Twitpic is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#151

Post by MrGrim » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 12:50 AM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #150

valarauca1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it has not succeeded. Most of users base browses the sites "Viral" gallery. Which is nothing more then a "Reddit's 24 hour greatest hits", a surprisingly low number of images make it into imgur's gallery from imgur itself. TL;DR No reddit, no front page content on imgur.

I agree that they haven't succeeded in removing their dependency on reddit, but you can tell it is certainly something on Alan's mind. I really don't understand why they have taken steps that really limit the community for no real good reason. For example, comments are limited to 140 chars, which de facto means the discussion is going to be incredibly shallow. The only reason I can think of is maybe Alan was afraid o…

Imgur is about instant gratification. As you cycle through the best images on the web, there's an oddly satisfying instant gratification effect after each one. This is the reason for both having 1 piece of content on each page, and having 140 char comments.

The longer the comment, the longer it takes to read. Ain't nobody got time to read walls of text on the Internet anymore. People want their Internet quick fixes, and 140 char comments allow you to skim through and continue on.

In Imgur's case, people visit for their quick fix, and end up getting lost in a rabbit hole of viral images. Fun fact: When people visit the homepage and start browsing from there, they average 44 pageviews over an average time of 22 minutes!

While Imgur don't have "subimgurs", it does have tags. Like game of thrones? Check out the best game of thrones images on the Internet: http://imgur.com/t/game_of_thrones/top/year

I don't want to split the community into subcommunities where you have to follow certain ones over others. This would lessen the affect of discovering something you didn't know you liked, and would lessen the instant gratification affect imho.

Also, I disagree that the user submitted section sucks, and for those wondering, just over 50% of front page "viral" content is from user-sub: http://imgur.com/new/viral

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#152

Post by MrGrim » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 12:52 AM UTC

frostmatthew wrote: post #131

robert_tweed wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the obvious counter-example to that lesson is imgur.

> Indeed, the obvious counter-example to that lesson is imgur. Is that actually a good counter-example? Are they profitable? If so, would that continue to be the case if reddit began prohibiting linking to imgur?

Imgur was bootstrapped for 5 years and profitable the whole time.

Also, less than half of Imgur's traffic comes from reddit.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#153

Post by MrGrim » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 12:53 AM UTC

valarauca1 wrote: post #102

billmalarky wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imgur has taken clear steps to hedge itself from its dependency on reddit though.

Yet it has not succeeded. Most of users base browses the sites "Viral" gallery. Which is nothing more then a "Reddit's 24 hour greatest hits", a surprisingly low number of images make it into imgur's gallery from imgur itself. TL;DR No reddit, no front page content on imgur.

50% of images on the front page of Imgur come from user-sub. The algorithm that runs the front page was designed to do that.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#154

Post by MrGrim » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 12:54 AM UTC

valarauca1 wrote: post #135

LukeB_UK wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there's quite a bit of content there that's not from reddit.

There isn't. User submitted is horrible. Most of the sites visitors are people uploading/sharing images normally via direct linking.

I disagree. User-sub is actually a really good time. Maybe you're just browsing user-sub/newest first? Try this: http://imgur.com/new/viral

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#155

Post by billmalarky » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 2:32 AM UTC

MrGrim wrote: post #151

billmalarky wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they haven't succeeded in removing their dependency on reddit, but you can tell it is certainly something on Alan's mind. I really don't understand why they have taken steps that really limit the community for no real good reason. For example, comments are limited to 140 chars, which de facto means the discussion is going to be incredibly shallow. The only reason I can think of is maybe Alan was afraid o…

Imgur is about instant gratification. As you cycle through the best images on the web, there's an oddly satisfying instant gratification effect after each one. This is the reason for both having 1 piece of content on each page, and having 140 char comments. The longer the comment, the longer it takes to read. Ain't nobody got time to read walls of text on the Internet anymore. People want their Internet quick fixes,…

The tagging functionality does mirror the formal organization of a forum. It would be nice to see it formalized a bit more on imgur. Maybe a bar at the top of the screen with trending tags? Or heck, maybe even just in the sidebar.

Oh and the real exciting question... when is imgur going to branch into a "simple video sharing" service. Youtube gets more cumbersome and annoying each year (dialog boxes that pop up all over the videos? I mean come on!). The perfect opportunity is arising for imgur to step in at what it does best, keeping things simple. In addition to imgur users, I bet all OC video content on reddit would immediately switch to using an imgur video service.