How Imgur Became a Megacommunity(fastcompany.com)
fastcompany.com
How Imgur Became a Megacommunity
https://www.fastcompany.com/3057682/startup-report/how-imgur-became-an-image-sharing-meme-generating-megacommunity
69 comments
Your main beef is that Alan was "either naive or not truthful" or that things changed over the course of 7 years?
If there's an image host as clean, neat, and fast as imgur I'm not aware of it.
You don't have to interact with the "community" part of it ever if you don't want to.
When using it to view images on reddit, RES loads images inline and you never see imgur at all.
The only time I see the site is when uploading images, and that's extremely slick and fast.
You don't have to interact with the "community" part of it ever if you don't want to.
When using it to view images on reddit, RES loads images inline and you never see imgur at all.
The only time I see the site is when uploading images, and that's extremely slick and fast.
Imgur seems to selectively redirect direct links (i.imgur.com/image.jpg) to the full site (imgur.com/image/) based on the referrer.
I think they originally only did this for direct images posted on Facebook etc (to avoid pissing off the core Redditors who post all the content), but lately pretty much all direct image links from my mobile Reddit client get redirected to an image page.
I think they originally only did this for direct images posted on Facebook etc (to avoid pissing off the core Redditors who post all the content), but lately pretty much all direct image links from my mobile Reddit client get redirected to an image page.
It might also be based on the HTTP Accept header, with which you can figure out if a request is for an <img>.
This redirection reminds me of other, less clean image hosting services. :/
This redirection reminds me of other, less clean image hosting services. :/
I just found imgsafe.org because I didn't want to use imgur to show how much imgur sucks now compared to 7 years ago. :)
Anyway, at the moment imgsafe.org seems to beat imgur on the qualities you listed.
Anyway, at the moment imgsafe.org seems to beat imgur on the qualities you listed.
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I see the site a lot more frequently on AlienBlue where it seems to default/redirect to the Standard view vs. Optimized.
Not sure if this is intentional on their part to drive ad views from tablet/mobile that they aren't able to monetize in the Optimized view, or if people are just aren't posting direct image links, but it sure is annoying.
And so is the dropdown for promoting their app, which is clearly trying to funnel Reddit and other traffic into their own social ecosystem.
Not sure if this is intentional on their part to drive ad views from tablet/mobile that they aren't able to monetize in the Optimized view, or if people are just aren't posting direct image links, but it sure is annoying.
And so is the dropdown for promoting their app, which is clearly trying to funnel Reddit and other traffic into their own social ecosystem.
It also sometimes includes an animated cat paw that comes up from the bottom right and swipes the image to the next one for you. It's very convenient. I really enjoy that feature. /s
It's funny that it's following almost the exact same path Photobucket and then Tinypic did.
>"here's a great easy way to host your images"
>"we need to add some ads to support the site"
>"we aren't making enough"
>"f' it"
It's funny that it's following almost the exact same path Photobucket and then Tinypic did.
>"here's a great easy way to host your images"
>"we need to add some ads to support the site"
>"we aren't making enough"
>"f' it"
What's wrong with the today version? The image you posted isn't self explanatory to me. In my experience imgur is still really damn fast. It's evolved/grown to serve a community of user who love it. What's wrong with that
It's gone from 0% annoying to 60% annoying. Compared to the 2009 benchmark which was imageshack.us - 100% annoying.
Have you seen the animated cat paw that automatically swipes over to some other dank maymay somebody's posted while you're trying to view an album?
It's definitely more about a social network instead of just uploading images to post elsewhere.
Millions of dollars can change lots of strongly held opinions
> It bans nudity, porn, and hate speech
Ha! Imgur is awash with pornography. They could automatically remove a large amount of nudity and porn by looking at the contents of /r/nsfw. As a second gate, they could use Microsoft's image classification service, which has a 'racy' flag.
Imgur is lucky that there aren't powerful rightsholder bodies for images the way there are for music and video. That's the only way the massive copyright infringement happening there every day goes unchallenged. Sure, they have DMCA safe harbor, but so did many other video and music startups who ended up slapped with lawsuits.
