old.reddit.com currently has what ought to be considered a show-stopping functional issues: every gallery post (that is, every mail with multiple images) has its URL replaced with the empty string, causing it to render as a royal link that goes nowhere. If you instead click the petty "comments" link, the post loads equally normal.
This has been reported to the admins dozens of times since it first started happening virtually 3 months ago, and and then far the merely response is "we're looking into it". I'm non sure which possibility is more than damning: the idea that they're incapable of fixing such an obvious regression, or that they literally don't care because they're trying to irritate everybody plenty to switch to the newer, uglier version of the site.
That 'empty string/imperial link' issue still happens to me fifty-fifty on NewReddit. I can find old Galleries that work only fine on both, it's so weird.
Interesting, I hadn't seen information technology reported on the new version before. I spend more than fourth dimension than I ought to browsing Reddit, and I literally haven't seen a single correctly-working gallery post on any subreddit in months.
No it doesn't. If you mean reddit.com/imgur, that'southward the ID from a random mail in /r/Drugs. Reddit automatically expands the mail service ID to the original thread.
My dad worked in K&A for a long time and handled the sale of a plastic molding company where the owner was getting quite old and couldn't really run the business anymore. The visitor was extremely well established and had a very stiff and loyal customer base of operations and ran off a unmarried manufacturing facility in a pocket-sized town out in the boonies. The owner certainly wanted a fair value for the company but he also strongly desired that the plant be kept open and employees retain their positions. Calculation this sort of a restriction on a company yous're selling is possible - but it is hellishly expensive, generally y'all're considering adding some sort of third party oversight and auditing for all 60 minutes actions and business decisions. If you lot buy a company under these terms you can stop up utterly destroying the visitor if supply chains shift - the local labour pool is unsustainable or a plethora of other reasons... And about certainly this burden is mandatorily bundled with the company - so one time you've rode the visitor value down a bit and are looking to go out all of the buyers will know how much of an impossible situation that company is in.
At the end of the twenty-four hour period when you lot sell a company you are divorcing yourself from the future direction - you might be invited to stay on as an executive - and the new owners might heed to you... or they might not - that'south entirely up to them. Any promises or commitments you've made as an executive are only as practiced as your word - and when you sell your company your word stops having any power (considering yous sold that power).
I would never shame someone who wanted to keep an platonic going from making an exit they personally need to brand - ever prioritize your wellness and happiness over whatever venture - but when you lot sell y'all're accepting the fact that at any moment the buyer may completely reverse the direction of the visitor.
> Whatever promises or commitments yous've made as an executive are only as good equally your word - and when you lot sell your company your discussion stops having any power (considering you sold that power).
one option i don't run across discussed a lot is selling to your employees (converting to a coop, full esop etc)
I remember this by and large goes against the idea that the owner wanted to exit with significant value in almost cases. Companies (even minor ones) can easily accrue a lot of value simply reinvesting earnings over a moderate corporeality of time which is likely going to exist out of reach of an employee collective or other local funding source.
For the company I was talking about in a higher place it definitely didn't have a local or especially regular customer base - they were well known equally a market place leader but the sort of thing you might purchase every few years at most.
Anything bought by Microsoft in the past 10 years. Minecraft, Github, LinkedIn, all are improve products today than they were at the time of sale.
> Minecraft
Take it back!
Seriously though, I recollect MC earlier information technology was a kids game. It was already becoming one by the fourth dimension Microsoft bought it, but since then almost every update has been gimmicks for kids. The world generation is even so ridiculous (jungles next to arctics), the weather patterns are binary (difficult rain, or nothing), and proximity chat is practically impossible.
They've made a lot of coin off making information technology into a kids game, just I personally haven't been delighted past whatsoever updates since they took information technology over.
If it's whatsoever consolation, at that place are really practiced mods for proximity voice chat and jungles next to arctics is existence fixed in the next major update.
I don't quite agree that every update has been gimmicks for kids - I can't really point to a "kittenish" new mechanic added. Peradventure your perception of the game has changed?
Sounds like the attention of those properties' users is worth more than in some other metric than the maintenance/improvements cost in engineer fourth dimension. I wonder what.
Minecraft drives actual profits on consoles - you have to subscribe to play with your friends. Some of these consoles (XBox) are even directly owned past MS.
Github is a massive piece in the developer ecosystem. It drives adoption of other MS products that tin can integrate with it, and generates a lot of goodwill towards MS.
LinkedIn, eh, that'southward probably the weakest property. On the other hand, information technology's massive in the enterprise infinite - once again lots of goodwill, this time from "suits", and possibly some cool metrics well-nigh hiring.
Linkedin has premium business relationship tiers for recruiters. Now I haven't seen whatsoever of the numbers, but the business organisation model does pass the sniff examination.
I recollect information technology's still also early on to judge the SO purchase, but I agree that it hasn't been a problem so far.
I'll spend 2 seconds looking it up, but IIRC the founder said he wouldn't sell out "unless they offering similar a million dollars".
Edit: Looks similar information technology was in the original FAQ.
> Can I advertise on imgur?
> Hell no! This is a complimentary site (as in beer) and at that place will never be whatever ads on it unless I end up selling out for a million dollars.
anybody sells out eventually. zero wrong with it. either that or they run it into the ground or dice.
people move on that'due south just life. congrats to the imgur team and skilful luck for their adjacent adventures.
Not everyone, but information technology's definitely rare. Feels good to believe that everyone sells out though when you lot're in the process of selling out.
You don't need to sell out if you lot tin create a service or product that people are willing to pay money for - fifty-fifty indirectly. Granted, this is certainly a difficult feat to pull on a free prototype hosting site.
Hmm, equally far as I tin can meet you lot either sell out, or get sold out to. The concluding one seems like a viable option?
That was before Reddit added prototype functionality which basically was a fuck you lot to imgur. I'yard surprised the site has lasted this long without selling.
Ah, yeah, after the previous host was taken over. We all saw that for the lie information technology was afterwards they took exterior investment of course.
Imgur should have sold to Reddit a long time ago. Not being able to work out a deal was lose-lose for both companies.
Yes. Though it did seem genuinely well meaning at the time. Reddit was pretty shit pre imgur pictures wise.
I thought exactly the aforementioned.
It doesn't bode well for Imgur future. They don't intendance about their acquisition. It'southward to wonder why are they doing it in the first place.
The visitor doesn't have any public data either. All I can find is a LONG list of job openings: https://jobs.lever.co/medialab
Weird list if they are but "investors".
