

How Imgur Became a Photo Sharing Hit - vinhnx
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-23/how-imgur-became-a-photo-sharing-hit

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kalleboo
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
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.

~~~
swang
No that was WaffleImages. It was built after Macbeth tried to monetize by
spamming SA.

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thejosh
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. :)

~~~
bluedino
Reddit can also be hostile to other image hosts

~~~
fafner
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.

------
scrollaway
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
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.

------
oneweirdtrick
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
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
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
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.

~~~
vilhelm_s
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
A while ago, their ad network started to serve .apk to Android users (see
[https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_t...](https://pay.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1qwb2i/weird_apk_trying_to_get_on_my_phone_from_imgur/)).
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.

------
sheetjs
Active discussion on reddit from yesterday:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_im...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2409uc/til_imgur_is_creating_tools_that_will_let_users/)

------
bane
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)

------
higherpurpose
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.

~~~
mikecb
What do you think the bid would be? I'm thinking 100 billion.

~~~
cdelsolar
nah, I think it would be closer to 1-2 trillion.

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

