5 ms·

How Imgur Became a Photo Sharing Hit

57 points by vinhnx 13y ago

higherpurpose 13y ago
Now that Andreessen invested a huge amount in them, I'm counting the days until it's being acquired by Facebook. Seems to be his modus operandi. An easy 20x ROI with this strategy.
- drunkcatsdgaf 13y ago
  I feel like facebook is a giant orgy of startups now.
  - sixQuarks 13y ago
    That's the whole point. They know that social networks are not stable in the long run. They are now a new type of tech company, one with a huge pocket (in stock), and willing to make big bets with it. Facebook is a tech rollup, and in my opinion, if they keep absorbing the most promising startups (and allow them to run independently), they could be a trillion dollar company with FB the social network making up less than 10% of that market value.
- mikecb 13y ago
  What do you think the bid would be? I'm thinking 100 billion.
  - cdelsolar 13y ago
    nah, I think it would be closer to 1-2 trillion.
kalleboo 13y ago
How Imgur Became a Photo-Sharing Hit: They didn't rate limit or show ads to referers from reddit.com. Before imgur we had imageshack.us which built it's success on forums.somethingawful.com. ImageShack's attempt at jumping on the Next Big Thing, yfrog.com, was thwarted when twitter added their own image sharing.
- endianswap 13y ago
  Was Imageshack the one that was hosted on several different volunteers' servers? I remember back in the day being a part of a goon-run image hosting service and I can't remember which one it was. In the one I'm remembering when you'd go to e.g. imageshack.us/image it'd send you to e.g. kalleboo.imageshack.us/image for the real hosting of that image.
  - LukeB_UK 13y ago
    I think that was waffleimages.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - swang 13y ago
    No that was WaffleImages. It was built after Macbeth tried to monetize by spamming SA.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  For context, they are showing ads to referers from social media websites (Facebook/Twitter/G+). (Wrote a blog post about it here: http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ ) If they did that in Reddit, hilarity would ensue.
  - neotek 13y ago
    They do, to a degree. When you view an imgur gallery in the Alien Blue reddit app, it now redirects you to the imgur mobile view which is clumsy to use and has ads.
- criswell 13y ago
  Fast, useful and easy to use.
- bluedino 13y ago
  ImageShack had a problem with people directly linking images, since that doesn't allow them to show ads, so they changed things around and SA didn't like it, then they blocked each other, the SA admins attempted to make a local copy of any image that was hosted there, to preserve Photoshop Phriday and other threads... A couple of people on SA ran WaffleImages for a while, where any user could donate a server to host images, but that didn't last for too long.
thejosh 13y ago
Imgur is one of those sites where noone believed it would last, due to the vast amount of money it takes to run a site like that (at the time) and it being the main way people posted images to reddit. Glad to see it has lasted and has a community built around images posted from reddit. :)
- pyvpx 13y ago
  what people seem to gloss over is he/they had good friends at Voxel (iirc) which was a growing CDN. they gave him bandwidth on the cheap in the hopes they're traffic would surge. it did, and everyone was happy. if imageshack could have made the numbers work with a performant CDN back then, they'd have made the cut and we'd probably be talking about something else :)
- bluedino 13y ago
  Reddit can also be hostile to other image hosts
  - X-Istence 13y ago
    A lot of that has to do with the fact that other image hosts are slow!
  - fafner 13y ago
    As the article mentions most image hosts simply don't scale to the reddit user base and once an image gets too popular they either pull it or break down under the load. And more importantly many other image hosts add aggressive advertisement and don't allow direct linking. (Imgur recently started to redirect direct image links to the normal image view which has ads for referrals not from reddit though.) I think the other image hoster which is similar is http://minus.com/ http://minus.com/. (And min.us, unlike imgur, does not downscale images or force convert PNG to JPEG or increases JPEG compression. Although I think you can prevent imgur from doing this with a "premium account".) edit: Someone also mentioned https://mediacru.sh/ https://mediacru.sh/ which is open source.
- georgiecasey 13y ago
bane 13y ago
I think it's worth revisiting the discussion we had here a while ago when they rose their VC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524216
oneweirdtrick 13y ago
I am surprised there was no mention in the article of Imgur stripping Exif data off of uploads. To me that seems like a nice bonus.
subdane 13y ago
They solved a problem for a highly engaged network, making it simple to post and share an image in formats necessary for forums and not tied to identity. The first time I used Imgur, it was so simple, so delightful and so not monetized I wondered how it would last.
- fancy_betta 13y ago
  They monetize the hell out of it now. A few times a day I click an imgur link and the page will show the image for a fraction of a second before forwarding to a full-page ad. It won't last much longer before someone else comes along with something less annoying and fewer ads.
  - knome 13y ago
    I've never seen a fullpage ad on imgur. They've got sidebar ads, and the occasional promoted image, but never an overlay or popup. If you're getting the latter, you might want to scan for malware.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      Never seen a fullpage ad either, although I finally had to add imgur to adblock when they started autoplaying video ads.
    - vilhelm_s 13y ago
      I see this every couple of days: http://imgur.com/gallery/AluV1G0 http://imgur.com/gallery/AluV1G0 I somewhat doubt it's malware on my computer, because it only happens on imgur.
      - Spittie 13y ago
        A while ago, their ad network started to serve .apk to Android users (see https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_trying_to_get_on_my_phone_from_imgur/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_t...). This is way worse than "just a fullscreen ads", since a malware on Android can easily steal your contacts and make you pay a fortune using premium numbers. Their ads provider are probably doing this without the consent from imgur, but I doubt they'll change ads provider. After all, the one serving the more shady ads are the one paying more.
scrollaway 13y ago
In another article a few days ago, someone mentioned mediacrush (https://mediacru.sh/ https://mediacru.sh/) which is an open source alternative to imgur. After the rumors about a sale to Yahoo, I personally prefer an open source site to have my data rather than Yahoo...
- ithought 13y ago
  When I log into my Flickr account, it says my account has been recycled after too much inactivity. My URL username is different than my account name and I'm unsure if it's actually linked to another Yahoo account. But that account is either my real name Yahoo ID or my real name @ymail.com. Yahoo just referred to one username as "96b2a95890acd0cb201aaeb385f6482e". I can't log in, can't reset the accounts, and am confused by what is what. Of course, ultimately it is my fault but my photos are stuck. They are still online in low resolution.
sheetjs 13y ago
Active discussion on reddit from yesterday: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_imgur_is_creating_tools_that_will_let_users/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_im...
dosh 13y ago
Imgur combined with bufferapp makes a great use case for running twitter accounts.

