Imgur Acquired by Medialab • Hacker News Board

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#21

Post by munchler » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #16

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #4

Wasn't this the company that ostensibly began on reddit? Their founder used to post many promises about "not selling out" and the rest.

"Selling" and "selling out" are not (always) the same thing.

Can you think of a notable example when they weren’t?

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#22

Post by ruined » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #19

pram wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite part is that they added 'social' stuff to imgur uploads, so your images (probably) have a separate set of terrible comments you're not even aware of.

Imgur comments have the old twitter length limit, 140 characters.

even worse!

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#23

Post by solarkraft » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

Oh no. Imgur was already close to being overloaded with ads. I have no doubt this will get much worse.

Any suggestions for alternative no bullshit image hosting services?

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#24

Post by exogeny » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

darkwizard42 wrote: post #5

Medialab has now acquired Kik (2019), Imgur (2021), Genius (2021)... Big spree of acquisitions! Anyone have any idea the goal?

To be the biggest media company of 2014.

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#25

Post by madrox » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

Congrats to Imgur on its exit, I suppose.

Honestly, this is probably the best outcome they could hope for. I suspect their growth has stagnated and are losing mindshare in the meme economy to Reddit and Discord. Imgur was started in a very different world from today and they didn't evolve enough.

Regardless, I'm grateful to them. Imgur will always have a soft spot in my heart.

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#26

Post by ChrisArchitect » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

Imgur, great service, lasted this long, amazing. But I always wondered how any of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth (reminds of the other various ones like TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter). I mean, I have a gallery of images in there, privately stored, directly linked to here and there around the net, without paying for anything for years. I think at one point I can't even remember now I did pay them a small fee and then they removed that option to go it alone with ads and refused to 'take my money'. Which seemed crazy and still does. Does the small imgur community (Which exists as a bizarre also-ran of Reddit) sustain them enough on ad views?

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#27

Post by tschwimmer » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

degenerate wrote: post #17

dpedu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC at the time imgur launched, all of the other free image sharing websites were pretty bad. Reddit itself didn't start allowing uploads until long after imgur.

Correct. ImageShack was the most widely used host on reddit and had recently disabled hotlinking (after nearly a year of ad bloat on their main site) so user MrGrim on reddit created Imgur and announced it on Reddit 12 years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_t... He did an AMA 3 years later: https://old.reddit.com//r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgu...

Holy crap, I have not thought about imageshack for a decade. It was hot garbage: slow, ad ridden and if I recall correctly they would disable your hotlinked images if they used too much bandwidth. Imgur was something of a godsend at the time. Now it's commodity unfortunately.

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#28

Post by efnx » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

Does anybody know what the acquisition price was? Or what the terms were (like how long must the founders remain on the team, etc)?

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#29

Post by ChrisArchitect » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

Medialab's other things include like, Genius (ok, fair enough, sustains itself / useful/ well-used I'm assuming)....and Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore? hm

Had to look a bit harder to even find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding company of consumer internet brands' heh, sheesh, yeah that's not sketchy.

Re: Imgur Acquired by Medialab

#30

Post by intricatedetail » Mon, Sep 27, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #26

Imgur, great service, lasted this long, amazing. But I always wondered how any of these random image hosts afforded bandwidth (reminds of the other various ones like TwitPic who was saved from being taken offline by Twitter). I mean, I have a gallery of images in there, privately stored, directly linked to here and there around the net, without paying for anything for years. I think at one point I can't even remember…

Bandwidth is pretty cheap if you look beyond cloud. There are providers that offer magnitudes cheaper bandwidth than e.g. AWS but you have to set servers yourself.