11 ms·

I remember the post that launched imgur. It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. So many redditors complained about the crappy image sharing sites

I remember the post that launched imgur. It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. So many redditors complained about the crappy image sharing sites...lots of them were verboten to use on reddit because they were so spammy, or slow, or whatever. There was no clear leader in the image sharing space. Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in), even if it were an acceptable place to upload weird random pictures (I know many people who do, but they just don't know about reddit and imgur yet). So...imgur's founder saw a very clear need, and humbly pointed redditors to it. It took off because it was amazing in its simplicity and sincerity. imgur's founder clearly wanted you to share funny pictures in imgur, even if he couldn't figure out how to make it pay him money for every image. He just wanted to solve a very real problem that caused millions of people tiny amounts of pain. (When picking a problem, pick one that causes either a few people a lot of pain, or one that causes a lot of people a little bit of pain. You're unlikely to find a problem that causes a lot of people a lot of pain, since those are already usually very competitive.)

timdiggerm 13y ago
> Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in) Well that's not true. Just get the image url and you're good to go.
- code_duck 13y ago
  Facebook denies images based on their privacy controls even if you are viewing a .jpg URL. People try to share those links often on a forum on which I'm a member, and when you view the link not logged in to FB or not connected to the proper proper 'friend', you receive a 'this content is not currently available' message.
yxhuvud 13y ago
Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer.
- MarkTanamil 13y ago
  Theres an app for that.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer. Have you seen the price of cancer drugs?
super-serial 13y ago
I also remember the post that originated imgur... because I was addicted to reddit back then. The founder called imgur a "gift to reddit"... http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur.
- cacat 13y ago
  > Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur. wat
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    People want things for free. News at eleven.
- albedoa 13y ago
  > Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur. I'd be surprised if many readers know what the hell you're talking about.
- ableal 13y ago
  And yet, 'MrGrim' is still using reddit, namely this nice post last week: "I'm finally going to build the computer of my dreams" http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1mjbvl/build_ready_after_a_lifetime_of_building_budget/ http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1mjbvl/build_ready... Nice.
- alex-g 13y ago
  It's almost as if reddit karma is totally meaningless!
nikcub 13y ago
> It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. I agree. They make it look lucky because they executed so well. Good entrepreneurs have a habit of making it look easy to outsiders (Zuck was lucky because he was at Harvard and had the right connections, etc.) There is a new problem of this type at reddit and other sites if somebody wants a project idea to work on. The problem is animated GIF's. At the moment most animated GIF's are too large, not optimized and the sites are slow. This has been a constant long-term complain on some of the sports subs that I frequent that post highlights from games. You press the button to display the animated GIF inline and it loads a couple of frames a second and takes 10-30x the GIF length to load. There are two factors here: 1. A lot of people don't know how to optimize animated GIF's. You don't need 24 or 30 frames per second where 8 will suffice, and you don't need full image quality on mobiles or tablets, or even on desktops. You can cut down the frame rate automatically and scale up the compression for some clients to load faster. 2. A lot of the regular hosts are overloaded and slow. A service idea for animated GIF's would be to specify a video to cut from then have the service automatically create and load desktop, mobile and tablet versions with low frame rates and hosted from a decent CDN. The regular posters are now using Google+ since it loads, but they haven't solved the optimization part. You don't have to spend a lot of time online to see and identify these pain points, you just have to be in the right mindset where you notice them and can identify the opportunity. edit: If anybody wants to do this, email me (in profile) and i'll send you my notes. It is something that I considered putting together but I don't have the time. I did do some research though (i'm a mod at some sports subs). If you serve optimized versions for different devices then that would be a good reason to get submissions linking to an HTML page rather than hot-linking to an image. Pipeline would be: upload video -> convert to 3 optimized version -> visitor lands on your HTML page -> serve version based on UA running these services isn't as expensive as what it used to be, CND's are now cheap. imgur is profitable with 12 staff and running on AWS, with no ads.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  In case anyone is wondering; this guide does wonders with GIF size reduction: http://blog.room208.org/post/48793543478 http://blog.room208.org/post/48793543478 It helped me to go from 6 MB to 100 KB for my specific type of video to animated GIF conversion.
crocowhile 13y ago
I made the very first imgur upload plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/imgur-uploader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/imgur-uploade... I like to think it helped imgur growing bigger. Too bad this was the time reddit gold was not a thing yet.
B-Con 13y ago
> I remember the post that launched imgur. So do I. It's kind of funny to see some of the things that have been born out of reddit or other social communities, having read the posts that resulted in them. On that note, I wonder how the history of project origins is going to change, in a sentimental way. We hear folklore of person X talking to person Y at dinner, which birthed projected Z. Now we can link to where MrGrim first promoted one his project. For the interested, he did an AMA on reddit[1]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...