57 points by vinhnx 13y ago

Now that Andreessen invested a huge amount in them, I'm counting the days until it's being acquired by Facebook. Seems to be his modus operandi. An easy 20x ROI with this strategy.

drunkcatsdgaf 13y ago
I feel like facebook is a giant orgy of startups now.
- sixQuarks 13y ago
  That's the whole point. They know that social networks are not stable in the long run. They are now a new type of tech company, one with a huge pocket (in stock), and willing to make big bets with it. Facebook is a tech rollup, and in my opinion, if they keep absorbing the most promising startups (and allow them to run independently), they could be a trillion dollar company with FB the social network making up less than 10% of that market value.
mikecb 13y ago
What do you think the bid would be? I'm thinking 100 billion.
- cdelsolar 13y ago
  nah, I think it would be closer to 1-2 trillion.

kalleboo 13y ago

How Imgur Became a Photo-Sharing Hit: They didn't rate limit or show ads to referers from reddit.com. Before imgur we had imageshack.us which built it's success on forums.somethingawful.com. ImageShack's attempt at jumping on the Next Big Thing, yfrog.com, was thwarted when twitter added their own image sharing.

endianswap 13y ago
Was Imageshack the one that was hosted on several different volunteers' servers? I remember back in the day being a part of a goon-run image hosting service and I can't remember which one it was. In the one I'm remembering when you'd go to e.g. imageshack.us/image it'd send you to e.g. kalleboo.imageshack.us/image for the real hosting of that image.
- LukeB_UK 13y ago
  I think that was waffleimages.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- swang 13y ago
  No that was WaffleImages. It was built after Macbeth tried to monetize by spamming SA.
minimaxir 13y ago
For context, they are showing ads to referers from social media websites (Facebook/Twitter/G+). (Wrote a blog post about it here: http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/moved-temporarily/ ) If they did that in Reddit, hilarity would ensue.
- neotek 13y ago
  They do, to a degree. When you view an imgur gallery in the Alien Blue reddit app, it now redirects you to the imgur mobile view which is clumsy to use and has ads.
criswell 13y ago
Fast, useful and easy to use.
bluedino 13y ago
ImageShack had a problem with people directly linking images, since that doesn't allow them to show ads, so they changed things around and SA didn't like it, then they blocked each other, the SA admins attempted to make a local copy of any image that was hosted there, to preserve Photoshop Phriday and other threads... A couple of people on SA ran WaffleImages for a while, where any user could donate a server to host images, but that didn't last for too long.