That exactly the get-go idea that came to my mind as well. RIP Imgur? Information technology doesn't seem like medialab is annihilation more than than the 'internet brand' version of a patent troll.
Medialab has now acquired Kik (2019), Imgur (2021), Genius (2021)...
Big spree of acquisitions! Anyone take any thought the goal?
To purchase onetime, dilapidated tech/media brands that no longer have any power to get pay out investors (who are happy to sell on the inexpensive for a write-off), only still get some level of traffic. Bundle all the traffic together to sell ads across a network of sites with the hopes of profiting.
It'southward a strategy as erstwhile equally fourth dimension. Sometimes it works (IAC, is arguably a expert example of a company who has bought or funded companies at diverse stages of distress/hype (and incubated some that are very successful in their ain right, like Friction match Group) and managed to get goodish CPMs across the sites they parcel together), nearly of the fourth dimension it doesn't. But the goal is to acquire the make/traffic, cut costs to the bone, and try to profit off the traffic by selling ads or user data or any. It's a rollup play and the goal is definitely not to invest back into the companies themselves any more than they need to run.
Most of this is dead on but I've been in the eye of this type of bargain and "happy to sell" wouldn't be an authentic clarification of the investors. Having some % of failures is built into the VC model simply they'd nevertheless much rather accept gotten their capital back.
Also, this reminds me of Computer Associates' (subsequently CA Technologies) business model: purchase enterprise software companies with locked-in customers, fire staff and cut costs as far as possible, and increase maintenance fees, all with the understanding the the business organization will deteriorate over fourth dimension. I call up here the equivalent of "increase maintenance fees" may be "load upward the product with fifty-fifty more ads".
Based on this episode of Darknet Diaries: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/93/ It sounds similar they buy upwards dead/dying online properties, burn basically anybody, put the service on life back up to proceed it barely functioning, milk all the money they tin from the remaining users as the service goes to shit, buy something else.
As a side note I notice it amusing how the HN community simultaneously obsesses over startups, equity, funding rounds, etc just gets grumpy when a company actually does sell. The cognitive dissonance is sublime.
HN contains enough people of dissimilar vintage and background that it would be rather more surprising if there was whatsoever subject that nosotros all agreed on. This has aught to exercise with cognitive dissonance, which is something unique to an individual, at best you could conclude that HN is able to cater to people on opposing sides of some spectra without turning into a hate fest.
I find it agreeable that people think of "the HN community" as a singular mind or something
Different people respond to different things
It depends on when they sell and who too. If you create a smashing startup and sell for a lot to a respectable company then it'due south praised but if you sell to a sketchy visitor (like this) long after your prime information technology's looked down on
Congrats to Imgur on its leave, I suppose.
Honestly, this is probably the best outcome they could hope for. I doubtable their growth has stagnated and are losing mindshare in the meme economic system to Reddit and Discord. Imgur was started in a very different earth from today and they didn't evolve enough.
Regardless, I'chiliad grateful to them. Imgur will always have a soft spot in my middle.
This is a tough one to make sense of - are they just getting killed past reddit on 1 side and tiktok on the other and cashing out? Anyone have any insight? (also anyone know the purchase price? only for fun)
They stopped being just an image host and attempted to branch out. Except the content creators just mail the garbage to reddit and tiktok directly because the reach is much greater than linking to imgur from the various platforms.
it use to be my fav fourth dimension waster app rather than the selfies on IG or airheaded politics on FB. but yea rarely use it now so I guess date is dropping
There is definitely a dedicated subculture at that place with their own rules (e.yard. selfies being mercilessly downward voted in usersub). Also the demographic was relatable for me as it skewed more towards older millennials.
I can't share the love for Imgur: for some reason, all imgur posts, including this i, are never displayed on my mobile Firefox. Just blank screen, and that'south it.
(the only addon I have is uBlock origin, and I'm too lazy to endeavor turning information technology off for some random images)
Imgur was a wonderful idea, but I recall they forgot to have a business plan. Imgur is absolutely terrible these days.
The Imgur customs is nigh completely toxic. Imgur manifestly care nigh my privacy, only still want to share information with 1200 different "partners". It's also the most effective fashion of draining the bombardment of any device you apply. Fifty-fifty the new M1 MacBooks will burn through battery like in that location's no tomorrow if y'all load the Imgur website in Safari, or worse any other browser.
It'south not a peachy site and haven't been for years.
Imgur does this weird thing on mobile where it will e'er redirect yous to some page where information technology tin can then nag you to download their app with grayouts, big buttons, and and so a content feed they hope you whorl down on.
It also downloads like 6 megabytes worth of local content. Doesn't matter if you are going to the imgur folio of the prototype, or literally the URI to the image file itself.
Holy fuck that'south anoying..
http://example.com/foobar.png <- if an url looks like that, I expect a directly link to the image... not some freaky redirect to a shitty webpage with floating popups, cookie prompts and "download the app"... why exercise I need an app to view a fucking image?! I already have one, information technology'due south chosen a browser!
Ah aye, the ol' app interstitial where they hound you to download the app by interrupting any y'all were trying to do on their site. I hate websites that use these.
Does anybody know what the conquering price was? Or what the terms were (like how long must the founders remain on the team, etc)?
Imgur could accept pivoted to becoming like Reddit faster than Reddit was able to pin to contain its own image repo.
It'south all user-submitted content. One was either a link or a blurb of text, the other was imagery.
There is a shitload of porn on Imgur. Is Medialab going to do the Silicon Valley Puritan investor purge on it?
An image hosting site seems similar one of those applications that are easier than ever to build but impossible to monetize.
Near people who use imgur only hotlink - what's the incentive for a company to buy or start a new imgur?
Same as Imgur. The current prototype hosting sites suck and you know y'all tin can do better
And so it works and y'all need to pay the bills
10 years later you sell it and some new guy makes ane
Imgur, nifty service, lasted this long, amazing. Simply I e'er wondered how whatsoever of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth (reminds of the other various ones like TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter). I mean, I have a gallery of images in there, privately stored, straight linked to hither and there around the net, without paying for anything for years. I retrieve at ane point I can't even recall now I did pay them a small fee and then they removed that option to go it lonely with ads and refused to 'have my coin'. Which seemed crazy and still does. Does the pocket-size imgur community (Which exists every bit a baroque as well-ran of Reddit) sustain them plenty on ad views?
My gauge is PR.
Regularly, on imgur, you lot encounter a pic in involvement for a celebrity, a rich person, a moving picture. It looks organic, merely if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things most it. Then it disappears equally all of a sudden as information technology arrived.
