14 ms·

Image Hosting on Reddit

191 points by no_gravity 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago
This is the announcement for the full rollout on the Web. Access to the Reddit image host was formerly app-only. When the partial rollout occurred on test subreddits (including defaults like /r/pics), the number of submissions from the Reddit Image Host doubled. However, the market share of Imgur submissions remained unchanged, and in the weeks since then, the market share of both services has not changed at all: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJNYhRczke5V5Cn7ZC_IwtZGQg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJN... It will be interesting to see how the full rollout affects Reddit globally, particular as Imgur's redirects are becoming non-user-friendly.
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  is a week a meaningful amount of time to mention whether market share has changed
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    The original test started on 5/24 (https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change_introducing_image_uploading_beta/ https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change...) which is why the chart starts a few days before that. It has been a month since then.
    - nicotonic 10y ago
      Yes, but that test only applies to official apps... Do we have usage data on those? Especially taking into account very good apps already existed and most users probably couldn't be arsed to switch to the official one. Those official apps have lots of downloads, but don't be fooled: I bet most people downloaded them because of the free three months of reddit gold you got when you logged into them.
      - minimaxir 10y ago
        The 16 subreddits in the 5/24 test were for the Web UI (the primary Reddit platform), not the App UI, which was available to all subreddits at launch.
- flashman 10y ago
  It's interesting that Reddit-hosted images have been averaging fewer upvotes than Imgur-hosted images, on /r/pics at least: http://i.imgur.com/91qkas5.png http://i.imgur.com/91qkas5.png One postulated reason is that browser plugin Reddit Enhancement Suite doesn't work as well with Reddit images as Imgur ones. But I wouldn't be surprised if something more subtle was also at work. I know you're doing some work around this and it will be interesting to see wider results in a few months.
revelation 10y ago
This must be the first actual meaningful change to the site since the whole "we're a startup again" and "tripling our headcount" episodes. And it only took a year!
- rozap 10y ago
  Not the only change, the mobile site got bloated and slow in the last year. All community/social changes aside, the site has gotten worse from a usability perspective as they increased their headcount. This is the most predictable pattern in our industry.
  - nicotonic 10y ago
    You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to any url: https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      Thanks. The mobile site has a banner that takes up a lot of the screen advertising their app. I don't want their app, and I can't dismiss the advert. Still, it's saved me wasting time browsing.
      - jachee 10y ago
        There is a twinge of irony in mentioning "wasting time browsing" reddit. :) (And yes, I realize the inherent irony in pointing that out here as well.)
      - nicotonic 10y ago
        Yes it can be dismissed. There's a link that says "No thanks", doesn't it appear for you?
        lostlogin 10y ago
        No - up to date iOS on iPhone 5s.
dmerrick 10y ago
It's really unfortunate that Imgur took such a turn for the worse. Originally it seemed like Imgur was a benevolent gift to Reddit users... a clean, simple, easy to use image hosting service that everyone could use for free. I guess it was too good to be true, because now it's tricky to link to a direct image (though not impossible), and the standard landing page is filled with unnecessary clutter. As an aside: if you're looking for an amusing read, the "IgnorantImgur" subreddit[0] is filled with examples of people from the Imgur community who seem to be oblivious to Imgur's origin as an image hosting site for Reddit users. [0]: http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top
- x5n1 10y ago
  Completely expected as soon as they took money. They are exactly what organic "success" stories online look like. Now they want some of reddit's traffic and so reddit is fighting back at first by embedding images directly on the page and now hosting the image themselves. Reddit is also looking to maximize profit.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Yes. I also think that part of reddit's unspoken strategy with this is to get more people using their mobile apps instead of the high-quality third-party alternatives (which allows them to control the reddit experience more tightly, which they want to try to rehabilitate their image away from 4chanLite, and also allows them to get the ad views instead of giving them to third-party devs). reddit is trying to squeeze back some of the juice from the third-party devs who use their API without being too overt about it, because they know the community would revolt. Twitter did the same thing much more loudly when they realized that they were giving away the farm by letting most of their userbase access the content via third-party apps. This works because imgur and other image hosts are already well-integrated into third-party reddit apps, but reddit's image hosting isn't yet, and they can change things around/break it repeatedly until users get annoyed and just move to the official app to try to get a more seamless experience.
    - 10y ago
whamlastxmas 10y ago
I don't think this is going to work for reddit long-term unless they change it so that removing the post tied to the image doesn't remove the image itself. People are going to share these images endlessly, perpetuating on Facebook posts and Instagrams for years and years. If they don't change their minds, we're going to see endless broken image links all over the internet as those reddit posts get deleted.
- revelation 10y ago
  It's with my deepest regret that I have to tell you.. people already don't care for broken links. Every other link citation on Wikipedia is broken, if it's a link to a newspaper, the probability approaches 1 as these sites just don't bother in their perpetual quest for SEO and ad value.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    What's ironic because a stable link from Wikipedia must be some great way to improve one's SEO.
    - umanwizard 10y ago
      No, because Wikipedia citation links have rel="nofollow".
      - makomk 10y ago
        With the exception of links to a limited list of other Wikis, one of which is Jimmy Wales' for-profit site Wikia. (At least, they used to be exempted from nofollow, it's possible that's changed at some point.)
      - danneu 10y ago
        It would be irresponsible for a machine learning black box like Google's indexer to give much importance to rel="nofollow". Think about it. Imagine you're building the perfect internet indexer. In an effort to generalize your model, you anticipate a scenario where a nofollow link shows up consistently on various Wikipedia pages where it persists for a long time. What are you going to do? Ignore the link because, sorry, them's the rules? Or are you going to realize that nofollow is about as useful of a signal as <meta name="keywords">?
ruipgil 10y ago
Besides whamlastxmas point, the danger that I see is also tied to copyright infringement. Imgur and other small sites, mostly because they don't have much profit, don't suffer a lot from copyright takedowns. I think reddit won't have the same treatment, and Imgur will still be a viable long-term solution.
- Splendor 10y ago
  Especially when reddit is spending so much time trying to court Hollywood celebrities.
tzs 10y ago
No reference counting? This seems like it will cause problems: [–]iBeReese 1246 points 3 hours ago Is there a planned retention policy? Or is it an "as long as reddit has the money to maintain the servers the images will stay forever" kind of deal? [–]Amg137[S,A] 1421 points 3 hours ago We will keep the images as long as they are associated to a post. However if you delete a post we will also delete the image [–]speedofdark8 1007 points 3 hours ago How are reposts handled? If i upload something into /r/aww, get the link for that post's image, submit that link to /r/cats, then delete the /r/aww post, will the link in /r/cats still work? [–]oldschoolred[A] 795 points 3 hours ago No it wont... once the uploader removes the original post the link to that image will break
- Klathmon 10y ago
  IMO that's how it should act. Just because someone else links to a picture doesn't mean that they get to say whether it's taken down or not... If you want to be the "uploader" then upload it, don't just link.
  - CM30 10y ago
    In the hypothetical case, the uploader is the person linking to it. They just want to post it on multiple subreddits without having to keep reuploading it. Heck, I can see a similar situation where post 1 is on a subreddit with awkwardly enforced rules, post 2 is on a more relaxed one, and then because the mods remove the post and image on subreddit 1, the second version breaks with it. Should people have to keep reuploading the same image every time they want to use it?
fletchowns 10y ago
I miss the days of meaningful filenames.

