
Image Hosting on Reddit - no_gravity
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4p5dm9/image_hosting_on_reddit/
======
dmerrick
It's really unfortunate that Imgur took such a turn for the worse.

Originally it seemed like Imgur was a benevolent gift to Reddit users... a
clean, simple, easy to use image hosting service that everyone could use for
free. I guess it was too good to be true, because now it's tricky to link to a
direct image (though not impossible), and the standard landing page is filled
with unnecessary clutter.

As an aside: if you're looking for an amusing read, the "IgnorantImgur"
subreddit[0] is filled with examples of people from the Imgur community who
seem to be oblivious to Imgur's origin as an image hosting site for Reddit
users.

[0]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top](http://www.reddit.com/r/IgnorantImgur/top)

~~~
shalmanese
What really killed them was the GIF explosion. Average image size remains
largely static and bandwidth and storage costs steadily decline so if you get
your timing exactly right, you can hit that sweet spot where your CPM declines
slower than your hosting costs and provide an increasingly profitable
business.

However, GIFs completely upended that calculation by increasing the average
file size by an order of magnitude and pushed the viability of a cruft free
image host further down the road by another few years.

Frankly, I'm surprised Google never just bought imgur and absorbed it under
youtube or something. Being the default place on the web to host images seems
like something way more strategically valuable to Google than any standalone
image host.

~~~
galistoca
Why would Google buy when they can just create one overnight if they wanted?
Probably much more stable than Imgur too.

Imgur is just a commodity. Youtube is not.

~~~
slig
Imgur has a community. Tons of users that goes directly there to see funny
images and GIFs.

Yes, Google can create a infinite scalable image hosting overnight, but
creating a community is a lot harder.

~~~
mmanfrin
Imageshack was in the same position 5 years ago. And Photobucket 3 years
before that. Image hosts go through a cycle of upending the tyrant and then
becoming the villain.

~~~
walrus01
does anyone remember pbase.com for free photo gallery hosting, in around 2002?
apparently it still exists with its same basic but functional UI.

~~~
discardorama
From their FAQ:

Is PBase free?

    
    
        No.

~~~
walrus01
it used to be, a long time ago

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tzs
No reference counting? This seems like it will cause problems:

[–]iBeReese 1246 points 3 hours ago Is there a planned retention policy? Or is
it an "as long as reddit has the money to maintain the servers the images will
stay forever" kind of deal?

[–]Amg137[S,A] 1421 points 3 hours ago We will keep the images as long as they
are associated to a post. However if you delete a post we will also delete the
image

[–]speedofdark8 1007 points 3 hours ago How are reposts handled? If i upload
something into /r/aww, get the link for that post's image, submit that link to
/r/cats, then delete the /r/aww post, will the link in /r/cats still work?

[–]oldschoolred[A] 795 points 3 hours ago No it wont... once the uploader
removes the original post the link to that image will break

~~~
Klathmon
IMO that's how it should act.

Just because someone else links to a picture doesn't mean that they get to say
whether it's taken down or not...

If you want to be the "uploader" then upload it, don't just link.

~~~
CM30
In the hypothetical case, the uploader is the person linking to it. They just
want to post it on multiple subreddits without having to keep reuploading it.

Heck, I can see a similar situation where post 1 is on a subreddit with
awkwardly enforced rules, post 2 is on a more relaxed one, and then because
the mods remove the post and image on subreddit 1, the second version breaks
with it.

Should people have to keep reuploading the same image every time they want to
use it?

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minimaxir
This is the announcement for the full rollout on the Web.

Access to the Reddit image host was formerly app-only. When the partial
rollout occurred on test subreddits (including defaults like /r/pics), the
number of submissions from the Reddit Image Host doubled. However, the market
share of Imgur submissions remained unchanged, and in the weeks since then,
the market share of both services has not changed at all:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJN...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f73AWzKsYrK7vFdJ3yJNYhRczke5V5Cn7ZC_IwtZGQg/edit?usp=sharing)

It will be interesting to see how the full rollout affects Reddit globally,
particular as Imgur's redirects are becoming non-user-friendly.

~~~
untilHellbanned
is a week a meaningful amount of time to mention whether market share has
changed

~~~
minimaxir
The original test started on 5/24
([https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change...](https://reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4kuk2j/reddit_change_introducing_image_uploading_beta/))
which is why the chart starts a few days before that.

It has been a month since then.

