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The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

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Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#221

Post by 6stringmerc »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #208
6stringmerc wrote: post #126

You know how I can tell Reddit doesn't have any content creators in upper management who consider these decisions? Because at least one of them would've spoken up: "Oh, we built many of our communities on sharing Copyright protected content by way of our weasel-cousin IMGUR, so let's go ahead and bring all that DMCA/Safe Harbors liability under our umbrella - you're joking, right?" At least the Conde Nast lawyers wil…

I think they did it because the writing was on the wall. Imgur's current business model was not sustainable. Direct image linking is expensive and can't be monetized. Imgur has been making an effort to lessen direct image linking and may end up blocking it entirely eventually, which would screw over reddit. And so reddit had to be proactive and create their own alternative.

The colloquialism / maxim "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" seems to fit here.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#222

Post by VintageCool »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #113
chii wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

funny how nobody wants to pay for bread and butter functionality, and yet the internet survives on such bread and butter.

I'm really not sure what point you're making. It's not surprising that Reddit rolled their own image hosting. In general, most major websites have done that, because it's easy to do. If your business relies upon image hosting, why would you trust others to do it? Anyway, Reddit gets paid via ads and gold, so people are paying for it. They just won't pay for it on it's own, because image hosting on it's own is not rea…

Imgur picked a good business model, they were profitable years before Reddit came close. It also managed to stay good as the best image hosting on the Internet for a decade.

It didn't last forever, but Imgur was great for a long time.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#223

Post by goeric »

6stringmerc wrote: post #126

You know how I can tell Reddit doesn't have any content creators in upper management who consider these decisions? Because at least one of them would've spoken up: "Oh, we built many of our communities on sharing Copyright protected content by way of our weasel-cousin IMGUR, so let's go ahead and bring all that DMCA/Safe Harbors liability under our umbrella - you're joking, right?" At least the Conde Nast lawyers wil…

Reddit hasn't been part of Conde Nast for a while.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#224

Post by ue_ »

dylz wrote: post #87
ue_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend links me to pictures he's put on Dropbox all the time, usually screenshots. Is that what you're referring to?

No. Dropbox used to have a folder that let you share direct links. https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/public-folder It's been retroactively removed from accounts.

What do you mean by direct links? My friend can link me to things, but they display in the "dropbox viewer", and I can download them by clicking "download" in that webpage.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#225

Post by colejohnson66 »

ryandrake wrote: post #147
tyingq wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit killed the model that allows them to be financially viable and "not annoying". I suspect the alternative is to shut down. The bit of community that exists solely within imgur can't be enough to subsidize the bandwidth costs of everyone else, can it? Thus far every image hosting site has gone the cycle of initially good, annoying attempts at monetizing, then shutting down. Which, of course, leaves a trail of fo…

I remember when “image hosing” meant copying the file into your machine’s public_html directory and sending out a link. Now somehow we need a third party to do this.

Because not everyone has a web host? It's easier for the average person to just upload to a website.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#226

Post by Yhippa »

Pxtl wrote: post #146
komali2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to talk about that community, because it genuinely boggles my mind. Their culture is as if they were crafted by /r/circlejerk as some sort of cosmic joke. They repeat the same memes ad nauseam, in every post , seemingly completely unaware. They lack any measure of what I consider healthy internet cynicism - if you post a picture of your face and say "I beat cancer!", you're getting upvotes, and there won't be…

The meme problem I see on Reddit and Twitter too - so many sites developing their own meme dialect that's completely incoherent if you're not up to your elbows in it.

I have to use http://knowyourmeme.com/ more than I care to admit.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#227

Post by takeda »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #199
takeda wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like that makes me wish NDN[1] would succeed. Essentially in this network instead using addressing to address hosts, they address the data. This brings interesting properties, since routers are aware what data is being transferred they can start caching it. In the end no CDNs are needed (network takes care of it) so people can host data themselves without worrying of it getting too popular. [1] https://named-d…

Sounds like a less shady version of Freenet.