I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.
Information technology's probably the same for a lot of communities with a potent influence on trends, similar popular sub reddits or hacker news.
At that place is no ameliorate ads than the one you don't see. At that place is no better slogan than the i you repeat to your friends every bit a catchphrase. And at that place is no better propaganda than the i based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.
I in one case posted an anthology on Imgur of my hobby project. I was hoping information technology would do well on the niche subreddit information technology involved.
It did ok on reddit (100 upvotes) but a few thousands upvotes on Imgur and made the front page with hundreds of thousands of views. I was shocked since I didn't fifty-fifty know that was a matter. But my judge is popular with people who are on their telephone a lot, are not as tech saavy, or international.
For the uninitiated, this is a meme reference to a clip from the TV show Arrested Development, popular on Imgur every bit a reaction to show back up for someone else who expresses a sense of loneliness in their appreciation or affection.
A version of this: https://i.imgur.com/pgXjbNy.gifv
No at that place's plenty, HN but has the kind of people who need to loudly proclaim they don't appoint with <insert pop thing>
That wrongly creates the impression that there are simply a few HN users engaging with it.
I used to in higher. Extremely bad addiction, was piece of cake to spend 4+ hours at that place just hit the right arrow.
Same. I stopped when I realised it was passively pedagogy me glory gossip, which I never wanted to know.
Information technology's so easy to absorb 'celebrity' gossip, I always wondered if it'd exist possible to practice the same with say science or maths, if it was presented in the same kind of format.
I think the hardest function is the rigour. Math and science build on concepts over time, and mastery is easier with more hands-on experience. Just presenting it to someone in a feed might be waaay too passive for absorption.
Easy manner to find out. Remove the pictures from glory gossip posts, and see how much you remember.
I recall beingness in high school (effectually 2013, 2014) and some of my classmates would browse imgur while slacking off from work. Not sure how big it is these days, but I think some people apply it the same fashion you'd browse r/funny on reddit, or iFunny. Except there isn't really a topic, it's simply images of whatever people recall is interesting.
Who doesn't? Information technology's the all-time source of about everything. Perfect mix of culturally important twitter and news screenshots and entertaining gifs.
I scrolled through it for five minutes simply now. Advice animals, rage-bait about politicians, political cartoons, cute animals—this is consummate garbage.
Absolutely this. imgur.com is the only reason I can pretend to be "down with the kids".
Oh yes also all the skilful/important tiktoks end upwardly on there. I don't even have tiktok and am conversant in all the memes.
7/7 would recommend
Huh wow, y'all weren't kidding!
I remember going on the forepart page of Imgur one time a couple of years dorsum and information technology seemed less entertaining and more than rage-baity than now -- remember I'll revisit that determination...
The way some of the replies talk about the front end page of imgur (huge fourth dimension sink, insightful, entertaining, keeps yous in the loop) is the same way I'd talk virtually the FYP on tiktok.
People that subscribe to default subreddits and click the Youtube "Featured" section.
I only at present learned that it has such a matter and decided to see information technology, and I am very confused past the lack of advertizement on it indeed.
But who are these companies that successfully provide this service?
Information technology's simply an educated guess, so I don't know.
Besides, such company would do its best to stay discrete, by design.
I'1000 aware of one such visitor that uses Imgur like that and that deals with celebs. Imgur isn't their primary target, it's just a handy layer of brainchild away from the real target so the content tin't TRULY be taken downwardly on the target site. Plus, it shows yous how many impressions y'all get for free. That way they can gather upwards their campaign prototype urls and views at the end of the contract and prove hard results without the demand for a fancy, paid analytics dashboard or entrada tracking system.
> Paying us money doesn't entitle yous to anything except owning less money
Brilliant
Agreed. It's delightfully funny without going overboard, or being too cheesy like nearly bigger companies who try to be cheeky.
I'm signing up.
The trick is to actually not care about whether people purchase your stuff! Hard to pull off when you're trying to make money, but easy for me.
While that may be true, yous actually seem to accept genuine talent for comedy. I'm inclined to pay for IMGZ for that reason solitary, even though I may never really use it.
I pay for SourceHut, not considering i get a lot of value from the service, but as a way of funding Drew DeVault's crazy ranting.
Simply in all seriousness, so you have an actual privacy policy and such? I like the pricing and practice take images I demand to host!
No, unfortunately not. I can give you an breezy ane, that I will not sell/give away/etc your information, won't rails you, etc. I likewise only utilize CloudFlare, so your information simply goes through them.
If your site ever get hacked, we will never know if its your sarcasm OR it is truly hacked :)
Browsing imgz felt like watching a fun film, I dear the compages too ( ... we dont accept this...LOL )
BTW, I am (Perhaps I should say WE are) too building a epitome hosting service. https://host.pics (Pre-Alpha)
I would have giggled slightly more if you had "Nearly Popular" instead of "OUR CHOICE" on the "Purchase THE SITE" selection.
The fact that "Our Choice" is besides definitely true though made me express joy a second time.
This website is great, I have no use for an image sharing site but in tempted to sign up but to assistance run across it get successful. And backside all the humour there is actually a very sensible concept: pay a reasonable amount of money to get an actual service and non some advertising infested crap. Also I love
> If you're expecting professionalism, call Oracle and enquire for a quote of Oracle Avant-garde Image Sharing for Hadoop or whatever crap they sell
> Let'south talk money. Equally y'all may have noticed from the subtle but effective messaging, this service isn't free. That'due south because nosotros want to avoid having to sell photos of your vagina to shady Russian oligarchs to pay for our servers and cocaine.
You weren't kidding. Astonishing.
The meme marketing is funny, but the meme license is less so. Would you consider using a more well-known and established license? The Parity license looks similar Open up Source/Free Software, merely it also looks very vague and hard to interpret, and has not been evaluated by the OSI or FSF, which makes it needlessly difficult to comply with, or to do things like brand packages or contributions or derivative works. If you want copyleft, consider the GPL family unit, or MPL?
I didn't mean it every bit a meme license, but I might change it to something similar the GPL 3 or AGPL, thanks!
Nosotros feel personally attacked at our startup by some of the stuff you wrote on your blog especially the thing most writing in plural
I love your marketing patter! Cracking upwardly reading some of this.
If I stop upwards stealing your style for something, I owe you lot a beer.
> We have CDNs and Rust and all that fast crap.
Lol! Haven't used the service, but the website is fun.
In case you didn't see it: They explain the reasoning behind the "steal button" in the FAQ and on the About page.
