Image Hosting on Reddit

Post by bluedino » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

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…

Post by loopbit » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

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…

Post by nilved » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

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.

Post by galistoca » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

nilved wrote: post #65

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 is exactly as much of a commodity as YouTube. The exception is that they host images instead, and when you consider that the images are silent webm videos a lot of the time, the lines are even more blurry. The value to both communities is just that, their communities.

Post by billmalarky » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #18

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.