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One big issue that could impact Reddit if not addressed is Imgur. Recently Imgur appears to have started redirecting some people from direct image links to the

One big issue that could impact Reddit if not addressed is Imgur. Recently Imgur appears to have started redirecting some people from direct image links to their full site (some claim this happens even on submissions linking directly to an image/gif). I've noticed this quite a bit on mobile or in the Alien Blue app. Others have also reported this behavior. My guess is Imgur is doing this not to display ads right away, but to drive people to their own app for later monetization and growing their own brand/community. Imgur has taken $40M in funding, and so is presumably needing to find an exit at some point. Reddit sending tons of traffic directly to images was great for establishing themselves deep in the Reddit ecosystem early on, but if people are going directly to images vs. to the HTML page, that's a lot of lost impressions beyond just those who visit it directly or go to upload photos. The load times for their site vs. just direct image/gif files are pretty painful on mobile, and this ultimately impacts the Reddit experience. I'm really curious if Reddit would ever roll out their own image host as a result, and it will be very interesting to watch this.

markdown 11y ago
> Recently Imgur appears to have started redirecting some people from direct image links to their full site This has always been true for traffic from FB and Twitter, but are you saying this is now also true when the referrer is reddit.com?
- minimaxir 11y ago
  I am the one who broke that story: http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ I double-checked today and count not find any indication that Imgur redirects images on Reddit referrers. (Although some Reddit submissions incorrectly submit the ad-page itself which is why people get confused) If anyone has reproducable evidence of a redirect, let me know.
rezashirazian 11y ago
A post (https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobile_reddit_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobi...) regarding this issue made it to the top of reddit yesterday. I figured I'd use the occasion to highlight a project I worked in a few months ago. And although the comment(https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobile_reddit_experience/d03yado https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobi...) was met with positive feedback from the community it was deleted by the mods without an explanation. The article should also highlight overzealous mods that paint every outgoing link as spam.
- shostack 11y ago
  Since the post is deleted, can you share a link to your project?
  - rezashirazian 11y ago
    http://www.pixpit.com http://www.pixpit.com It queries reddit.com/r/funny every ten minutes and collects the top 1000 images submitted. You as a user can then browse an endless stream of images much like Instagram. At the end of the night it takes all the collected images from that day and parse them into 20 picture albums that user can be accessed by pressing the shuffle button on the top bar. It's a never ending stream of funny images
flashman 11y ago
Reddit's not going to want the bother of an image host, with the associated DMCA, abuse and community issues. Its philosophy seems to be "let other people do as much of the work as possible," which makes sense, and I don't see why they wouldn't just let the community solve the problem if Imgur 'broke' itself by aggressively monetizing Reddit traffic.
- shostack 11y ago
  Perhaps they would let the community solve the problem. However they are now stuck with the same issue any other company is that relies heavily on a 3rd party for a core component of their business. Namely, degradation in the experience of the 3rd party results in a perceived degradation of their own service as users view the experiences as one in the same. Most people probably realize that Reddit and Imgur are separate companies, but if a core part of their Reddit browsing experience gets messed up by Imgur, that is also Reddit's problem. Now, I'm sure the community could come up with something eventually, as inevitably happens when an image host gets too spammy. The issue is that it is not easy to trust every host, and frankly should be something Reddit owns to have better control over.

markdown 11y ago

> Recently Imgur appears to have started redirecting some people from direct image links to their full site This has always been true for traffic from FB and Twitter, but are you saying this is now also true when the referrer is reddit.com?

minimaxir 11y ago
I am the one who broke that story: http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ I double-checked today and count not find any indication that Imgur redirects images on Reddit referrers. (Although some Reddit submissions incorrectly submit the ad-page itself which is why people get confused) If anyone has reproducable evidence of a redirect, let me know.

rezashirazian 11y ago

A post (https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobile_reddit_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobi...) regarding this issue made it to the top of reddit yesterday. I figured I'd use the occasion to highlight a project I worked in a few months ago. And although the comment(https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobile_reddit_experience/d03yado https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/46c2v5/90_of_my_mobi...) was met with positive feedback from the community it was deleted by the mods without an explanation. The article should also highlight overzealous mods that paint every outgoing link as spam.

shostack 11y ago
Since the post is deleted, can you share a link to your project?
- rezashirazian 11y ago
  http://www.pixpit.com http://www.pixpit.com It queries reddit.com/r/funny every ten minutes and collects the top 1000 images submitted. You as a user can then browse an endless stream of images much like Instagram. At the end of the night it takes all the collected images from that day and parse them into 20 picture albums that user can be accessed by pressing the shuffle button on the top bar. It's a never ending stream of funny images

flashman 11y ago

Reddit's not going to want the bother of an image host, with the associated DMCA, abuse and community issues. Its philosophy seems to be "let other people do as much of the work as possible," which makes sense, and I don't see why they wouldn't just let the community solve the problem if Imgur 'broke' itself by aggressively monetizing Reddit traffic.

shostack 11y ago
Perhaps they would let the community solve the problem. However they are now stuck with the same issue any other company is that relies heavily on a 3rd party for a core component of their business. Namely, degradation in the experience of the 3rd party results in a perceived degradation of their own service as users view the experiences as one in the same. Most people probably realize that Reddit and Imgur are separate companies, but if a core part of their Reddit browsing experience gets messed up by Imgur, that is also Reddit's problem. Now, I'm sure the community could come up with something eventually, as inevitably happens when an image host gets too spammy. The issue is that it is not easy to trust every host, and frankly should be something Reddit owns to have better control over.