I emailed ane of them 12 years and four months ago to ask how they paid for everything. This was dorsum in 2009 when the internet was nevertheless small plenty that companies would respond to random emails. They responded to say they had funding covered. They close down a few years later.
The domain is there, but it simply says "ImageHost.org is closed" with a Google Analytics tag.
> But I always wondered how whatsoever of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth ... reminds of the other diverse ones similar TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter
Paradigm hosting is relatively cheap, then y'all can accept good margins if you can go a lot of use and fill the ad inventory. The fashion you do it, is past running as sparse of an performance as possible.
When the first wave of one-click epitome hosts were popping up back in 2004-2005 roughly, I noticed i called ImageVenue. The founder, Vlad, was out of Eastern Europe somewhere. I emailed him and bought advertising, the price was correct and he had a lot of impressions to fill. Dorsum then he was just ownership tons of $40/month dedicated servers from one specific host, using a img7.imagevenue.com scheme for each auto, and filling upward the boxes. You lot tin can still use ImageVenue.com 17 years afterward, even though the traffic for the service has never been what it was during the early on peak years (tons of image hosting competition swamped the market). I had a running dialogue with Vlad across nigh a year, he also mentioned in discussing Ajax (early on popularity days for Ajax) use at the time, that he wasn't familiar with it and was "only really good with C++ and PHP". And then I assume some of it was built in PHP. He was managing ads in-house, where he handled each sale past email, negotiating impressions and elapsing each month.
And regarding TwitPic, circa 2010: "TwitPic is generating $i.5 to $ii million in ad sales on an almanac footing, with lxx% profit margins, says its founder Noah Everett"
https://mixergy.com/interviews/twitpic-noah-everett/
At present that'south a proper name I haven't heard in a while. Yes, funny story, Twitter at that fourth dimension was threatening to cut off our API access due to the states trying to trademark "Twitpic". We had been in the process of trying to trademark our name for many years prior. Our initial application hit tons of hurdles with other Twit* marks (my fault for filing late). Fast forward near iv years subsequently nosotros'd finally worked through all the issues which required us to file a whole new trademark application and this one ran afoul (pun intended) of Twitter's legal. I presume that in 2009'ish when we originally filed, Twitter either didn't care then or we weren't big enough to exist a threat, simply I guess that changed in 2014.
Long story long, I basically ended upwardly giving Twitpic to Twitter (I wanted the photos to alive on). Nosotros were already feeling the squeeze from their ain native image characteristic plus some other compounding events like Google Adsense banning usa out-of-the-blue with no recourse that really afflicted our margins [Hey Google, you lot still owe us $100k+ ;)].
It was one of the best, most educating times of my life. Just thankful I had that opportunity to run Twitpic for those years, God blessed me.
The End.
P.S. I'chiliad still tinkering https://ark.fm
Thank you for popping on. A legendary time dorsum then. And ultimately I'm glad that Twitter kept the photos living on as preservation is so important. But man, whatever insights into the bandwidth imgur must incur to maintain things? They are similar in that for a time they were the defacto image host capability for reddit earlier reddit rolled its own.
I imagine Imgur now is many times bigger than we were. If I think correctly effectually 2009/2010 our Amazon rep said Twitpic accounted for nigh 1% of data stored in S3 at that time and I think our cost was effectually $100k/month. We somewhen got that down to $60k'ish when they gave us "special" pricing and later on on we put bare-metal caching servers in front of information technology to shop/serve hot images which farther decreased it.
Disclaimer: Hopefully I'm remembering correctly, it'southward been a while!
I don't remember it's a large mystery. Bandwidth and ad acquirement scale together. Sometimes the epitome will be embedded, hot linked or the request is otherwise not monetizable, simply yous can assume that those are a fixed fraction. Every prototype clicked on otherwise will generate some advertizement acquirement which is multiples of the bandwidth cost of serving information technology.
Anecdotal and I can't substantiate any of this. Almost 5 years agone my erstwhile boss's wife worked for imgur and it did not sound great. They had constant churn. She was an upper manager of some sort and even she left later on a short time. From what I understood, the company was not profitable and similar many other tech companies relied heavily on investor.
I seriously doubt their community can sustain the costs of the service. In fact, the quality of imgur's service has declined in an effort to make profit. For instance, all images are compressed now. That used to not exist true.
Most platforms y'all are using today cannot survive without advertizement's, because their business model is not i that can brand a turn a profit without a monopoly offset.
took a look at it, nicely implemented resumable uploads/downloads... very smooth.
i find youre using cloudflare to deliver the files on the download side, and im guessing you lot are taking advantage of bandwidth brotherhood and so ingress/egress are basically free - i always thought the biggest cost for something like this would be the storage, eg if yous are letting people ship unlimited <5GB files for free, and each of those terminal for 10 days on what im bold is some kind of object storage/s3-like thing, surely you are paying a fortune in $/GB/month, even if its pro-rated to 1/3 the amount since the files but live 1/3 a month?
I think at that place's a cost to taking money from thousands of people vs taking the coin from an investor or advertiser.
First off there is tax compliance, if you want to exist global it will cost a lot for accountants and lawyers that understand how this should work "anywhere" in the world.
2nd, I know some people that will simply cancel credit cards because they don't desire to brand the side by side recurring payment for a service. Coming afterwards these people is non worth the effort simply hurts the bottom line.
Third, you demand to hire employees to look afterward customer accounts and billing if at that place are any questions.
I think there's other reasons and I know payment processors similar Stripe and Square are attempting to make this seamless, but I'm guessing a unmarried source of funding is still desirable.
Bandwidth is pretty cheap if yous look beyond cloud. At that place are providers that offer magnitudes cheaper bandwidth than due east.g. AWS but you have to set servers yourself.
absolutely not. I don't use fastly, merely i pay 1/10th the rate of AWS and co.
Scaleway, OVH will get you lot that, but at a larger scale just rent blank metal.
At their scale, zilch is inexpensive. Some things are cheaper than others, but even the cheapest option must exist costing a fortune each month.
Right, it'due south the scale and seemingly limitless ceiling.... seems crazy. Obviously there's a lot of depression res tiny images on there etc but there's also not -- and for years and years?
I call up back around 2009(?) ish I had a run a risk to talk to some folks at Justin.tv (now twitch) and they said ane ad on the stream every few hours more than covers all the costs. What changed?
I guess the videos are much more loftier resolution now than the webcam size 320x240 videos back then but has cost gone up that much?