In a way, it also was created by people who contributed to developing Internet and is NSF founded. The head behind it is Van Jacobson[1] who was responsible for implementing congestion control in TCP/IP also creator of popular tools such as traceroute.

Unlike FreeNet it was designated that while it can work as an overlay network it is actually capable to run without TCP/IP so it could even replace it.

Also unlike FreeNet it's not trying to obscure who is hosting the content. Basically you get a prefix (which looks like unix file path) which you start advertising to neighboring routers (like IP is advertised in TCP/IP) so then all requests under it (as long as no cached version is available anywhere) will be forwarded to you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jacobson

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#228

Post by srett »

samstave wrote: post #215
anoonmoose wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Imgur actually started off as a bit of a public service. From Wikipedia: "Imgur was created as a response to the usability problems encountered in similar services. Designed to be a gift to the online community of Reddit, it took off almost instantly, jumping from a thousand hits per day to a million total page views in the first five months."

it was created by /u/mrgrim as a programming side project because all the other img hosts were shitty, and as it was born of reddit, essentially for reddit, it blew up. I cant stand the new i.reddit img service, but that could be me just being an off-my-lawn-er... but I am wary of reddits motivations, as I dont trust the admins all that much given the fact that they are a huge social manipulation tool - and if you do…

For me it's quite the opposite. I like browsing the web in the evening on a 5 year old tablet. Ever since imgur started redirecting mobile clients to the full site for all direct image links the experience gets worse and worse. They keep adding more scripts and shit over time so currently when opening an imgur link the tablet freezes for about 4 seconds until it starts showing the loading spinner and then it takes another couple seconds depending on image size until I can finally see a plain old jpeg. Every fucking time. I mean I don't understand the decision to redirect mobile but not desktop at all. Desktops are faster (cpu and connection) and got more screen space to show ads. Why not the other way round?

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#229

Post by ClassyJacket »

komali2 wrote: post #119
tyingq wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit killed the model that allows them to be financially viable and "not annoying". I suspect the alternative is to shut down. The bit of community that exists solely within imgur can't be enough to subsidize the bandwidth costs of everyone else, can it? Thus far every image hosting site has gone the cycle of initially good, annoying attempts at monetizing, then shutting down. Which, of course, leaves a trail of fo…

I want to talk about that community, because it genuinely boggles my mind. Their culture is as if they were crafted by /r/circlejerk as some sort of cosmic joke. They repeat the same memes ad nauseam, in every post , seemingly completely unaware. They lack any measure of what I consider healthy internet cynicism - if you post a picture of your face and say "I beat cancer!", you're getting upvotes, and there won't be…

A big part of what makes the comments so poor on imgur is that they have an arbitrary character limit of 140. When you limit people to a single sentence, memes and jokes are all they can post. This comment, for example, can't be posted there.

Re: The Decline of Imgur on Reddit and the Rise of Reddit's Native Image Hosting

#230

Post by shostack »

penpapersw wrote: post #162
tyingq wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit killed the model that allows them to be financially viable and "not annoying". I suspect the alternative is to shut down. The bit of community that exists solely within imgur can't be enough to subsidize the bandwidth costs of everyone else, can it? Thus far every image hosting site has gone the cycle of initially good, annoying attempts at monetizing, then shutting down. Which, of course, leaves a trail of fo…

Imgur has developed a very active community and they have a MINIMUM of $20,000 per "promoted post" (ad). Considering how often I see new ads on there (at least once a month), I'd say they've finally figured out how to actually monetize an img hosting site. Whether they can avoid throwing away all that money on inefficiency and poor management is another story though. If anyone here knows how to scale an imgur clone p…

As an advertiser, if I see a site with placements that are only available via direct buys, and the advertisers cycle through there quickly without staying around for a while, that's often a sign of a poor performing placement that they tested and moved on from.

I'm not clear on the specifics of their inventory, but some of their placements are available on the Google Display Network, and presumably exchanges as well. So I'm not sure if the inventory with the $20k min. buy overlaps at all with that to reach this sort of conclusion.

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