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Looks great, and clearly a lot of time and thought invested. Not news to you, I'm sure, but these sites typically only last for a while. Because nobody has re

by tyingq 2y ago

Looks great, and clearly a lot of time and thought invested. Not news to you, I'm sure, but these sites typically only last for a while. Because nobody has really hit on a way to subsidize a reasonable free plan enough to pay for the bandwidth it collectively consumes, and to implement enough spam protection. Especially once it hits a certain adoption curve. So they either die or find a way to push ads, like imgur did. This is so nice though, I'm really rooting for it to find a way.

sweca 2y ago
Thanks! It's been operating for the past 3 years without any ads or third-party trackers, and I don't have plans to shut it down for the forseeable future.
- fragmede 2y ago
  No one ever starts these things with plans to shut them down, the question is how much money do you have for this right now, how much money is it burning per unit of time, and how long will that last if no one pays for a paid plan. I'm not asking you to answer those questions, but pointing out the reality of the economics of the situation. If an image goes viral, can you pay a 10x or 100x hosting bill? For how long? How much are you commiting to spend before shutting it down becomes an attractive option?
  - sweca 2y ago
    These are good questions to ask. Right now, the monetization strategy is profitable. If an image does go viral, which has happened before on popular Reddit posts that hit the front page, the infrastructure should be able to handle it for a while, and it should not be costly.
    - airtonix 2y ago
      you should protect yourself from free plans going viral and costing you more than you'd like with rate limiting rules of some kind.
      - sweca 2y ago
        I see your point, but the business model can sustain a large influx in free signups. I will keep this in mind though.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - shrubble 2y ago
    I can, right now, go find dedicated servers with 1gbps port that will deliver continuous 800Mbps of traffic 24x7, for $35/month. Bandwidth is not as expensive as people think.
    - scharman 2y ago
      You’ve intrigued me! Can you provide a link to such a hosting option? I’ve got some side projects I’d like to explore! Thanks in advance
      - mrbluecoat 2y ago
        https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
      - shrubble 2y ago
        Wholesaleinternet.net is just 1 of many places.
    - _rwo 2y ago
      > Bandwidth is not as expensive as people think Now we only need to explain that to AWS folks
lelandbatey 2y ago
Exactly; I still remember reading the imgur announcement post on reddit which had all the same descriptions. They were ad free and they were aiming to be great forever. Now though they're the "big bad". https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c07u7kr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c...
- fsckboy 2y ago
  In 2016, Imgur raised $40 million in funding from investors, valuing the company at around $500 million. In 2021, Imgur was acquired by the media company, MediaLab, for an undisclosed amount, reportedly around $200-300 million. Alan Schaaf, the CEO and founder, reportedly owned around 40% of the company at the time of the acquisition, which would have netted him a significant amount, estimated to be around $80-120 million. why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure in light of OP's stated goals? His stated goals are the same as imgur's stated goals. The imgur outcome is the stated goal of most of the people here. Think a little bit more inside the box.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - phito 2y ago
    So the goal is to make another unsustainable business, make everyone use and love it, then sell it to someone who will make it uterly shitty with the hopes of squeezing at least a bit of money out of the people who now rely on it, before it inevitably dies?
    - latexr 2y ago
      The goal is to make “fuck you money” then tell everyone, including users, to go fuck themselves. The specifics are up in the air. Don’t forget to talk about the “wonderful journey” it has been when announcing the sale.
    - bonestamp2 2y ago
stavros 2y ago
I found a way, pay me: https://imgz.org/ https://imgz.org/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago
  Now that is one finely worded site. More like these needed.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Haha, thank you, I'll make more.
jchook 2y ago
The spam protection is worth repeating. I made one of these back in 2005 and it was inevitably gangloaded with questionable content like p*rn, malware, software license keys, copyrighted material, etc.
- Modified3019 2y ago
  I remember a few years ago when some starry eye coder on Reddit made a page that would load and display the latest uploads to Imgur as tiles. It soon became apparent that this is not ideal. Same thing with tools that would try to archive Imgur, the results basically need manual review because the resulting dataset is a loaded gun.
- wiether 2y ago
  Just p*rn? You can consider yourself lucky. One week after publishing my own public instance of an IMGUR-like, I woke up with +150 emails from my host provider and a final one telling me that they had shutdown my server. Someone had posted ~500 pictures of "naked kids", a Canadian bot had found them and notified my host provider, who automatically took action. Everything happened in less than 30 minutes, between the first picture being uploaded and the server being shutdown. First I tried to restart the server and clean it, but I received new notifications as soon as it was online. So I just restored the last backup before it all started. And I removed the ability for public users to upload pictures. I will never ever publish a service allowing user to upload publicly any content.