What? They're crazy competitive these days. Every popular ad space online has been bought by the highest bidder. AdWords, Facebook, Imgur, Reddit, companies are dumping cash like mad. The market grew by billions over the past decade.
The advertisement market basically bifurcated. Information technology'due south a land of the haves and have nots
The big ad platforms like Facebook and Google take thrived, of course. And as platforms like Snapchat have aged they've gradually improved the rates they're getting for their ad space (a typical process).
The scale of online advertising today isn't considering the industry'south median or average CPMs went up 100 fold. The book went up dramatically over the last 10-fifteen years with the traffic for the big services. The large advertisers brought billion dollar ad budgets online and handed them to Facebook, not to one-click image hosts.
Your typical 1-click paradigm host is not going to command better ad rates today vs 15 years ago. It's a worse context than it was back so, actually. Back then advertisers were relatively stupid when it came to online ad, today they're a lot more sophisticated, and a lot more strict nigh where they identify ads (eg porn on one-click prototype hosts is a large trouble for advertisers). The big, rich platforms like Facebook swallow a large share of the high paying advert. What'due south left for something similar a ane-click paradigm host, is very, very low paying ads that y'all have to run a trillion of to make money.
I used to piece of work for a company in a niche industry that used to clear 7 figures a year using the online platform I put together back in its heyday. And while traffic isn't quite as practiced as it used to be, it's still at nearly 70%. Their advertizing revenue is today about 1/8th of what they were making back in 2011-2015ish, and they basically take nothing defended staff to the platform. I only do some maintenance and bug fixes for them every calendar month.
But you need to consider that and so have hosting costs-- proportionately as well. Hosting data was incredibly expensive ten years ago. If the math was working and so, it should at least be pretty close to working now.
For some segments that'southward true. Paradigm hosting wasn't incredibly expensive x years ago. Information technology was very much on the lighter side in toll compared to MegaUpload or YouTube type services.
Image file sizes increasing dramatically as smartphones started producing photo sizes that would have been considered massive 15 years ago, saturated much of the gains in cost to hardware.
It'south easier to run a one-click image host (like the early Imgur) as a solo operator today versus dorsum and then. Information technology's not much cheaper when you account for the larger epitome files (unless yous severely limit the file size, which won't be a pop option with users, well-nigh of which just blast four billion smartphone photos, don't think much near image sizes, and want to upload them as is without thinking about any of that).
Bandwidth is a heck of a lot cheaper these days (I call up a previous employer paying $10k/mo for a 100MB excursion in San Francisco 10ish years ago). That said while the prices are much lower, people are realizing that not all bandwidth is created equal, eastward.thousand to go skilful connectivity to some regions tin still exist ludicrously expensive, for case if you want to deliver to Singapore, Commonwealth of australia, etc, or say you expect to get content from the U.s. to South America with reasonable reliability and low latency.
I call up a lot of tech companies see the fate where they go diminishing returns on growth and have to go on hiring and spending a lot of cash to chase smaller and smaller gains. Bandwidth is expensive simply having thousands of highly compensated employees is besides very expensive, probably more then.
Where take you had success with hosting outside the usual aws/gap/etc? It seems like digital bounding main has a bit cheaper bandwidth, but curious if you have a improve recommendation!
Anywhere you rent bare metal. Deject hosting providers always had the worst bandwidth prices, I'm not joking.
My preferred server provider would prepare you upward with a linux machine with SSD with 20TB of transfer on a gigabit port for $130/month and another 100TB on a gigabit port for $79/month
DataPacket has a lot of locations globally (compared to Hetzner), though you're going to need to spend more than a few dollars to get started.
Non just to become started. What costs me €20 on hetzner costs me $800 on DataPacket.
That's quite a departure.
Correct, information technology's non a 'side project' type of vendor, more of an Imgur scale vendor. I love Hetzner, I merely wish they had more than locations than Germany and Finland, which are practically the same in terms of latency if you/your users are from Asia or the Americas.
A couple of friends of mine are the co-founders of i of the big gif sharing sites. I've heard some pretty interesting, and very funny, stories about the sticker shock on S3 equally they grew. Simply it sounds like Amazon has been fairly flexible and provided some decent leeway with respect to giving grace periods equally investment rounds closed.
Imgur for a while had a hugely active Imgur base AFAIK. Folks who just went on Imgur, did things on Imgur, and added to Imgur. That was a meta layer on top of Reddit. The issue was most of those people wouldn't pay for Imgur storage, and didn't view Imgur ads
Their community now though non the size of reddit would exist comparable to something like 9gag or ifunny, arguably larger. It'south become it'south own thing carve up from reddit now.
The whisper founders threatened to default on the debt they raised from SVB, and then used inside money to buy it at cents on the dollar. considering debt is senior to equity, they and so wiped out the disinterestedness raised and kicked sequoia, shasta, and lightspeed off the board. then raised PE to fund a series of purchases of apps such equally kik, and a lot of android apps with churned users with always-on location permissions turned on. They so used that data to build a small ad network.
Buying Kik alone is a really shady movement. Past at present it's famous for being a porn commutation with no enforcement. Darknet Diaries has a long episode virtually it. I now think where I heard from Medialab before.
Holy shit. That'due south a mafia movement against VC.
Pretty much guarantees that these folks volition never heighten another circular from anyone ever again, though.
Way to burn bridges...
Hm. My bet would be that you can now count the number of years until imgur links go dead on one hand.
This prompted me to check whether in that location were whatsoever backup efforts already, and how much data that would involve. Indeed, archiveteam has some good info: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/alphabetize.php/Imgur
> Imgur serves a massive amount of traffic. In 2012 alone, 42 petabytes of data were transferred. Fortunately, the amount of images uploaded is much less, albeit still a lot. In 2012, around 300,000,000 images were uploaded; assuming an average size of 120KB, that's 36TB in one year. As of 2014, there were 650 million images with 1.five meg being added each twenty-four hour period according to ane source. An analysis in 2015 based on extrapolation from a sample of random image IDs estimated almost 2 billion images with a total raw full-resolution image size of 376 TiB.
Besides makes me recall near whether/how much I currently link to imgur in various places on the internet, and whether there's anything that I should gear up to supplant. Do people accept suggestions how to best approach this?
Huh, all of Imgur costs only +/- $2000/calendar month to store on Backblaze.
That'due south not that bad.
I would change whatever links you have pointing to Imgur. But as for storing the contents, wasn't it just a site for memes? I can't recall a single time over many years seeing anything worth preserving that wasn't essentially throwaway content.