191 points by no_gravity 10y ago

This is the announcement for the full rollout on the Web. Access to the Reddit image host was formerly app-only. When the partial rollout occurred on test subreddits (including defaults like /r/pics), the number of submissions from the Reddit Image Host doubled. However, the market share of Imgur submissions remained unchanged, and in the weeks since then, the market share of both services has not changed at all: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJNYhRczke5V5Cn7ZC_IwtZGQg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJN... It will be interesting to see how the full rollout affects Reddit globally, particular as Imgur's redirects are becoming non-user-friendly.

untilHellbanned 10y ago
is a week a meaningful amount of time to mention whether market share has changed
- minimaxir 10y ago
  The original test started on 5/24 (https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change_introducing_image_uploading_beta/ https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change...) which is why the chart starts a few days before that. It has been a month since then.
  - nicotonic 10y ago
    Yes, but that test only applies to official apps... Do we have usage data on those? Especially taking into account very good apps already existed and most users probably couldn't be arsed to switch to the official one. Those official apps have lots of downloads, but don't be fooled: I bet most people downloaded them because of the free three months of reddit gold you got when you logged into them.
    - minimaxir 10y ago
      The 16 subreddits in the 5/24 test were for the Web UI (the primary Reddit platform), not the App UI, which was available to all subreddits at launch.
flashman 10y ago
It's interesting that Reddit-hosted images have been averaging fewer upvotes than Imgur-hosted images, on /r/pics at least: http://i.imgur.com/91qkas5.png http://i.imgur.com/91qkas5.png One postulated reason is that browser plugin Reddit Enhancement Suite doesn't work as well with Reddit images as Imgur ones. But I wouldn't be surprised if something more subtle was also at work. I know you're doing some work around this and it will be interesting to see wider results in a few months.

revelation 10y ago

This must be the first actual meaningful change to the site since the whole "we're a startup again" and "tripling our headcount" episodes. And it only took a year!

rozap 10y ago
Not the only change, the mobile site got bloated and slow in the last year. All community/social changes aside, the site has gotten worse from a usability perspective as they increased their headcount. This is the most predictable pattern in our industry.
- nicotonic 10y ago
  You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to any url: https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Thanks. The mobile site has a banner that takes up a lot of the screen advertising their app. I don't want their app, and I can't dismiss the advert. Still, it's saved me wasting time browsing.
    - jachee 10y ago
      There is a twinge of irony in mentioning "wasting time browsing" reddit. :) (And yes, I realize the inherent irony in pointing that out here as well.)
    - nicotonic 10y ago
      Yes it can be dismissed. There's a link that says "No thanks", doesn't it appear for you?
      - lostlogin 10y ago
        No - up to date iOS on iPhone 5s.

