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Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

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Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#161

Post by rplnt »

bostik wrote: post #112
fooey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit basically needs an image hosting service to succeed, and Imgur is now at least as obnoxious as all the previous generation of hosts that lead to it being created in the first place

While I agree with Imgur being obnoxious and a far cry from their early days, they are not as awful as the previous de-facto image sharing site - whatever it was with the green frog as their mascot.

Do you mean imageshack? It's exactly like that.

Though imageshack's biggest crime was delete everything (maybe except stuff from paid accounts) at one point in time.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#162

Post by derefr »

Melk wrote: post #125
wingerlang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of image upload sites does this, start out good and eventually add a lot of crap to monetise. Does it mean they cut their throat or does it mean the creator just set himself up for a life of money? Genuine question, maybe this is just a way to become rich, maybe these shitty upload sites make enough money that they simply pick this way instead of keeping it pure.

My guess is that imgur started out profitable but that ended when gifs became popular. /r/all is about 50% gifs nowadays. The low bandwidth of an image host makes it possible to allow hotlinking but that doesn't work with videos.

Good point! I distinctly recall Imgur being started because it was one of those "this used to be something hard, but now Moore's law has made it easy" services. Imgur could afford to allow hotlinking because actually serving images had become a trivial cost. Because no other image-host had capitalized on this, Imgur cleaned up—for a while.

Once people started shifting to sharing content mostly as really-inefficiently-compressed ten-second videos (which are still pretty large when efficiently recompressed), Imgur's original business model was dead in the water. Maybe one day gifs will be as cheap to serve as images are now—but it won't be any time in the next few years.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#163

Post by redthrowaway »

kristofferR wrote: post #156
redthrowaway wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what drives the circle of life for image hosts. "Man, all the image hosts suck ass and get in the way of me just seeing the damned image. I'm gonna create a new one, without all the cruft!" "This image host is going well, but the bills are killing me. We'll have to add ads, but obviously only where they're unobtrusive." "We're still bleeding cash, but we've got a huge userbase. We need to monetize it better.…

Yeah. https://sli.mg seems to be the new imgur. I wonder how long until they start going downhill. I like their moderation log though, that's a good step.

sli.mg is the new imgur for /r/the_donald, and other subs whose content imgur regularly censors. I haven't really seen it used "in the wild" on more mainstream subs. It does have a nice, clean and minimalistic interface, similar to what imgur used to have.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#165

Post by jug »

I think this is a good move. Imgur got used only because it was convenient and that it didn't have any stuff brewing around the service. That it was created by a redditor probably also helped. Now it is a service with a lot of stuff going on around it, and a competitor to Reddit in a sense, being its own community oriented around discussing trending topics or creating memes.

Since Reddit has their own service for this now, hopefully they can use their revenue to keep it clean and at least reasonably ad free and focused on its simple mission. If that can happen, I think this is a step forward from what Imgur has become. Not anything bad per se if you want a different community, but not optimal if you already are on one and just want to view the pictures.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#166

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

static_noise wrote: post #19
kinkdr wrote: post #3

Bad news for Imgur...

Bad news for the current shareholders of imgur. All we want is an easy and reliable image hoster. You upload an image, they host it, you can link it, fin. Perfect plan! Except for the plot hole of not generating any money this way. That's where the suits creep in. First they finance you to grow and grow quickly you must. Imgur did it. Then you experiment with some methods of generating ad views or other revenue. Peop…

> There's guitars and barbecue as the corporate drones dance around the firepit of burning money

Where are the "I'll paint that!" guys when you need them?

(Personally, I'm more the 'abstract art' type of person, for good reason, ahem ...)

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#167

Post by Guest98123 »

I'm surprised one of the big companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon), or one of the world's governments doesn't start up a simple image hosting site with direct linking, and foot the bill in exchange for tracking everyone, and having more of the world under their umbrella, visiting daily.

I'm assuming those companies also have the infrastructure to reduce bandwidth expenses, and they could accept the loss in the short term, to have a well established service and community for when imaging hosting becomes more profitable in the future.

A simple image hosting service is relatively quick to develop, and it's almost guaranteed to be one of the most used services on the internet. Why are these companies wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on all sorts of failed projects, when they could easily win this market?

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#168

Post by [deleted] »

redthrowaway wrote: post #109
cloudwalking wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, bandwidth isn't free. Imgur can't serve hotlinked content for free, forever.

Which is what drives the circle of life for image hosts. "Man, all the image hosts suck ass and get in the way of me just seeing the damned image. I'm gonna create a new one, without all the cruft!" "This image host is going well, but the bills are killing me. We'll have to add ads, but obviously only where they're unobtrusive." "We're still bleeding cash, but we've got a huge userbase. We need to monetize it better.…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#169

Post by raverbashing »

ljk wrote: post #69
zitterbewegung wrote: post #18

Having a third party host Reddit's images gave away a bunch of control to the point that imgur has its own community based upon the site . At the time Reddit didn't have the resources to make a competitor but this seems to be a good move now that imgur is doing dark patterns.

it's funny that imgur is turning into the sites it was replacing in the first place

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

(or until you get an investment from less ethical companies)

But to be honest monetizing things like imgurl is hard. Most of the users cost more than they earn

I think with adblockers becomming more common we'll have to think of better ways of coming out with feasible arrangements. Sharing bandwidth between users? JS bitcoin mining (or some other kind of processing)? Mechanical Turk style work for users?

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#170

Post by chinathrow »

Guest98123 wrote: post #167

I'm surprised one of the big companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon), or one of the world's governments doesn't start up a simple image hosting site with direct linking, and foot the bill in exchange for tracking everyone, and having more of the world under their umbrella, visiting daily. I'm assuming those companies also have the infrastructure to reduce bandwidth expenses, and they could accept the loss in…

> and foot the bill in exchange for tracking everyone

Don't give them ideas.

Anyway - that is what lots of companies are doing anyway, even if it's passively. Imgur for example is using Google Analytics.

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