> There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill. There are plenty of these around, so I doubt it was being

> There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill. There are plenty of these around, so I doubt it was being free and simple that made them "win" (we have an ad-free one with even simpler UI, for example). There were 2 factors that contributed most to their success in my opinion: a) being used much on Reddit, b) being awesome at implementing many useful, well-designed features. Without a), they would probably still have won this race, but at a much slower pace.