Well, one (semi-)frequent use case for me would be creating some graphic (east.g. a nautical chart or a UI proposition) that I would share in some community (e.1000. forum). Unlikely anyone looks at them once again a decade subsequently, but those embeds volition all the same rot away...
That is an incredibly narrow view of what imgur is used for. Over on the Something Awful forums there is a _ton_ of astonishing content with all of the images hosted on Imgur. Stuff like woodworking and other craft blogs, video game playthroughs, collection photographs, musical instruments... I'grand sure many other online communities use it for the aforementioned purpose. When imgur dies (this annunciation is a very loud death knell) it's going to be a huge, huge loss.
Tons of amazing one-off web log posts told with images as the focus has been posted through Imgur.
Things like "how I renovated my firm" or "how the circuitry of this gadget works" told through pictures with supporting texts lives solely on Imgur.
lxxx TB racks run for around $1500 each. And then just a one fourth dimension payment of $5000. Not every calendar month.
Medialab'south other things include like, Genius (ok, fair enough, sustains itself / useful/ well-used I'yard bold)....and Kik? The teen messaging app from similar 2010 that no 1 uses anymore? hm
Had to look a fleck harder to fifty-fifty find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding company of consumer internet brands' heh, sheesh, yes that'southward non sketchy.
>Had to look a bit harder to even find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding visitor of consumer net brands' heh, sheesh, yeah that'southward not sketchy.
I notice information technology curious that in that location's no page well-nigh who owns/runs MediaLab. Not even a single blurb about their executives/management!
To relieve others looking it upwards: `.la` is the ccTLD of Laos. They're using it here to mean "Los Angeles", of course, but I hadn't seen that one before :)
MediaLab probably got Kik at a pretty big disbelieve. There were kid grooming issues, and at ane indicate they did an ICO and afterward got fined past the SEC.
They were also indirectly responsible for the whole leftpad disaster lol.
Are you talking near NPM leftpad that bankrupt Node? Is there any identify where I can read more than about this claim?
After reading this, it's articulate everybody knows (multiple legal challenges, involvement past MS...) and nobody with actual ability wants to crack downward on information technology. Safe haven or not, when government want to destroy a sketchy business, they accept a number of weapons at their disposal. To me, it all suggests Kik (and by extension, maybe, Medialab) might well be some sort of law-enforcement front at this point.
1/3 American Teenagers use the app according to Kik... I have a feeling they're non counting right considering that doesn't sound right to me.
>Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore?
It's not "none uses anymore" anymore, it's widely used for nefarious and degenerate sexual solicitation and shit like that.
Hey, before y'all judge them, note that their stated goal is: "to enrich and empower consumers in their everyday lives...through expansion and acquisitions."
All I can think of is that silicon valley tech disrupt bit. "We're making the earth a amend place...through paxos algorithms for consensus protocols."
Simply a note, we're getting close to fiscal twelvemonth terminate (nine/30) for a lot of companies. Maybe totally anecdotal but I've noticed in the past that I run across a lot of these kinds of announcements this fourth dimension of year presumably to get these done earlier the next fiscal year.
Kik'south the website that had a serious kid porn and child sexual solicitation problem. I retrieve they've tried to exercise something near that in the last couple of years but from a quick Google search it's not clear it's really worked.
The fact that Imgur doesn't care to link to Medialab in their argument makes it even more sketchy.
Normal procedure seems to exist that each company links to the other companys argument on the bargain.
Also, are nosotros sure they're not "joining Medialab", most Silicon Vally type companies always state that their joining some other company. Non Imgur, nope straight upwardly acquired, which is at least honest.
Wasn't this the visitor that ostensibly began on reddit? Their founder used to post many promises about "not selling out" and the balance.
It literally began on reddit. I remember reading the thread. The founder (of imgur) was sick of all the bullshit that other hosting sites did. Like not merely serving the paradigm. Only instead forcing logins, and landing pages etc.
I remember the writing was on the wall when someone said, making fun of "imgurians" as people who idea of imgur equally "a site to go to" and not simply an epitome host for reddit. It keeps getting more and more user hostile with dark patterns etc. The other twenty-four hours I tried to just get to my page of epitome uploads on mobile and flat out could not. The site would non allow me even though I know the exact url.
It was sorry, if inevitable to watch imgur go the exact same garbage site it was trying to replace.
Time to download my stuff I guess.
I'thousand certain there'southward skillful reasons for this. only I'd exist curious for details.
I wonder if Reddit would exist what it is today without imgur. I started using Reddit shortly before imgur launched, and I can still remember the day that it went live. It was by far the best image uploading experience I'd ever had, and I'd used most (maybe every) major uploader that came before them, between 1995 and 2009.
> I wonder if Reddit would exist what it is today without imgur.
It would probably be different, only non worse or better. I was there when Imgur launched, and at the time nosotros thanked Imgur for dealing with the crap of hosting images (checking for child porn, dealing with DMCA notices and other copyright and privacy issues, etc). Had they not existed, reddit would have just done that ourselves.
Eventually reddit did do that themselves, but by and so Imgur had their own community. I suspect some of those people would even so be on reddit.
My favorite role is that they added 'social' stuff to imgur uploads, so your images (probably) have a separate set of terrible comments you're not even aware of.
They began on Reddit because Reddit was incapable of handling image uploads.
IIRC at the time imgur launched, all of the other free epitome sharing websites were pretty bad. Reddit itself didn't offset allowing uploads until long after imgur.
Holy crap, I take non thought most imageshack for a decade. Information technology was hot garbage: slow, advertizing ridden and if I recall correctly they would disable your hotlinked images if they used besides much bandwidth. Imgur was something of a godsend at the fourth dimension. Now it's commodity unfortunately.
I remember when ImageShack was the best of all the bad options. TinyPic and PhotoBucket were super deadening, and I call back popular forums dorsum so either didn't support image uploads, or they were even slower to load than external hosts. So much cyberspace history has been lost to "this image has exceeded its bandwidth limit" placeholders from PhotoBucket and TinyPic.
Imgur really did alter everything.
The disabled hotlink images are the only reason I know imageshack exists. How's that for marketing?
And now Imgur has disabled hotlinking. Depending on device and/or image.
And has an interstitial ad to look through earlier upload. I don't think even ImageShack thought of that one
It was 1 specific date which imageshack decided to essentially ban all images being linked on Reddit. Imgur filled the void and grew via their own social.
IMO all the other gratis paradigm sharing websites are still bad, i've nonetheless to run across annihilation that lets you -e.g.- make direct links to the images for use in Discord, Reddit, forums (phpbb), etc and non environment them with garbage and images tend to stay around for a long fourth dimension unlike other places where they disappear after a while.
