4 ms·

Imgur seems like an interesting case study.

by sjg007 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago
Does Imgur make money and is it profitable? As far as I know their "business model" (which actually isn't one, or at least not a profitable one) is "growth and engagement". Their core product isn't something people want to pay for (image hosting itself can be obtained anywhere, including from cloud storage subscriptions people already pay for), and their social side is at odds with the advertising business model - you need ads to survive, but ads revenue is forever decreasing and people will leave if you put too much ads.
- cfors 6y ago
  They were profitable for a while, and then got a round of funding from Andreessen-Horowitz. [0] I don't know if they are still profitable, but I recently for some reason was on the founder's (Alan Schaaf) wikipedia page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3
jedberg 6y ago
Sort of. The provided a functionality that reddit did not, so they weren't really unbundling anything. They smartly realized that reddit would probably eventually provide that same functionality (which they did) so they started down the path of building their own community before that happened.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  Lucky for them, the reddit implementation is as-of-now still pretty awful.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Yeah but that's the sad part. People still use reddit's built in system because it's there, despite the inferiority.
    - RankingMember 6y ago
      True, it's the path of least resistance, particularly if you're a new user.
    - markdown 6y ago
      On the contrary, the sad part is that people still use imgur. Going off-site to be bombarded with off-topic pics (all imgur pics are surrounded by random other (sometimes NSFW) pics isn't a great experience.
    - dageshi 6y ago
      I dunno, what really do you need to do other than have your pictures uploaded and displayed on the post? I kinda figure that's all 90% of the userbase actually wants from the feature?

Imgur seems like an interesting case study.

by sjg007 6y ago

Imgur seems like an interesting case study.

Does Imgur make money and is it profitable? As far as I know their "business model" (which actually isn't one, or at least not a profitable one) is "growth and engagement". Their core product isn't something people want to pay for (image hosting itself can be obtained anywhere, including from cloud storage subscriptions people already pay for), and their social side is at odds with the advertising business model - you need ads to survive, but ads revenue is forever decreasing and people will leave if you put too much ads.

cfors 6y ago
They were profitable for a while, and then got a round of funding from Andreessen-Horowitz. [0] I don't know if they are still profitable, but I recently for some reason was on the founder's (Alan Schaaf) wikipedia page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3

jedberg 6y ago

Sort of. The provided a functionality that reddit did not, so they weren't really unbundling anything. They smartly realized that reddit would probably eventually provide that same functionality (which they did) so they started down the path of building their own community before that happened.

RankingMember 6y ago
Lucky for them, the reddit implementation is as-of-now still pretty awful.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Yeah but that's the sad part. People still use reddit's built in system because it's there, despite the inferiority.
  - RankingMember 6y ago
    True, it's the path of least resistance, particularly if you're a new user.
  - markdown 6y ago
    On the contrary, the sad part is that people still use imgur. Going off-site to be bombarded with off-topic pics (all imgur pics are surrounded by random other (sometimes NSFW) pics isn't a great experience.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    I dunno, what really do you need to do other than have your pictures uploaded and displayed on the post? I kinda figure that's all 90% of the userbase actually wants from the feature?