~~~
nicotonic
Yes, but that test only applies to official apps... Do we have usage data on
those? Especially taking into account very good apps already existed and most
users probably couldn't be arsed to switch to the official one.

Those official apps have lots of downloads, but don't be fooled: I bet most
people downloaded them because of the free three months of reddit gold you got
when you logged into them.

~~~
minimaxir
The 16 subreddits in the 5/24 test were for the Web UI (the primary Reddit
platform), not the App UI, which was available to all subreddits at launch.

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whamlastxmas
I don't think this is going to work for reddit long-term unless they change it
so that removing the post tied to the image doesn't remove the image itself.
People are going to share these images endlessly, perpetuating on Facebook
posts and Instagrams for years and years. If they don't change their minds,
we're going to see endless broken image links all over the internet as those
reddit posts get deleted.

~~~
revelation
It's with my deepest regret that I have to tell you.. people already don't
care for broken links. Every other link citation on Wikipedia is broken, if
it's a link to a newspaper, the probability approaches 1 as these sites just
don't bother in their perpetual quest for SEO and ad value.

~~~
marcosdumay
What's ironic because a stable link from Wikipedia must be some great way to
improve one's SEO.

~~~
umanwizard
No, because Wikipedia citation links have rel="nofollow".

~~~
danneu
It would be irresponsible for a machine learning black box like Google's
indexer to give much importance to rel="nofollow". Think about it.

Imagine you're building the perfect internet indexer. In an effort to
generalize your model, you anticipate a scenario where a nofollow link shows
up consistently on various Wikipedia pages where it persists for a long time.
What are you going to do? Ignore the link because, sorry, them's the rules?

Or are you going to realize that nofollow is about as useful of a signal as
<meta name="keywords">?

~~~
umanwizard
Interesting. I and everyone else I've talked to in the industry have always
assumed Google just takes it on faith.

Granted, I never worked in SEO directly.

I'm still not sure what the truth is. You raise a good point.

~~~
danneu
The only reason you'd take someone's word for something is when you can't
derive it yourself, like if the tech isn't there yet.

Google introduced nofollow in 2005 to either let people help fill a gaping
hole in Google's tech at the time or for the smart marketing move of making
people fixate on their magic attribute. Both under the guise that spammers
would care.[1]

It's been twelve years.

The SEO advice industry and Matt Cutts' blog these days are probably like when
I try to ponder why my cat scoots its waterdish around the room before it
drinks: attempting to find backsplanations for the idiosyncrasies of a neural
network that nobody quite understands.

[1]: [https://googleblog.blogspot.mx/2005/01/preventing-comment-
sp...](https://googleblog.blogspot.mx/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html)

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ruipgil
Besides whamlastxmas point, the danger that I see is also tied to copyright
infringement.

Imgur and other small sites, mostly because they don't have much profit, don't
suffer a lot from copyright takedowns. I think reddit won't have the same
treatment, and Imgur will still be a viable long-term solution.

~~~
Splendor
Especially when reddit is spending so much time trying to court Hollywood
celebrities.

------
revelation
This must be the first actual meaningful change to the site since the whole
"we're a startup again" and "tripling our headcount" episodes.

And it only took a year!

~~~
rozap
Not the only change, the mobile site got bloated and slow in the last year.

All community/social changes aside, the site has gotten worse from a usability
perspective as they increased their headcount.

This is _the_ most predictable pattern in our industry.

~~~
nicotonic
You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to
any url: [https://www.reddit.com/.compact](https://www.reddit.com/.compact)

~~~
lostlogin
Thanks. The mobile site has a banner that takes up a lot of the screen
advertising their app. I don't want their app, and I can't dismiss the advert.
Still, it's saved me wasting time browsing.

~~~
jamiequint
Why don't you want the app?

~~~
DocG
Tabs. Loading on mobile still takes a second or two. Tabs help with this. All
those native apps usually staring at blank screen half the time. And I have 4g
and top of the line phone.

~~~
lostlogin
The new version of the mobile web app has this issue too, where comments take
ages to load. Older phone but 4g too.

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fletchowns
I miss the days of meaningful filenames.