The only matter i found annoying with Imgur is the mobile site not allowing zooming for some reason (tin be bypassed past loading the desktop version but it is still an annoyance).
Not certain if this will still be the case going forward though. I used to like Minus since they immune all that stuff plus had unlimited GIF sizes and didn't reencode PNGs to JPGs (non sure if Imgur does that anymore) but after Minus was sold it went to hell then disappeared completely.
> They began on Reddit because Reddit was incapable of handling image uploads.
I'd argue they largely still are incapable of handling image uploads. Their gallery system sucks and the redesign just makes it harder to even see what was posted.
It's not just a poor design. old.reddit.com currently has what ought to be considered a show-stopping functional issues: every gallery post (that is, every mail with multiple images) has its URL replaced with the empty string, causing it to render as a royal link that goes nowhere. If you instead click the petty "comments" link, the post loads equally normal.
This has been reported to the admins dozens of times since it first started happening virtually 3 months ago, and and then far the merely response is "we're looking into it". I'm non sure which possibility is more than damning: the idea that they're incapable of fixing such an obvious regression, or that they literally don't care because they're trying to irritate everybody plenty to switch to the newer, uglier version of the site.
https://www.reddit.com/r/assistance/comments/o6ckmr/threads_showin...
That 'empty string/imperial link' issue still happens to me fifty-fifty on NewReddit. I can find old Galleries that work only fine on both, it's so weird.
Interesting, I hadn't seen information technology reported on the new version before. I spend more than fourth dimension than I ought to browsing Reddit, and I literally haven't seen a single correctly-working gallery post on any subreddit in months.
No it doesn't. If you mean reddit.com/imgur, that'southward the ID from a random mail in /r/Drugs. Reddit automatically expands the mail service ID to the original thread.
My dad worked in K&A for a long time and handled the sale of a plastic molding company where the owner was getting quite old and couldn't really run the business anymore. The visitor was extremely well established and had a very stiff and loyal customer base of operations and ran off a unmarried manufacturing facility in a pocket-sized town out in the boonies. The owner certainly wanted a fair value for the company but he also strongly desired that the plant be kept open and employees retain their positions. Calculation this sort of a restriction on a company yous're selling is possible - but it is hellishly expensive, generally y'all're considering adding some sort of third party oversight and auditing for all 60 minutes actions and business decisions. If you lot buy a company under these terms you can stop up utterly destroying the visitor if supply chains shift - the local labour pool is unsustainable or a plethora of other reasons... And about certainly this burden is mandatorily bundled with the company - so one time you've rode the visitor value down a bit and are looking to go out all of the buyers will know how much of an impossible situation that company is in.
At the end of the twenty-four hour period when you lot sell a company you are divorcing yourself from the future direction - you might be invited to stay on as an executive - and the new owners might heed to you... or they might not - that'south entirely up to them. Any promises or commitments you've made as an executive are only as practiced as your word - and when you sell your company your word stops having any power (considering yous sold that power).
I would never shame someone who wanted to keep an platonic going from making an exit they personally need to brand - ever prioritize your wellness and happiness over whatever venture - but when you lot sell y'all're accepting the fact that at any moment the buyer may completely reverse the direction of the visitor.
one option i don't run across discussed a lot is selling to your employees (converting to a coop, full esop etc)
I remember this by and large goes against the idea that the owner wanted to exit with significant value in almost cases. Companies (even minor ones) can easily accrue a lot of value simply reinvesting earnings over a moderate corporeality of time which is likely going to exist out of reach of an employee collective or other local funding source.
For the company I was talking about in a higher place it definitely didn't have a local or especially regular customer base - they were well known equally a market place leader but the sort of thing you might purchase every few years at most.
Anything bought by Microsoft in the past 10 years. Minecraft, Github, LinkedIn, all are improve products today than they were at the time of sale.
> Minecraft
Take it back!
Seriously though, I recollect MC earlier information technology was a kids game. It was already becoming one by the fourth dimension Microsoft bought it, but since then almost every update has been gimmicks for kids. The world generation is even so ridiculous (jungles next to arctics), the weather patterns are binary (difficult rain, or nothing), and proximity chat is practically impossible.
They've made a lot of coin off making information technology into a kids game, just I personally haven't been delighted past whatsoever updates since they took information technology over.
If it's whatsoever consolation, at that place are really practiced mods for proximity voice chat and jungles next to arctics is existence fixed in the next major update.
I don't quite agree that every update has been gimmicks for kids - I can't really point to a "kittenish" new mechanic added. Peradventure your perception of the game has changed?
Sounds like the attention of those properties' users is worth more than in some other metric than the maintenance/improvements cost in engineer fourth dimension. I wonder what.
Minecraft drives actual profits on consoles - you have to subscribe to play with your friends. Some of these consoles (XBox) are even directly owned past MS.
Github is a massive piece in the developer ecosystem. It drives adoption of other MS products that tin can integrate with it, and generates a lot of goodwill towards MS.
LinkedIn, eh, that'southward probably the weakest property. On the other hand, information technology's massive in the enterprise infinite - once again lots of goodwill, this time from "suits", and possibly some cool metrics well-nigh hiring.
Linkedin has premium business relationship tiers for recruiters. Now I haven't seen whatsoever of the numbers, but the business organisation model does pass the sniff examination.
I recollect information technology's still also early on to judge the SO purchase, but I agree that it hasn't been a problem so far.
I'll spend 2 seconds looking it up, but IIRC the founder said he wouldn't sell out "unless they offering similar a million dollars".
Edit: Looks similar information technology was in the original FAQ.
> Can I advertise on imgur?
> Hell no! This is a complimentary site (as in beer) and at that place will never be whatever ads on it unless I end up selling out for a million dollars.
https://web.annal.org/web/20090226191747/https://imgur.com...
anybody sells out eventually. zero wrong with it. either that or they run it into the ground or dice.
people move on that'due south just life. congrats to the imgur team and skilful luck for their adjacent adventures.
Not everyone, but information technology's definitely rare. Feels good to believe that everyone sells out though when you lot're in the process of selling out.
You don't need to sell out if you lot tin create a service or product that people are willing to pay money for - fifty-fifty indirectly. Granted, this is certainly a difficult feat to pull on a free prototype hosting site.
Hmm, equally far as I tin can meet you lot either sell out, or get sold out to. The concluding one seems like a viable option?
