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I find it ludicrous that amongst the hundreds of comments between here and on Twitter, people seem to completely ignore that this is a FREE WEBSITE. But one tha

I find it ludicrous that amongst the hundreds of comments between here and on Twitter, people seem to completely ignore that this is a FREE WEBSITE. But one that is likely incredibly expensive to operate. How to reconcile this and attempt to make up the shortfall? You're looking at it. Imgur started as hardly more than an IMG element. It burned and burned and burned money, and their users were happy. Then it added ads, but it didn't matter because people direct linked from reddit anyway, which was the vast majority of the traffic. Then imgur realized they need to break their dependency on the reddit social mass, and built their own to apparently great success. Now people go to imgur for images directly, and stay. So. All that "bloat" came around for a reason and it was to try to make the company sustainable as a business. Dammed if you do, and if you don't.

saagarjha 7y ago
And in doing so, they made their website awful for the one thing that most people were using it for.
- nsgi 7y ago
  Doesn't matter, people still use it. It's not completely awful for what people use it for as long as it stays up.
  - flukus 7y ago
    > So. All that "bloat" came around for a reason and it was to try to make the company sustainable as a business. Until someone comes along with a simple basic service that just works, exactly like how imgur replaced imageshack.
    - deanCommie 7y ago
      Imgur now is still multiple orders of magnitude better than what Imageshack and Photobucket were when it disrupted them.
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  That doesn't matter though if you're losing money. The early imgur was simple and popular, but, as the parent said, lost money. Who would host a system that loses money? Similarly, I could have a website called yougetadollar.com where people put in their address and I mailed them a dollar. It might be a really simple site that fulfills it's core purpose efficiently - but if I don't figure out a way to make money of it, I'm going to have to stop hosting it sometime. If someone came along with a way to make money off yougetadollar.com and that method involved adding a lot of JavaScript, and registrations, and upvotes, and advertising - you'd be correct that it makes the website worse for what people want to use it for, but if the alternative is losing money and shutting down - I don't see the point of the observation.
Khoth 7y ago
There are more options than "just serve the images" and "bloated monstrosity that takes so long to load on mobile that I actively avoid imgur links". For example, they could have, but didn't, make it a page with adverts and social features that loads in a second or so.
- deanCommie 7y ago
  Everyone keeps saying that, but I don't buy it, and I think it's insulting to think we all know better than the imgur employees who have been dealing with this problem for years, and have likely considered all the possible options. 1) They needed a solution that would still be somewhat meaningful with adblock. That means maintaining user engagement to stay with the site and eventually encounter branded content that is not officially an ad but is still a revenue stream 2) Whatever sequence they chose for how they load the page, it is certain that they considered alternatives and a/b tested them, and what they chose was the best balance of user bounce rates and revenue. It's not the most user-friendly version, but that can't be the only metric for a free site.
  - boomlinde 7y ago
    Are you accusing Imgur of doing this deliberately? That seems more insulting than assuming that it's the result of ignorance.
hakfoo 7y ago
I'm surprised image hosting never went aggressively with proabilistic advertising. 80% of the time, it loads your image, 20% you get an ad for Pepsi (or an ad overlaid over the bottom third of the image) You're offering only cheap 'branding' CPM advertising, because you can't control how the image will be presented to provide any interactivity or clickability. Technologically, it requires no changes for the embed code, and could work with a "just load the image" view-- it's all server side magic. But at imgur's scale, that's not smll potatoes money. Importantly, the inconvenience that sort of ad presents to users is modest and manageable. If you can't see the photo, reload it once. It's not going to be 30 seconds of loading dependencies and non-content until you give up BEFORE seeing the photo, and it won't be the photobucket-style "let's just disable hundreds of millions of external embeds AFTER 10 years of people building valuable resources around them.

saagarjha 7y ago

And in doing so, they made their website awful for the one thing that most people were using it for.

nsgi 7y ago
Doesn't matter, people still use it. It's not completely awful for what people use it for as long as it stays up.
- flukus 7y ago
  > So. All that "bloat" came around for a reason and it was to try to make the company sustainable as a business. Until someone comes along with a simple basic service that just works, exactly like how imgur replaced imageshack.
  - deanCommie 7y ago
    Imgur now is still multiple orders of magnitude better than what Imageshack and Photobucket were when it disrupted them.
ALittleLight 7y ago
That doesn't matter though if you're losing money. The early imgur was simple and popular, but, as the parent said, lost money. Who would host a system that loses money? Similarly, I could have a website called yougetadollar.com where people put in their address and I mailed them a dollar. It might be a really simple site that fulfills it's core purpose efficiently - but if I don't figure out a way to make money of it, I'm going to have to stop hosting it sometime. If someone came along with a way to make money off yougetadollar.com and that method involved adding a lot of JavaScript, and registrations, and upvotes, and advertising - you'd be correct that it makes the website worse for what people want to use it for, but if the alternative is losing money and shutting down - I don't see the point of the observation.

Khoth 7y ago

There are more options than "just serve the images" and "bloated monstrosity that takes so long to load on mobile that I actively avoid imgur links". For example, they could have, but didn't, make it a page with adverts and social features that loads in a second or so.

deanCommie 7y ago
Everyone keeps saying that, but I don't buy it, and I think it's insulting to think we all know better than the imgur employees who have been dealing with this problem for years, and have likely considered all the possible options. 1) They needed a solution that would still be somewhat meaningful with adblock. That means maintaining user engagement to stay with the site and eventually encounter branded content that is not officially an ad but is still a revenue stream 2) Whatever sequence they chose for how they load the page, it is certain that they considered alternatives and a/b tested them, and what they chose was the best balance of user bounce rates and revenue. It's not the most user-friendly version, but that can't be the only metric for a free site.
- boomlinde 7y ago
  Are you accusing Imgur of doing this deliberately? That seems more insulting than assuming that it's the result of ignorance.

hakfoo 7y ago

I'm surprised image hosting never went aggressively with proabilistic advertising. 80% of the time, it loads your image, 20% you get an ad for Pepsi (or an ad overlaid over the bottom third of the image) You're offering only cheap 'branding' CPM advertising, because you can't control how the image will be presented to provide any interactivity or clickability. Technologically, it requires no changes for the embed code, and could work with a "just load the image" view-- it's all server side magic. But at imgur's scale, that's not smll potatoes money. Importantly, the inconvenience that sort of ad presents to users is modest and manageable. If you can't see the photo, reload it once. It's not going to be 30 seconds of loading dependencies and non-content until you give up BEFORE seeing the photo, and it won't be the photobucket-style "let's just disable hundreds of millions of external embeds AFTER 10 years of people building valuable resources around them.