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> At first, the service took off not because it did a lot, but because it did so little. "Nobody really wants to put images up on the Internet," he explains. "W

> At first, the service took off not because it did a lot, but because it did so little. "Nobody really wants to put images up on the Internet," he explains. "What you actually want to do is share it with somebody. So I stripped out everything that other image hosts even had, because when you just get to the point of sharing, what's really important is speed." > "I had this insight—that ended up being wrong, by the way—which was, 'This content's so good, let's just have it stand on its own,'" he remembers. "'I'm not even going to put titles or descriptions or anything on this stuff.' Turns out that's actually a dumb idea, because people need context." Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use. It seems like nobody can have a "community-less" image sharing site.

mrweasel 11y ago
I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value. Attempting to add context is a good idea, but Imgur fails at that. Images on Imgur isn't tagged or titled right, which makes search completely useless. If you see an image, and want to find it, even later that same day, you can pretty much forget about it. The community part of Imgur might even make the problem worse, because the users just stay within the confines of Imgur, meaning they don't feel the need for tagging, good titles and search. Take this example: http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y the title is "useful for arguments", except it's just a bunch of jumbled gif, there are no useful tags, no discover-ability or search-ability. The community part shows up, because regardless of the original intent, sites do need to make money. There are no real way for sites like Imgur to make money, other than attempting to sell ads. Having a community helps sell those ads.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value. Like /r9k/ it had a great three months, and then everyone found it.
  - surge 11y ago
    This seems like the story of every great Internet site, ever. It's great until the lowest common denominator finds it then it goes to crap. Reddit is only spared because you can unsubscribe from default subreddit's and find more niche sub-reddit's that attract a niche audience or subset of users that are less likely to "sh#tpost" for lack of a better term. Not to say all new users are bad or don't contribute anything new, but the noise to signal ratio is way worse the more people pile on and start becoming an echo chamber. I've even seen it a little with HN as its gained popularity, but thankfully this site is so niche its not too bad. But I kind of wish I could do that with other community sites and social media. I know a lot of people loved twitter, or digg, or whatever back in the day before the celebrities, media, and extended relatives caught on.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      There was a picture that I remember describing "The problem with social media" and it had a couple of people sharing something they thought interesting with friends. Then five more people joined and it got noisy. Then a bunch of people showed up, spouting irrelevant noise. Then the first group of people left. Unfortunately I think it's inevitable. If only there was a site where I could search for images like that |;)
      - surge 11y ago
        Yeah, I've accepted that, and for the most part, usually something new comes along and replaces it. The trick is to find where people went after X site went to crap. Sometimes though, a suitable replacement doesn't always crop up. I haven't seen a good imgur replacement.
    - jnky 11y ago
      Ah, yes. Eternal September. A problem almost as old as the WWW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
    - CM30 11y ago
      I'm not sure this is necessarily an unavoidable fate for internet sites, even communities. You can keep the signal to noise ratio decent if you've got an active team of moderators, fairly heavy pruning of content that doesn't add anything to the conversation and the willingness to say no, my site doesn't offer 'freedom of speech'. Unfortunately, most big sites seem to be built on the 'leave it as a complete free for all with no moderation whatsoever' model, which immediately stops working the minute the memberbase expands from early adopters to every Tom, Dick and Harry. That's why Reddit, Twitter, etc have had so many problems. They were built with the idea of 'anyone can say virtually anything' in mind, then realised it would lead to massive amounts of trolling and personal attacks and questionable content, then dug themselves an even deeper hole by trying to moderate the site in woefully biased ways.
Laaw 11y ago
You can't really make money without a community/context. What value is the non .jpg page if all it has is ads? Though it's true, Imgur is worse off for it, the reason (I suspect) for "community" is to drive income.
Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
I'll give you an account on https://sr.ht https://sr.ht if you like. I think it meets what you're looking for.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  Sorry, but I'm not familiar with it. I've heard of it, but what separates it from other image-sharing sites?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    It's just a private site. It's intentionally kept small and community-less.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      Interesting... Yes please. I might also use that code for another project of mine.... Thanks for pointing it out!
      - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
        No problem. Fill out the form on the page and mention this comment thread, I'll hook you up with an account to explore it with.
        CaptSpify 11y ago
        I didn't see a comment section, but my username is the same as here. Thanks
ghrifter 11y ago
> Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use. Yep, its a pain on mobile, is bloated (so non direct image links like i.imgur/garbage.jpg) load slowly. The sponsored content is annoying too with the adds. I also find it ironic that the Imgur people hate "reddit" and redditors, even though imgur was pretty much made to service reddit.
- lem0n 11y ago
  And it's growth is pretty much because of Reddit. Reddit (for a while now) even restricts image hosting to Imgur and Gifly on most subreddits now. This is going to bite both them and Imgur at some point.
hyperpallium 11y ago
Until quite recently, you could append ".jpg" to get just the image, without all the comments and ads. His strategy seems to have been to provide the images for reddit to comment and vote upon - and then add those features himself. The outsourcee eventually owning the customer.
agumonkey 11y ago
It's one of the most 'demanding' website too. It's my favorite web browser pressure test these days. Who's imgur's imgur now ?

