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Image Hosting on Reddit

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Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#31

Post by forrestthewoods »

shalmanese wrote: post #22
dmerrick wrote: post #10

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 yo…

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 magnitud…

What makes you think imgur is dead? They have a thriving community independent of Reddit. Some might even argue it's a better community.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#32

Post by fweespeech »

galistoca wrote: post #24
shalmanese wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 magnitud…

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.

> Imgur is just a commodity. Youtube is not.

Video hosting + community is a commodity.

Image hosting + community is a commodity.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#33

Post by danielweber »

revelation wrote: post #23
ythl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a clean, simple, easy to use image hosting service that everyone could use for free How do you monetize such a site without bloating into the current Imgur? It seems like the only way to have a "clean, simple, easy" image hosting service is to be a billionaire and to do it out of the goodness of your heart.

That's what the lore tells us, but maybe it's just plain wrong and the old incumbents were just greedy and terrible. I think imgur was bootstrapped for a long time and didn't have much in the way of monetization, certainly hotlinking still worked then. The changes came when imgur took VC money.

Maybe the only people willing to nurse along a free image host are the ones hoping to somehow, in some way, get rich off of it.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#34

Post by nicotonic »

swang wrote: post #15
dmerrick wrote: post #10

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 yo…

Same thing with ImageShack. They use to host images for SA and then got really shady with linking images. Hosting images is a high cost service that most people don't want to pay for, so there's very little ways to make money.

What is SA? Something Awful?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#35

Post by [deleted] »

shalmanese wrote: post #22
dmerrick wrote: post #10

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 yo…

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 magnitud…

[deleted]

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#36

Post by jachee »

lostlogin wrote: post #12
nicotonic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to any url: https://www.reddit.com/.compact

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.

There is a twinge of irony in mentioning "wasting time browsing" reddit. :)

(And yes, I realize the inherent irony in pointing that out here as well.)

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#37

Post by galistoca »

slig wrote: post #29
galistoca wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And why would Google purchase a forum site for sharing funny images and GIFs?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#38

Post by nicotonic »

lostlogin wrote: post #12
nicotonic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to any url: https://www.reddit.com/.compact

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.

Yes it can be dismissed. There's a link that says "No thanks", doesn't it appear for you?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#39

Post by niftich »

slig wrote: post #29
galistoca wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Creating communities is hard, but Google wants a unified 'Google' community, not multiple disparate ones -- just look at how they handled YouTube.

Even if you throw in some machine learning to figure out if the user's looking at memes or gifs or porn, I can't imagine the marginal value of that data being of use to Google. It's essentially unmonetizable, which is why most image hosts disappear after a few years.

Imgur was successful in avoiding that fate by pivoting to a community, but that community would be of no use to someone like Google.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#40

Post by jamiequint »

lostlogin wrote: post #12
nicotonic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still access the old site by using i.reddit.com or adding .compact to any url: https://www.reddit.com/.compact

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.

Why don't you want the app?
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