For image hosting I use an s3 bucket with MonoSnap (a free program). You can configure Monosnap to record an area of your screen as a gif/mpeg or capture your screen, or you can drop files onto its tray icon, and it will upload the file to s3, and copy a shortened link to your clipboard. For most images it takes about a second. It's been very helpful for me. (http://take.ms/BBVGW)
The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
41–50 of 282 posts
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#42Why on earth would Reddit want to add a massive expense (image hosting) at a time that they're already hemorrhaging money? Especially since imgur was still a fairly adequate host for the site. Reddit's image hosting seems like burning money for nothing. Not to mention the Reddit image URLs are horrifying. I upload stuff to imgur just for the nice, short URLs.
Reddit's URLs got much shorter within a few iterations of the product. As to why compete with imgur? User experience. It's much easier to share a picture on Reddit now, with it being a native feature, rather than having to go to imgur or elsewhere, upload something, find the best/right URL to share with, and the submit that to Reddit.
Right, but why not just pay imgur some $$$ for the privilege of a simple little upload form? That seems like a far smarter idea. Now Reddit is responsible for running not only its current business but also an entirely separate image hosting business. Keep in mind how ridiculously expensive it is to run an image host. Even imgur, which is by far the most acceptable of the popular hosts, has a ton of obtrusive ads.
I have a feeling that this image upload thing was dreamed up by an intern who thought "oh, this would improve our user flow!" while not realizing it might literally double the company's costs in exchange for a gain of a few percentage points more users.
Reddit can't run obtrusive ads (they'd piss off their user base) so where is that money going to come from?
Example reddit url: https://i.redd.it/2n0gpcrfes4z.jpg
Example imgur url: http://i.imgur.com/ykbUTZG.jpg (and that can even be shortened to http://imgur.com/ykbUTZG)
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#43This is not really a surprise, this cycle happens from time to time, i.e. Photobucket, ImgShack, etc.
As soon as Imgur took funding the die was cast. They have to show more ads, get more traffic to their pages, and drive engagement.
Imgur was at its best when it was simple to upload and link. Those days are gone.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#44Imgur is essentially a parasite upon reddit which exploited and relied upon reddit's lack of native image posts. Imgur's dependency on reddit led to it trying to compete directly with it to ensure its survival without its host (Imgur is now also a place to find and comment on images), but also ensured reddit would eventually drop it, thus paradoxically also hurting its survival. Ultimately I think Imgur is destined t…
> Imgur is essentially a parasite upon reddit This is true in exactly the same sense that "pastebins are essentially parasites on freenode". Which is to say, kinda not.
That's an unfair comparison. Imgur was originally created specifically to be an image host for reddit users, and succeeding in that market, slowly tried to become a reddit competitor on the back of reddit traffic.
Pastebins are merely text hosts.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: Whoops! I was definitely wrong here. It was absolutely a parasite. It would not have survived to grow to the size it did without Reddit. Parasites can offer a beneficial service to the host but cannot live without it. It has since evolved into something possibly capable of existing on its own but only time will tell. My guess is it lives for a few more years at best.
I don't think we have the same definition of a parasite or we see things differently. For me a parasite is a startup being a copy-cat, eating your market share, stealing your content, and stealing your customers. But Reddit and Imgur are two different websites. If Reddit was that mad about it, they could have done it in a month on S3... If you want a parasite I will say 9gag. It's true that Imgur has to grow its prod…
"For me a parasite is a startup being a copy-cat,"
The parasite metaphor does not include the idea of being a "copy-cat"; parasites in the real world do not do the same things as their host. Indeed, that is the entire point of a parasite, in some sense; to take advantage of the host setting up various expensive systems to survive and just using them instead of developing their own.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#46Imgur pushing it's own website over direct image links is the exact reason I've stopped using it. I understand they have to make money by but I just want to put a damn picture on the internet and send the link to others. I don't want to have to deal with Imgur's album/site link crap and dumb expansion into being a social network. It's hard now to even find the direct link, nevermind avoid Imgur's annoying messages ab…
They used to offer a paid account which I gladly signed up for. Apparently they saw that the ad model was the way to go and discontinued the paid accounts. Which is too bad because that's where we stand right now. I wish they would still offer an ad-free paid account. I guess in the long run we'll see how Imgur current business model will last.
I too was a (happily) paying customer of Imgur and was surprised when they refunded my prepayment for the year and went free. I had a feeling it was going to go downhill quickly thereafter.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#47Imgur recently started doing something really annoying on their mobile site. If you keep scrolling past the picture you were linked to, it shows a bunch of other pictures that were not posted by the person who posted the first picture. These extra pictures seem to be generally in the same category as the picture that was meant to be linked to, so if the original picture is a slightly risque photo, the photos that fol…
That was my biggest wtf when I saw that, along with how they managed to grind a macbookpro to a halt just showing an album of a dozen or so pictures on the page.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: Whoops! I was definitely wrong here. It was absolutely a parasite. It would not have survived to grow to the size it did without Reddit. Parasites can offer a beneficial service to the host but cannot live without it. It has since evolved into something possibly capable of existing on its own but only time will tell. My guess is it lives for a few more years at best.
I don't think we have the same definition of a parasite or we see things differently. For me a parasite is a startup being a copy-cat, eating your market share, stealing your content, and stealing your customers. But Reddit and Imgur are two different websites. If Reddit was that mad about it, they could have done it in a month on S3... If you want a parasite I will say 9gag. It's true that Imgur has to grow its prod…
The characterisation of Imgur as a parasite isn't a value judgement. Imgur isn't doing anything wrong (nor reddit for that matter).
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#49Imgur pushing it's own website over direct image links is the exact reason I've stopped using it. I understand they have to make money by but I just want to put a damn picture on the internet and send the link to others. I don't want to have to deal with Imgur's album/site link crap and dumb expansion into being a social network. It's hard now to even find the direct link, nevermind avoid Imgur's annoying messages ab…
Why not use Dropbox public links or something similar?
There's limits on what you can share. imgur's big benefit is no cap on hosting, so if your meme goes nuclear you're not going to get a "bandwidth exceeded" page.
Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting
#50To me, Reddits new image handling is a pain in the ass. I liked that I could either look at the image/video or read the commments. Now I have no choice but to receive them both at the same time. Videos even start to autoplay.
Also: Is it new that Reddit allows animated ads? I always had the feeling Reddit was a place where I could peacfully interact with others. Lately I am afraid it turns into a page full of animated, colorful distractions that make me feel uneasy.