by tyingq 2y ago

sweca 2y ago

Thanks! It's been operating for the past 3 years without any ads or third-party trackers, and I don't have plans to shut it down for the forseeable future.

fragmede 2y ago
No one ever starts these things with plans to shut them down, the question is how much money do you have for this right now, how much money is it burning per unit of time, and how long will that last if no one pays for a paid plan. I'm not asking you to answer those questions, but pointing out the reality of the economics of the situation. If an image goes viral, can you pay a 10x or 100x hosting bill? For how long? How much are you commiting to spend before shutting it down becomes an attractive option?
- sweca 2y ago
  These are good questions to ask. Right now, the monetization strategy is profitable. If an image does go viral, which has happened before on popular Reddit posts that hit the front page, the infrastructure should be able to handle it for a while, and it should not be costly.
  - airtonix 2y ago
    you should protect yourself from free plans going viral and costing you more than you'd like with rate limiting rules of some kind.
    - sweca 2y ago
      I see your point, but the business model can sustain a large influx in free signups. I will keep this in mind though.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shrubble 2y ago
  I can, right now, go find dedicated servers with 1gbps port that will deliver continuous 800Mbps of traffic 24x7, for $35/month. Bandwidth is not as expensive as people think.
  - scharman 2y ago
    You’ve intrigued me! Can you provide a link to such a hosting option? I’ve got some side projects I’d like to explore! Thanks in advance
    - mrbluecoat 2y ago
      https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
    - shrubble 2y ago
      Wholesaleinternet.net is just 1 of many places.
  - _rwo 2y ago
    > Bandwidth is not as expensive as people think Now we only need to explain that to AWS folks

lelandbatey 2y ago

Exactly; I still remember reading the imgur announcement post on reddit which had all the same descriptions. They were ad free and they were aiming to be great forever. Now though they're the "big bad". https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c07u7kr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c...

fsckboy 2y ago
In 2016, Imgur raised $40 million in funding from investors, valuing the company at around $500 million. In 2021, Imgur was acquired by the media company, MediaLab, for an undisclosed amount, reportedly around $200-300 million. Alan Schaaf, the CEO and founder, reportedly owned around 40% of the company at the time of the acquisition, which would have netted him a significant amount, estimated to be around $80-120 million. why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure in light of OP's stated goals? His stated goals are the same as imgur's stated goals. The imgur outcome is the stated goal of most of the people here. Think a little bit more inside the box.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- phito 2y ago
  So the goal is to make another unsustainable business, make everyone use and love it, then sell it to someone who will make it uterly shitty with the hopes of squeezing at least a bit of money out of the people who now rely on it, before it inevitably dies?
  - latexr 2y ago
    The goal is to make “fuck you money” then tell everyone, including users, to go fuck themselves. The specifics are up in the air. Don’t forget to talk about the “wonderful journey” it has been when announcing the sale.
  - bonestamp2 2y ago

stavros 2y ago

I found a way, pay me: https://imgz.org/ https://imgz.org/

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
Now that is one finely worded site. More like these needed.
- stavros 2y ago
  Haha, thank you, I'll make more.

jchook 2y ago

The spam protection is worth repeating. I made one of these back in 2005 and it was inevitably gangloaded with questionable content like p*rn, malware, software license keys, copyrighted material, etc.

Modified3019 2y ago
I remember a few years ago when some starry eye coder on Reddit made a page that would load and display the latest uploads to Imgur as tiles. It soon became apparent that this is not ideal. Same thing with tools that would try to archive Imgur, the results basically need manual review because the resulting dataset is a loaded gun.
wiether 2y ago
Just p*rn? You can consider yourself lucky. One week after publishing my own public instance of an IMGUR-like, I woke up with +150 emails from my host provider and a final one telling me that they had shutdown my server. Someone had posted ~500 pictures of "naked kids", a Canadian bot had found them and notified my host provider, who automatically took action. Everything happened in less than 30 minutes, between the first picture being uploaded and the server being shutdown. First I tried to restart the server and clean it, but I received new notifications as soon as it was online. So I just restored the last backup before it all started. And I removed the ability for public users to upload pictures. I will never ever publish a service allowing user to upload publicly any content.