dmerrick 10y ago

It's really unfortunate that Imgur took such a turn for the worse. Originally it seemed like Imgur was a benevolent gift to Reddit users... a clean, simple, easy to use image hosting service that everyone could use for free. I guess it was too good to be true, because now it's tricky to link to a direct image (though not impossible), and the standard landing page is filled with unnecessary clutter. As an aside: if you're looking for an amusing read, the "IgnorantImgur" subreddit[0] is filled with examples of people from the Imgur community who seem to be oblivious to Imgur's origin as an image hosting site for Reddit users. [0]: http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top

x5n1 10y ago
Completely expected as soon as they took money. They are exactly what organic "success" stories online look like. Now they want some of reddit's traffic and so reddit is fighting back at first by embedding images directly on the page and now hosting the image themselves. Reddit is also looking to maximize profit.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Yes. I also think that part of reddit's unspoken strategy with this is to get more people using their mobile apps instead of the high-quality third-party alternatives (which allows them to control the reddit experience more tightly, which they want to try to rehabilitate their image away from 4chanLite, and also allows them to get the ad views instead of giving them to third-party devs). reddit is trying to squeeze back some of the juice from the third-party devs who use their API without being too overt about it, because they know the community would revolt. Twitter did the same thing much more loudly when they realized that they were giving away the farm by letting most of their userbase access the content via third-party apps. This works because imgur and other image hosts are already well-integrated into third-party reddit apps, but reddit's image hosting isn't yet, and they can change things around/break it repeatedly until users get annoyed and just move to the official app to try to get a more seamless experience.
  - 10y ago

whamlastxmas 10y ago

I don't think this is going to work for reddit long-term unless they change it so that removing the post tied to the image doesn't remove the image itself. People are going to share these images endlessly, perpetuating on Facebook posts and Instagrams for years and years. If they don't change their minds, we're going to see endless broken image links all over the internet as those reddit posts get deleted.

revelation 10y ago
It's with my deepest regret that I have to tell you.. people already don't care for broken links. Every other link citation on Wikipedia is broken, if it's a link to a newspaper, the probability approaches 1 as these sites just don't bother in their perpetual quest for SEO and ad value.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  What's ironic because a stable link from Wikipedia must be some great way to improve one's SEO.
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    No, because Wikipedia citation links have rel="nofollow".
    - makomk 10y ago
      With the exception of links to a limited list of other Wikis, one of which is Jimmy Wales' for-profit site Wikia. (At least, they used to be exempted from nofollow, it's possible that's changed at some point.)
    - danneu 10y ago
      It would be irresponsible for a machine learning black box like Google's indexer to give much importance to rel="nofollow". Think about it. Imagine you're building the perfect internet indexer. In an effort to generalize your model, you anticipate a scenario where a nofollow link shows up consistently on various Wikipedia pages where it persists for a long time. What are you going to do? Ignore the link because, sorry, them's the rules? Or are you going to realize that nofollow is about as useful of a signal as <meta name="keywords">?

ruipgil 10y ago

Besides whamlastxmas point, the danger that I see is also tied to copyright infringement. Imgur and other small sites, mostly because they don't have much profit, don't suffer a lot from copyright takedowns. I think reddit won't have the same treatment, and Imgur will still be a viable long-term solution.

Splendor 10y ago
Especially when reddit is spending so much time trying to court Hollywood celebrities.

tzs 10y ago

No reference counting? This seems like it will cause problems: [–]iBeReese 1246 points 3 hours ago Is there a planned retention policy? Or is it an "as long as reddit has the money to maintain the servers the images will stay forever" kind of deal? [–]Amg137[S,A] 1421 points 3 hours ago We will keep the images as long as they are associated to a post. However if you delete a post we will also delete the image [–]speedofdark8 1007 points 3 hours ago How are reposts handled? If i upload something into /r/aww, get the link for that post's image, submit that link to /r/cats, then delete the /r/aww post, will the link in /r/cats still work? [–]oldschoolred[A] 795 points 3 hours ago No it wont... once the uploader removes the original post the link to that image will break

Klathmon 10y ago
IMO that's how it should act. Just because someone else links to a picture doesn't mean that they get to say whether it's taken down or not... If you want to be the "uploader" then upload it, don't just link.
- CM30 10y ago
  In the hypothetical case, the uploader is the person linking to it. They just want to post it on multiple subreddits without having to keep reuploading it. Heck, I can see a similar situation where post 1 is on a subreddit with awkwardly enforced rules, post 2 is on a more relaxed one, and then because the mods remove the post and image on subreddit 1, the second version breaks with it. Should people have to keep reuploading the same image every time they want to use it?

fletchowns 10y ago

I miss the days of meaningful filenames.