Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Image Hosting on Reddit

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 163 posts

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#101

Post by krackers »

chadscira wrote: post #66
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…

This was the reason why I created http://img42.com . They bombard you with ads, and other "features". I wanted something where I could just click, drag and drop, or pate and it would be uploaded.

Neat service. How do you plan to offset the hosting, storage, and bandwidth costs though?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#102

Post by School-Cotton »

danneu wrote: post #90
School-Cotton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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, sorr…

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.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#103

Post by niftich »

BigJono wrote: post #100
gottam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Contemporary media coverage suggests they wanted to buy out a competitor which became the dominant video site in a year. This New York Times article [1] from 2006 wrote:

"The acquisition of the privately held YouTube will enable Google to thrive in one area of the Internet where it has so far failed to gain footing. According to Hitwise, which monitors Web traffic, [YouTube] has the lion's share of online video traffic (...) a 46 percent share, MySpace has 23 percent and Google Video has 10 percent."

Meanwhile, this 2006 article from the Economist [2] stated:

"the deal is 'an aggressive, mature move for Google, one that shows that senior management is not too proud or stubborn to see that they can't build everything themselves,' says Henry Blodget, an analyst at Cherry Hill Research. Indeed, Google's Mr Schmidt freely conceded that YouTube is the 'clear winner', especially in creating social networks around its site."

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/09cnd-deal.html

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/8031159

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#104

Post by rms_returns »

galistoca wrote: post #58
toxican wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they purchase a forum site for sharing funny cat videos?

Because it's a monopoly. Come back when Imgur becomes the only (or one of very few) place on the web to share funny images and Gifs. Farewell.

Are you trying to imply that Youtube is a monopoly? Aren't there others like vimeo, etc.? Besides, there is nothing from technology perspective to make it a monopoly. All you need is a server rack and a bunch of web developers who can build such a site, right?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#105

Post by galistoca »

BigJono wrote: post #100
gottam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Google knew that Youtube will turn into the largest video search engine, so they bought it strategically. Otherwise someone else could have swooped in and acquired the largest video search site, which would have left Google vulnerable in many ways.

Summary: userbase/community was what drove the network effect, which made it impossible for Google to catch up, and that's why Google made the decision to purchase Youtube.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#106

Post by rms_returns »

BigJono wrote: post #100
gottam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> was there some technical aspects to YouTube that Google couldn't or didn't want to build themselves?

Google had very much the power of building a YouTube-like community themselves, but buying out a competitor is a short-cut since it has the positive side-effect of removing that competition in our business. After buying YouTube, Google didn't have to waste time in building a community around a new product or "converting" the YouTube masses to theirs.

This short-cut way of acquisition is nowadays preferred by large companies rather than risk everything by doing innovation and "real" competition.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#107

Post by galistoca »

542458 wrote: post #98
dexterdog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Parent said "most of", and I think that's pretty much correct regardless of how vibrant of a community Imgur has. Most traffic to imgur is via embeds or links from another discussion forums. The former case obviously provides no exposure to Imgur community, and even in the latter case most people are there only to look at the picture, not to engage as an Imgur community member.

The whole point of this discussion thread is that Imgur is f*ed because they aren't independent enough. Otherwise there's nothing to worry about, right?

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#108

Post by discardorama »

walrus01 wrote: post #79
mmanfrin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

From their FAQ:

Is PBase free?

    No.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#109

Post by sundvor »

AznHisoka wrote: post #94
nilved wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 homeru…

Agreed; whilst there are some subcommunities that appear unscathed, YouTube comments are typically a cesspool of hurtful spew from the bottom feeders of human society.

Re: Image Hosting on Reddit

#110

Post by rodgerd »

BigJono wrote: post #100
gottam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Google had a YouTube competitor at the time. It wasn't very successful.
Post reply on HN