timdiggerm 13y ago

> Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in) Well that's not true. Just get the image url and you're good to go.

code_duck 13y ago
Facebook denies images based on their privacy controls even if you are viewing a .jpg URL. People try to share those links often on a forum on which I'm a member, and when you view the link not logged in to FB or not connected to the proper proper 'friend', you receive a 'this content is not currently available' message.

yxhuvud 13y ago

Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer.

MarkTanamil 13y ago
Theres an app for that.
001sky 13y ago
Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer. Have you seen the price of cancer drugs?

super-serial 13y ago

I also remember the post that originated imgur... because I was addicted to reddit back then. The founder called imgur a "gift to reddit"... http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur.

cacat 13y ago
> Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur. wat
- Ygg2 13y ago
  People want things for free. News at eleven.
albedoa 13y ago
> Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur. I'd be surprised if many readers know what the hell you're talking about.
ableal 13y ago
And yet, 'MrGrim' is still using reddit, namely this nice post last week: "I'm finally going to build the computer of my dreams" http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1mjbvl/build_ready_after_a_lifetime_of_building_budget/ http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1mjbvl/build_ready... Nice.
alex-g 13y ago
It's almost as if reddit karma is totally meaningless!

nikcub 13y ago

> It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. I agree. They make it look lucky because they executed so well. Good entrepreneurs have a habit of making it look easy to outsiders (Zuck was lucky because he was at Harvard and had the right connections, etc.) There is a new problem of this type at reddit and other sites if somebody wants a project idea to work on. The problem is animated GIF's. At the moment most animated GIF's are too large, not optimized and the sites are slow. This has been a constant long-term complain on some of the sports subs that I frequent that post highlights from games. You press the button to display the animated GIF inline and it loads a couple of frames a second and takes 10-30x the GIF length to load. There are two factors here: 1. A lot of people don't know how to optimize animated GIF's. You don't need 24 or 30 frames per second where 8 will suffice, and you don't need full image quality on mobiles or tablets, or even on desktops. You can cut down the frame rate automatically and scale up the compression for some clients to load faster. 2. A lot of the regular hosts are overloaded and slow. A service idea for animated GIF's would be to specify a video to cut from then have the service automatically create and load desktop, mobile and tablet versions with low frame rates and hosted from a decent CDN. The regular posters are now using Google+ since it loads, but they haven't solved the optimization part. You don't have to spend a lot of time online to see and identify these pain points, you just have to be in the right mindset where you notice them and can identify the opportunity. edit: If anybody wants to do this, email me (in profile) and i'll send you my notes. It is something that I considered putting together but I don't have the time. I did do some research though (i'm a mod at some sports subs). If you serve optimized versions for different devices then that would be a good reason to get submissions linking to an HTML page rather than hot-linking to an image. Pipeline would be: upload video -> convert to 3 optimized version -> visitor lands on your HTML page -> serve version based on UA running these services isn't as expensive as what it used to be, CND's are now cheap. imgur is profitable with 12 staff and running on AWS, with no ads.

mtrimpe 13y ago
In case anyone is wondering; this guide does wonders with GIF size reduction: http://blog.room208.org/post/48793543478 http://blog.room208.org/post/48793543478 It helped me to go from 6 MB to 100 KB for my specific type of video to animated GIF conversion.

crocowhile 13y ago

I made the very first imgur upload plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/imgur-uploader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/imgur-uploade... I like to think it helped imgur growing bigger. Too bad this was the time reddit gold was not a thing yet.

B-Con 13y ago

> I remember the post that launched imgur. So do I. It's kind of funny to see some of the things that have been born out of reddit or other social communities, having read the posts that resulted in them. On that note, I wonder how the history of project origins is going to change, in a sentimental way. We hear folklore of person X talking to person Y at dinner, which birthed projected Z. Now we can link to where MrGrim first promoted one his project. For the interested, he did an AMA on reddit[1]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...