thejosh 13y ago

Imgur is one of those sites where noone believed it would last, due to the vast amount of money it takes to run a site like that (at the time) and it being the main way people posted images to reddit. Glad to see it has lasted and has a community built around images posted from reddit. :)

pyvpx 13y ago
what people seem to gloss over is he/they had good friends at Voxel (iirc) which was a growing CDN. they gave him bandwidth on the cheap in the hopes they're traffic would surge. it did, and everyone was happy. if imageshack could have made the numbers work with a performant CDN back then, they'd have made the cut and we'd probably be talking about something else :)
bluedino 13y ago
Reddit can also be hostile to other image hosts
- X-Istence 13y ago
  A lot of that has to do with the fact that other image hosts are slow!
- fafner 13y ago
  As the article mentions most image hosts simply don't scale to the reddit user base and once an image gets too popular they either pull it or break down under the load. And more importantly many other image hosts add aggressive advertisement and don't allow direct linking. (Imgur recently started to redirect direct image links to the normal image view which has ads for referrals not from reddit though.) I think the other image hoster which is similar is http://minus.com/ http://minus.com/. (And min.us, unlike imgur, does not downscale images or force convert PNG to JPEG or increases JPEG compression. Although I think you can prevent imgur from doing this with a "premium account".) edit: Someone also mentioned https://mediacru.sh/ https://mediacru.sh/ which is open source.
georgiecasey 13y ago

bane 13y ago

I think it's worth revisiting the discussion we had here a while ago when they rose their VC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524216

oneweirdtrick 13y ago

I am surprised there was no mention in the article of Imgur stripping Exif data off of uploads. To me that seems like a nice bonus.

subdane 13y ago

They solved a problem for a highly engaged network, making it simple to post and share an image in formats necessary for forums and not tied to identity. The first time I used Imgur, it was so simple, so delightful and so not monetized I wondered how it would last.

fancy_betta 13y ago
They monetize the hell out of it now. A few times a day I click an imgur link and the page will show the image for a fraction of a second before forwarding to a full-page ad. It won't last much longer before someone else comes along with something less annoying and fewer ads.
- knome 13y ago
  I've never seen a fullpage ad on imgur. They've got sidebar ads, and the occasional promoted image, but never an overlay or popup. If you're getting the latter, you might want to scan for malware.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    Never seen a fullpage ad either, although I finally had to add imgur to adblock when they started autoplaying video ads.
  - vilhelm_s 13y ago
    I see this every couple of days: http://imgur.com/gallery/AluV1G0 http://imgur.com/gallery/AluV1G0 I somewhat doubt it's malware on my computer, because it only happens on imgur.
    - Spittie 13y ago
      A while ago, their ad network started to serve .apk to Android users (see https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_trying_to_get_on_my_phone_from_imgur/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_t...). This is way worse than "just a fullscreen ads", since a malware on Android can easily steal your contacts and make you pay a fortune using premium numbers. Their ads provider are probably doing this without the consent from imgur, but I doubt they'll change ads provider. After all, the one serving the more shady ads are the one paying more.

scrollaway 13y ago

In another article a few days ago, someone mentioned mediacrush (https://mediacru.sh/ https://mediacru.sh/) which is an open source alternative to imgur. After the rumors about a sale to Yahoo, I personally prefer an open source site to have my data rather than Yahoo...

ithought 13y ago
When I log into my Flickr account, it says my account has been recycled after too much inactivity. My URL username is different than my account name and I'm unsure if it's actually linked to another Yahoo account. But that account is either my real name Yahoo ID or my real name @ymail.com. Yahoo just referred to one username as "96b2a95890acd0cb201aaeb385f6482e". I can't log in, can't reset the accounts, and am confused by what is what. Of course, ultimately it is my fault but my photos are stuck. They are still online in low resolution.

sheetjs 13y ago

Active discussion on reddit from yesterday: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_imgur_is_creating_tools_that_will_let_users/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_im...

dosh 13y ago

Imgur combined with bufferapp makes a great use case for running twitter accounts.