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You either did something questionable or broke the rules. Also in reality, you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially th

by korzun 13y ago

You either did something questionable or broke the rules. Also in reality, you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
The feature we brought to the table to compete with was turning GIFs into HTML5 video, so they save bandwidth and get extra features. This seems to be doing pretty well, though another competitor has shown up and seems to be doing better than we are in that space - even though they offer an inferior service. As for questionably breaking the rules, we pretty much followed in Imgur's footsteps. Even if this was too much, it hardly justifies the crucification we received.
- korzun 13y ago
  The difference is that you were too late in the game. When image hosting started blowing up alternatives to Imgur were horrible, horrible ad farms with low quality images that took several seconds to load. Comparing to what Imgur brings to the table and what you bring to the table, the different is not that drastic. Also you can't compare rules Reddit has in place now with rules it had years ago. There has been weeks where multiple image providers with shitty off the shelf solutions would be doing same thing you were trying to do after seeing Imgur take off every single day. Like I said, it's just too late at this point. Find another market.
  - korzun 13y ago
    It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such. I founded similar service before Imgur was born and was trying to compete with them way before you did. Word of advice, stop allowing NSFW. You do not want to go down that path, there is no money in it and it will impact your business in a negative way when you decide to become profitable.
    - prawn 13y ago
      "It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such." This after: "you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game." "it's just too late at this point. Find another market." Reads like you're trying to discourage them to me.
      - korzun 13y ago
        Suggesting to focus on a different market is a discouragement now? You are on HN last time I checked.
        nknighthb 13y ago
        Always has been. We're speaking English here, last time I checked. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discouraging http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discouraging
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    Thanks for the discouragement, but I'll continue trying. We aren't doing so bad now: http://www.reddit.com/domain/mediacru.sh/new http://www.reddit.com/domain/mediacru.sh/new There has been a great response to "HTML5 GIFs", though. Many people are very eager to use them instead of Imgur. The problem we face there is that a competing service has shown up and attracted more attention without consequence from the Reddit admins, so we're trying to get back into that area.
    - thenewbtg 13y ago
      @Sir as a long time reddit user, your total blameshifting of your services inability to compete with gfycat, coming right after listening to you blameshift on why you couldn't compete with imgur, stinks to high heaven from here. At what point do you accept responsibility for the success and failure of your ability to create a service and make it popular? At what point do you stop externalizing the blame and get down to the hard task (or simply lucky outcome) of succeeding? For what it's worth, I just made a gfycat of a youtube video to share with my mom. So I decided to do the exact same process for your service that you tout as superior to gfycat. With gfycat, it was super simple to paste the youtube link, select the time frame and output the html5 video/gif. Done in under a minute. Your service has not actually completed an "upload" of the youtube video from a link no matter how long I've waited. Whenever I click on the random floating microphone near the top left of your services homepage, I simply see "an error occurred". I don't know how long I'm supposed to wait for this to work, but I just made 3 more youtube->gfycats while waiting. I'm not lying, here are the 3 youtube -> gfycats that finished while your service says "uploading" without a progress bar at all (gfycat has a working progress bar so I can helpfully tell that it downloads the youtube video in about 10-15 seconds). http://gfycat.com/UnitedGoodnaturedArcherfish http://gfycat.com/UnitedGoodnaturedArcherfish http://www.gfycat.com/RemoteWelltodoLadybird http://www.gfycat.com/RemoteWelltodoLadybird http://www.gfycat.com/FeminineCapitalCob http://www.gfycat.com/FeminineCapitalCob No offense but gfycat obviously blows your service out of the water, so perhaps you should play catch-up instead of blaming reddit admins? Which is silly anyway, because gfycat succeeds through comments and people sharing it and talking about it, not through owner spam or something else. For the record it's been over 10 minutes since I began a youtube -> html5 conversion on your site and it still says "uploading" and I think it's broken.
opendais 13y ago
As far as I'm aware, he did nothing that was more rulebreaking/questionable than MrGrimm/Imgur did [self promotion via links to imgur]. http://www.reddit.com/r/awwnime/comments/1mlr4o/a_little_miku_dance_vocaloid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/awwnime/comments/1mlr4o/a_little_mik...
- bane 13y ago
  Which is of course explicitly against the rules. Turns out reddit was an investor which was not revealed until today.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    Actually, it's not. Reddit runs with a loose "10% rule", where you should strive to make 10% or less of your activity promotional.
    - bane 13y ago
      Take a look at MrGrim's posting history for yourself. http://www.reddit.com/user/MrGrim http://www.reddit.com/user/MrGrim It's not 100% imgur anymore, but he's well over 10%. It turns out having Reddit be a secret investor in your company gives you all kinds of leeway.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
        Oh, I thought you were implying that our own promontional stuff on Reddit was over the line.

