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> Don't base your entire business on another business' product. That is a terrible generalization. That pretty much covers every ISV ever. And large companies
by daigoba66 12y ago
> Don't base your entire business on another business' product.
That is a terrible generalization. That pretty much covers every ISV ever. And large companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple all have a history of "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" when it comes to closing out 3rd parties.
However I think your point is valid for companies like Twitter, and to a slightly lesser extent Facebook. These companies don't have a vested interest in 3rd parties building on their platforms.
- robert_tweed 12y agoIndeed, the obvious counter-example to that lesson is imgur.
- danudey 12y agoimgur is a good service even without Reddit, though (and I often use it just to send nice, short, copyable image links to people). TwitPic without Twitter is almost worthless, like a worse imgur. Its single defining characteristic was 'put pictures on twitter automatically!' but as soon as Twitter supported posting photos directly their entire business model was gone. Honestly I'm surprised they've lasted this long; they had no differentiating factor other than being new, and they had no real features that anyone cared about. I haven't even seen a twitpic link in years, let alone clicked on one.
- billmalarky 12y agoImgur has taken clear steps to hedge itself from its dependency on reddit though.
- valarauca1 12y agoYet it has not succeeded. Most of users base browses the sites "Viral" gallery. Which is nothing more then a "Reddit's 24 hour greatest hits", a surprisingly low number of images make it into imgur's gallery from imgur itself. TL;DR No reddit, no front page content on imgur.
- LukeB_UK 12y agoExcept there's quite a bit of content there that's not from reddit.
- valarauca1 12y agoThere isn't. User submitted is horrible. Most of the sites visitors are people uploading/sharing images normally via direct linking.
- MrGrim 12y agoI disagree. User-sub is actually a really good time. Maybe you're just browsing user-sub/newest first? Try this: http://imgur.com/new/viral http://imgur.com/new/viral
- atomicUpdate 12y ago> TL;DR No reddit, no front page content on imgur. With the number of image macro posts that are on the reddit front page at any given point, I'd say their relationship is pretty symbiotic. Without imgur, I'd argue that reddit loses a significant number of their highest viewed posts, and vice-versa. Reddit would certainly have content in their smaller subreddits, but their largest ones (AdviceAnimals, funny, pics, etc.) would be ghost towns without imgur.
- ben0x539 12y agoWithout imgur, they'd use any of a dozen of another imagehosts, like they did before imgur got big.
- valarauca1 12y agoReddit can live without imgur, and has lived without imgur. Its imgur who still needs reddit.
- skeletonjelly 12y ago
- frostmatthew 12y ago> Indeed, the obvious counter-example to that lesson is imgur. Is that actually a good counter-example? Are they profitable? If so, would that continue to be the case if reddit began prohibiting linking to imgur?
- wodenokoto 12y agoReddit is one of the bigger investors in imgur. I think that's how it's a counter- example.
- MrGrim 12y agoImgur was bootstrapped for 5 years and profitable the whole time. Also, less than half of Imgur's traffic comes from reddit.