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Image Hosting on Reddit

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Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#91

Post by gottam »

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Videos

They did make their own version of youtube at one point, apparently it wasn't enough and they wanted the userbase too.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#92

Post by pyre »

makomk wrote: post #47
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…

Eh, they're serving GIFs up as video and low-res, short compressed videos aren't actually all that big these days.

I've come across animated GIFs that when downloaded in GIF form are 100+MB. That's slightly different than a 100KB jpeg.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#93

Post by flashman »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

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: htt…

It's interesting that Reddit-hosted images have been averaging fewer upvotes than Imgur-hosted images, on /r/pics at least: http://i.imgur.com/91qkas5.png

One postulated reason is that browser plugin Reddit Enhancement Suite doesn't work as well with Reddit images as Imgur ones. But I wouldn't be surprised if something more subtle was also at work.

I know you're doing some work around this and it will be interesting to see wider results in a few months.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#94

Post by AznHisoka »

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.

I can name hundreds of places to find funny images and memes. Heck even buzzfeed satisfies that demand. As does google images

I wanna see the entire game 7 of the nba finals online. Show me where besides YouTube.

I wanna see the Red Wedding scene again. Show me where besides YouTube.

I wanna find a quick entertaining video to show my kid. Show me where besides YouTube.

I wanna find a compilation of the longest homeruns in baseball history. Show me where besides YouTube.

Heck most people try to ignore YouTube comments. It's not really a community at all. The actual content is the value prop.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#95

Post by NamTaf »

mmanfrin wrote: post #43
cortesoft wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imgur started off as a benevolent gift to Reddit users, but then as more and more people started to use it, the expenses became too great to keep it the way it was. There is no money in serving images directly with no advertising, but there is certainly costs. What were they supposed to do?

s/imgur/imageshack s/reddit/somethingawful

Absoutely. See also: Waffleimages after it.

This is cyclical, an image site gains critical mass, builds in size and then buckles under the weight of providing a free, clean, high-bandwidth service.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#96

Post by dexterdog »

fweespeech wrote: post #32
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 just a commodity. Youtube is not. Video hosting + community is a commodity. Image hosting + community is a commodity.

But most of imgur's audience is not even seeing the site or is just looking at a quick picture and then going back to reddit or some other referring site.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#97

Post by dexterdog »

nisa wrote: post #83
ddorian43 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please explain, doesn't make sense

I guess traffic gets a lot cheaper beyond a certain volume. I suspect it's dollars/TB to cents/TB? So they can cut prices for their offerings and have more revenue and growth due to paying less for the traffic. Having these volumes of data also allows them to approach potential clients with some solid data (e.g. we serve 1/5 of image clicks on the net every day and below 20ms response time... I have no data, just spe…

So I should start a burger joint and give away food for free to prove I can handle the throughout and my cost will be essentially zero?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#98

Post by 542458 »

dexterdog wrote: post #96
fweespeech wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imgur is just a commodity. Youtube is not. Video hosting + community is a commodity. Image hosting + community is a commodity.

But most of imgur's audience is not even seeing the site or is just looking at a quick picture and then going back to reddit or some other referring site.

I think you're mistaken here. As a reddit user you might think that, but there's actually a fully functional imgur community that votes on images independently from reddit and comments on them on imgur independent from reddit.

Just scroll down on this page: http://imgur.com/gallery/tWWxi4D

Voting options, and lots and lots of comments.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#99

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

A premium model for gif hosting might have been an alternative.

As it is:

1. I hate gifs (with very few exceptions).

2. I lack a decent place to host images associated with Reddit.

3. Subscription-based services are a risk on several fronts.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#100

Post by BigJono »

gottam wrote: post #91
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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Videos They did make their own version of youtube at one point, apparently it wasn't enough and they wanted the userbase too.

Does anyone know if it was specifically the community/userbase that enticed Google, or was there some technical aspects to YouTube that Google couldn't or didn't want to build themselves?
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