by korzun 13y ago

You either did something questionable or broke the rules. Also in reality, you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago

The feature we brought to the table to compete with was turning GIFs into HTML5 video, so they save bandwidth and get extra features. This seems to be doing pretty well, though another competitor has shown up and seems to be doing better than we are in that space - even though they offer an inferior service. As for questionably breaking the rules, we pretty much followed in Imgur's footsteps. Even if this was too much, it hardly justifies the crucification we received.

korzun 13y ago
The difference is that you were too late in the game. When image hosting started blowing up alternatives to Imgur were horrible, horrible ad farms with low quality images that took several seconds to load. Comparing to what Imgur brings to the table and what you bring to the table, the different is not that drastic. Also you can't compare rules Reddit has in place now with rules it had years ago. There has been weeks where multiple image providers with shitty off the shelf solutions would be doing same thing you were trying to do after seeing Imgur take off every single day. Like I said, it's just too late at this point. Find another market.
- korzun 13y ago
  It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such. I founded similar service before Imgur was born and was trying to compete with them way before you did. Word of advice, stop allowing NSFW. You do not want to go down that path, there is no money in it and it will impact your business in a negative way when you decide to become profitable.
  - prawn 13y ago
    "It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such." This after: "you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game." "it's just too late at this point. Find another market." Reads like you're trying to discourage them to me.
    - korzun 13y ago
      Suggesting to focus on a different market is a discouragement now? You are on HN last time I checked.
      - nknighthb 13y ago
        Always has been. We're speaking English here, last time I checked. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discouraging http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discouraging
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Thanks for the discouragement, but I'll continue trying. We aren't doing so bad now: http://www.reddit.com/domain/mediacru.sh/new http://www.reddit.com/domain/mediacru.sh/new There has been a great response to "HTML5 GIFs", though. Many people are very eager to use them instead of Imgur. The problem we face there is that a competing service has shown up and attracted more attention without consequence from the Reddit admins, so we're trying to get back into that area.
  - thenewbtg 13y ago
    @Sir as a long time reddit user, your total blameshifting of your services inability to compete with gfycat, coming right after listening to you blameshift on why you couldn't compete with imgur, stinks to high heaven from here. At what point do you accept responsibility for the success and failure of your ability to create a service and make it popular? At what point do you stop externalizing the blame and get down to the hard task (or simply lucky outcome) of succeeding? For what it's worth, I just made a gfycat of a youtube video to share with my mom. So I decided to do the exact same process for your service that you tout as superior to gfycat. With gfycat, it was super simple to paste the youtube link, select the time frame and output the html5 video/gif. Done in under a minute. Your service has not actually completed an "upload" of the youtube video from a link no matter how long I've waited. Whenever I click on the random floating microphone near the top left of your services homepage, I simply see "an error occurred". I don't know how long I'm supposed to wait for this to work, but I just made 3 more youtube->gfycats while waiting. I'm not lying, here are the 3 youtube -> gfycats that finished while your service says "uploading" without a progress bar at all (gfycat has a working progress bar so I can helpfully tell that it downloads the youtube video in about 10-15 seconds). http://gfycat.com/UnitedGoodnaturedArcherfish http://gfycat.com/UnitedGoodnaturedArcherfish http://www.gfycat.com/RemoteWelltodoLadybird http://www.gfycat.com/RemoteWelltodoLadybird http://www.gfycat.com/FeminineCapitalCob http://www.gfycat.com/FeminineCapitalCob No offense but gfycat obviously blows your service out of the water, so perhaps you should play catch-up instead of blaming reddit admins? Which is silly anyway, because gfycat succeeds through comments and people sharing it and talking about it, not through owner spam or something else. For the record it's been over 10 minutes since I began a youtube -> html5 conversion on your site and it still says "uploading" and I think it's broken.

opendais 13y ago

As far as I'm aware, he did nothing that was more rulebreaking/questionable than MrGrimm/Imgur did [self promotion via links to imgur]. http://www.reddit.com/r/awwnime/comments/1mlr4o/a_little_miku_dance_vocaloid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/awwnime/comments/1mlr4o/a_little_mik...

bane 13y ago
Which is of course explicitly against the rules. Turns out reddit was an investor which was not revealed until today.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Actually, it's not. Reddit runs with a loose "10% rule", where you should strive to make 10% or less of your activity promotional.
  - bane 13y ago
    Take a look at MrGrim's posting history for yourself. http://www.reddit.com/user/MrGrim http://www.reddit.com/user/MrGrim It's not 100% imgur anymore, but he's well over 10%. It turns out having Reddit be a secret investor in your company gives you all kinds of leeway.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
      Oh, I thought you were implying that our own promontional stuff on Reddit was over the line.