mrweasel 11y ago

I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value. Attempting to add context is a good idea, but Imgur fails at that. Images on Imgur isn't tagged or titled right, which makes search completely useless. If you see an image, and want to find it, even later that same day, you can pretty much forget about it. The community part of Imgur might even make the problem worse, because the users just stay within the confines of Imgur, meaning they don't feel the need for tagging, good titles and search. Take this example: http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y the title is "useful for arguments", except it's just a bunch of jumbled gif, there are no useful tags, no discover-ability or search-ability. The community part shows up, because regardless of the original intent, sites do need to make money. There are no real way for sites like Imgur to make money, other than attempting to sell ads. Having a community helps sell those ads.

DanBC 11y ago
> I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value. Like /r9k/ it had a great three months, and then everyone found it.
- surge 11y ago
  This seems like the story of every great Internet site, ever. It's great until the lowest common denominator finds it then it goes to crap. Reddit is only spared because you can unsubscribe from default subreddit's and find more niche sub-reddit's that attract a niche audience or subset of users that are less likely to "sh#tpost" for lack of a better term. Not to say all new users are bad or don't contribute anything new, but the noise to signal ratio is way worse the more people pile on and start becoming an echo chamber. I've even seen it a little with HN as its gained popularity, but thankfully this site is so niche its not too bad. But I kind of wish I could do that with other community sites and social media. I know a lot of people loved twitter, or digg, or whatever back in the day before the celebrities, media, and extended relatives caught on.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    There was a picture that I remember describing "The problem with social media" and it had a couple of people sharing something they thought interesting with friends. Then five more people joined and it got noisy. Then a bunch of people showed up, spouting irrelevant noise. Then the first group of people left. Unfortunately I think it's inevitable. If only there was a site where I could search for images like that |;)
    - surge 11y ago
      Yeah, I've accepted that, and for the most part, usually something new comes along and replaces it. The trick is to find where people went after X site went to crap. Sometimes though, a suitable replacement doesn't always crop up. I haven't seen a good imgur replacement.
  - jnky 11y ago
    Ah, yes. Eternal September. A problem almost as old as the WWW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
  - CM30 11y ago
    I'm not sure this is necessarily an unavoidable fate for internet sites, even communities. You can keep the signal to noise ratio decent if you've got an active team of moderators, fairly heavy pruning of content that doesn't add anything to the conversation and the willingness to say no, my site doesn't offer 'freedom of speech'. Unfortunately, most big sites seem to be built on the 'leave it as a complete free for all with no moderation whatsoever' model, which immediately stops working the minute the memberbase expands from early adopters to every Tom, Dick and Harry. That's why Reddit, Twitter, etc have had so many problems. They were built with the idea of 'anyone can say virtually anything' in mind, then realised it would lead to massive amounts of trolling and personal attacks and questionable content, then dug themselves an even deeper hole by trying to moderate the site in woefully biased ways.

Laaw 11y ago

You can't really make money without a community/context. What value is the non .jpg page if all it has is ads? Though it's true, Imgur is worse off for it, the reason (I suspect) for "community" is to drive income.

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago

I'll give you an account on https://sr.ht https://sr.ht if you like. I think it meets what you're looking for.

CaptSpify 11y ago
Sorry, but I'm not familiar with it. I've heard of it, but what separates it from other image-sharing sites?
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  It's just a private site. It's intentionally kept small and community-less.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    Interesting... Yes please. I might also use that code for another project of mine.... Thanks for pointing it out!
    - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
      No problem. Fill out the form on the page and mention this comment thread, I'll hook you up with an account to explore it with.
      - CaptSpify 11y ago
        I didn't see a comment section, but my username is the same as here. Thanks

ghrifter 11y ago

> Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use. Yep, its a pain on mobile, is bloated (so non direct image links like i.imgur/garbage.jpg) load slowly. The sponsored content is annoying too with the adds. I also find it ironic that the Imgur people hate "reddit" and redditors, even though imgur was pretty much made to service reddit.

lem0n 11y ago
And it's growth is pretty much because of Reddit. Reddit (for a while now) even restricts image hosting to Imgur and Gifly on most subreddits now. This is going to bite both them and Imgur at some point.

hyperpallium 11y ago

Until quite recently, you could append ".jpg" to get just the image, without all the comments and ads. His strategy seems to have been to provide the images for reddit to comment and vote upon - and then add those features himself. The outsourcee eventually owning the customer.

agumonkey 11y ago

It's one of the most 'demanding' website too. It's my favorite web browser pressure test these days. Who's imgur's imgur now ?