That was before Reddit added prototype functionality which basically was a fuck you lot to imgur. I'yard surprised the site has lasted this long without selling.
Ah, yeah, after the previous host was taken over. We all saw that for the lie information technology was afterwards they took exterior investment of course.
Imgur should have sold to Reddit a long time ago. Not being able to work out a deal was lose-lose for both companies.
Yes. Though it did seem genuinely well meaning at the time. Reddit was pretty shit pre imgur pictures wise.
I thought exactly the aforementioned.
It doesn't bode well for Imgur future. They don't intendance about their acquisition. It'southward to wonder why are they doing it in the first place.
The visitor doesn't have any public data either. All I can find is a LONG list of job openings: https://jobs.lever.co/medialab
Weird list if they are but "investors".
That exactly the get-go idea that came to my mind as well. RIP Imgur? Information technology doesn't seem like medialab is annihilation more than than the 'internet brand' version of a patent troll.
Medialab has now acquired Kik (2019), Imgur (2021), Genius (2021)...
Big spree of acquisitions! Anyone take any thought the goal?
To purchase onetime, dilapidated tech/media brands that no longer have any power to get pay out investors (who are happy to sell on the inexpensive for a write-off), only still get some level of traffic. Bundle all the traffic together to sell ads across a network of sites with the hopes of profiting.
It'southward a strategy as erstwhile equally fourth dimension. Sometimes it works (IAC, is arguably a expert example of a company who has bought or funded companies at diverse stages of distress/hype (and incubated some that are very successful in their ain right, like Friction match Group) and managed to get goodish CPMs across the sites they parcel together), nearly of the fourth dimension it doesn't. But the goal is to acquire the make/traffic, cut costs to the bone, and try to profit off the traffic by selling ads or user data or any. It's a rollup play and the goal is definitely not to invest back into the companies themselves any more than they need to run.
Most of this is dead on but I've been in the eye of this type of bargain and "happy to sell" wouldn't be an authentic clarification of the investors. Having some % of failures is built into the VC model simply they'd nevertheless much rather accept gotten their capital back.
Also, this reminds me of Computer Associates' (subsequently CA Technologies) business model: purchase enterprise software companies with locked-in customers, fire staff and cut costs as far as possible, and increase maintenance fees, all with the understanding the the business organization will deteriorate over fourth dimension. I call up here the equivalent of "increase maintenance fees" may be "load upward the product with fifty-fifty more ads".
Based on this episode of Darknet Diaries: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/93/ It sounds similar they buy upwards dead/dying online properties, burn basically anybody, put the service on life back up to proceed it barely functioning, milk all the money they tin from the remaining users as the service goes to shit, buy something else.
As a side note I notice it amusing how the HN community simultaneously obsesses over startups, equity, funding rounds, etc just gets grumpy when a company actually does sell. The cognitive dissonance is sublime.
HN contains enough people of dissimilar vintage and background that it would be rather more surprising if there was whatsoever subject that nosotros all agreed on. This has aught to exercise with cognitive dissonance, which is something unique to an individual, at best you could conclude that HN is able to cater to people on opposing sides of some spectra without turning into a hate fest.
I find it agreeable that people think of "the HN community" as a singular mind or something
Different people respond to different things
It depends on when they sell and who too. If you create a smashing startup and sell for a lot to a respectable company then it'due south praised but if you sell to a sketchy visitor (like this) long after your prime information technology's looked down on
Congrats to Imgur on its leave, I suppose.
Honestly, this is probably the best outcome they could hope for. I doubtable their growth has stagnated and are losing mindshare in the meme economic system to Reddit and Discord. Imgur was started in a very different earth from today and they didn't evolve enough.
Regardless, I'chiliad grateful to them. Imgur will always have a soft spot in my middle.
This is a tough one to make sense of - are they just getting killed past reddit on 1 side and tiktok on the other and cashing out? Anyone have any insight? (also anyone know the purchase price? only for fun)
They stopped being just an image host and attempted to branch out. Except the content creators just mail the garbage to reddit and tiktok directly because the reach is much greater than linking to imgur from the various platforms.
it use to be my fav fourth dimension waster app rather than the selfies on IG or airheaded politics on FB. but yea rarely use it now so I guess date is dropping
There is definitely a dedicated subculture at that place with their own rules (e.yard. selfies being mercilessly downward voted in usersub). Also the demographic was relatable for me as it skewed more towards older millennials.
I can't share the love for Imgur: for some reason, all imgur posts, including this i, are never displayed on my mobile Firefox. Just blank screen, and that'south it.
(the only addon I have is uBlock origin, and I'm too lazy to endeavor turning information technology off for some random images)
Imgur was a wonderful idea, but I recall they forgot to have a business plan. Imgur is absolutely terrible these days.
The Imgur customs is nigh completely toxic. Imgur manifestly care nigh my privacy, only still want to share information with 1200 different "partners". It's also the most effective fashion of draining the bombardment of any device you apply. Fifty-fifty the new M1 MacBooks will burn through battery like in that location's no tomorrow if y'all load the Imgur website in Safari, or worse any other browser.
It'south not a peachy site and haven't been for years.
Imgur does this weird thing on mobile where it will e'er redirect yous to some page where information technology tin can then nag you to download their app with grayouts, big buttons, and and so a content feed they hope you whorl down on.
It also downloads like 6 megabytes worth of local content. Doesn't matter if you are going to the imgur folio of the prototype, or literally the URI to the image file itself.
Holy fuck that'south anoying..
http://example.com/foobar.png <- if an url looks like that, I expect a directly link to the image... not some freaky redirect to a shitty webpage with floating popups, cookie prompts and "download the app"... why exercise I need an app to view a fucking image?! I already have one, information technology'due south chosen a browser!
Ah aye, the ol' app interstitial where they hound you to download the app by interrupting any y'all were trying to do on their site. I hate websites that use these.
Does anybody know what the conquering price was? Or what the terms were (like how long must the founders remain on the team, etc)?
Imgur could accept pivoted to becoming like Reddit faster than Reddit was able to pin to contain its own image repo.
It'south all user-submitted content. One was either a link or a blurb of text, the other was imagery.
There is a shitload of porn on Imgur. Is Medialab going to do the Silicon Valley Puritan investor purge on it?
An image hosting site seems similar one of those applications that are easier than ever to build but impossible to monetize.
Near people who use imgur only hotlink - what's the incentive for a company to buy or start a new imgur?
Same as Imgur. The current prototype hosting sites suck and you know y'all tin can do better
And so it works and y'all need to pay the bills
10 years later you sell it and some new guy makes ane