4 ms·
Let's dig a bit deeper and ask why is imgur doing these things? The fact is image uploading is one of the most commoditized services you can offer. Long term, t
by briholt 12y ago
Let's dig a bit deeper and ask why is imgur doing these things? The fact is image uploading is one of the most commoditized services you can offer. Long term, the most you could possibly get out of that is razor-thin margins, assuming Google, Amazon, or Microsoft doesn't just walk in one day and crush your entire business with one fell swoop. Clearly, imgur is trying to build some competitive advantages around their business - namely network effect by creating a community on top of their content destination. They're comparing the Facebook to Dropbox and asking which business model looks better. I'm sure they realize this makes straight image uploading slightly more of a hassle, but from their perspective the business benefits of community far outweigh the loss efficiency-oriented uploaders. They know it's annoying and they don't care.
- RexRollman 12y agoI think if there was profit to be had in this, Google, MS, or Amazon would have already bought or started an image hoster. My personal favorite was omploader, which I used quite a bit to share screenshots.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> I'm sure they realize this makes straight image uploading slightly more of a hassle, but from their perspective the business benefits of community far outweigh the loss efficiency-oriented uploaders. They know it's annoying and they don't care. Which means they'll most likely die quickly. Nobody cares about their "business side", they were an Internet No 1. image hosting because they were hassle-free and mostly bullshit-free. What I expect to see is most users leaving to someone willing to provide no-bullshit upload service, and imgur to crawl into hole and die, like PhotoBucket or ImageShack. The sad thing is, many links will probably get broken. Web, unfortunately, is extremely fragile.