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My guess is PR. Regularly, on imgur, you see a pic in interest for a celebrity, a rich person, a movie. It looks organic, but if you look closely, there are pl
by BiteCode_dev 5y ago
My guess is PR.
Regularly, on imgur, you see a pic in interest for a celebrity, a rich person, a movie. It looks organic, but if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things about it. Then it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.
I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.
It's probably the same for a lot of communities with a strong influence on trends, like popular sub reddits or hacker news.
There is no better ads than the one you don't see. There is no better slogan than the one you repeat to your friends as a catchphrase. And there is no better propaganda than the one based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.
- djhn 5y agoBut who are these companies that successfully provide this service?
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoIt's just an educated guess, so I don't know. Besides, such company would do its best to stay discrete, by design.
- Abrownn 5y agoI'm aware of one such company that uses Imgur like that and that deals with celebs. Imgur isn't their primary target, it's just a handy layer of abstraction away from the real target so the content can't TRULY be taken down on the target site. Plus, it shows you how many impressions you get for free. That way they can gather up their campaign image urls and views at the end of the contract and show hard results without the need for a fancy, paid analytics dashboard or campaign tracking system.
- robertoandred 5y agoYeah but who goes to the front page of imgur?
- corobo 5y agoThe exact opposite personality type to people that browse HN I'd wager
- JadeNB 5y agoI, and apparently Swizec (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28676558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28676558), do both, and I doubt we're the only ones.
- everdrive 5y agoYes, there might be dozens of you.
- BoorishBears 5y agoNo there's plenty, HN just has the kind of people who need to loudly proclaim they don't engage with <insert popular thing> That wrongly creates the impression that there are only a few HN users engaging with it.
- cheschire 5y agoFor the uninitiated, this is a meme reference to a clip from the TV show Arrested Development, popular on Imgur as a reaction to show support for someone else who expresses a sense of loneliness in their appreciation or affection. A version of this: https://i.imgur.com/pgXjbNy.gifv https://i.imgur.com/pgXjbNy.gifv
- w-ll 5y agoHow much could a banana cost? 10 dollars?
- still_grokking 5y agoHN and Imgur are among my favorite sites on the web! Both sites are quite "nerdy". Each in their own way.