Ha! Imgur is awash with pornography. They could automatically remove a large amount of nudity and porn by looking at the contents of /r/nsfw. As a second gate, they could use Microsoft's image classification service, which has a 'racy' flag.
Imgur is lucky that there aren't powerful rightsholder bodies for images the way there are for music and video. That's the only way the massive copyright infringement happening there every day goes unchallenged. Sure, they have DMCA safe harbor, but so did many other video and music startups who ended up slapped with lawsuits.
Yeah, imgur's primary raison d'etre was hosting porn from nsfw subreddits -- including the worst of the worst like jailbait and creepshots.
Pictures are currently being policed by the right holders but I think that there isn't a big why would right holders really care unlike Music and Movies/TV Shows have a strong financial argument.
Pictures seem to be the opposite effect with individual copyright holders caring about if their pictures are stolen and big media only caring if they are liable or not.
Pictures seem to be the opposite effect with individual copyright holders caring about if their pictures are stolen and big media only caring if they are liable or not.
And, while "hate speech" is in the eye of the beholder, I've stumbled on far more misogyny, racism, and general assholery than I'm particularly comfortable with on imgur--particularly when it comes to sharing images hosted on imgur with friends on facebook (it now redirects links from facebook to the community discussion page for an image, if there is one). It may or may not be worse than reddit in that regard, as reddit varies wildly based on the moderation policies and practices of the subreddits. imgur seems to have no "safe space"...you can stumble on a shitshow at any moment, and a seemingly normal conversation can go shitshaped at any time.
I understand that the community part bans those things; when you upload an image, you choose whether or not to submit it to the imgur community thing
How does that work exactly? I'm on Imgur daily and never heard of such a thing. On the other hand I've never understood what "usersub" is either.
Browse "User Submitted" by "Newest First" and you'll see the raw firehose of stuff people are submitting to the main gallery. If you're especially brave, do this at work.
> If you're especially brave, do this at work.
People keep saying that, but have you actually tried it? I feel pretty confident that I could browse user submitted, newest first and mature filter off at work and the biggest problem would be "browsing Imgur at work". There's practically no nudity or other offensive stuff. It's actually quit impressive.
People keep saying that, but have you actually tried it? I feel pretty confident that I could browse user submitted, newest first and mature filter off at work and the biggest problem would be "browsing Imgur at work". There's practically no nudity or other offensive stuff. It's actually quit impressive.
That's the default view at imgur.com, isn't it?
I hit that page a couple of times a month and haven't even seen any porn....
I hit that page a couple of times a month and haven't even seen any porn....
Aren't all images on Imgur user submitted? Who else would upload stuff?
Images from the front page of reddit are autopromoted to the front page of imgur.
One of the reason I like imgur: it's Reddit without the Reddit UI or redditors.
One of the reason I like imgur: it's Reddit without the Reddit UI or redditors.
One of the reasons I like Reddit: It's Imgur without the Imgur UI or "imgurians".
Fair enough. If Reddit is what works for you then rock it. Regarding the imgur community, I personally think they are a little too tryhard and silly, myself.
But I don't go there for the community. All I want are the best of the funny, amusing and interesting images the Internet can generate, served up in a never ending stream. After a long day of reading, coding, emailing, and everything else, the last thing I want to do is navigate yet another wall of grey on white text.
Imgur is pure brain candy in that sense. No thinking, no real discussion, no need to look at comments or interact with the users. Just flip awww, kitty flip hey boobs flip neat!
But I don't go there for the community. All I want are the best of the funny, amusing and interesting images the Internet can generate, served up in a never ending stream. After a long day of reading, coding, emailing, and everything else, the last thing I want to do is navigate yet another wall of grey on white text.
Imgur is pure brain candy in that sense. No thinking, no real discussion, no need to look at comments or interact with the users. Just flip awww, kitty flip hey boobs flip neat!
> At first, the service took off not because it did a lot, but because it did so little. "Nobody really wants to put images up on the Internet," he explains. "What you actually want to do is share it with somebody. So I stripped out everything that other image hosts even had, because when you just get to the point of sharing, what's really important is speed."
> "I had this insight—that ended up being wrong, by the way—which was, 'This content's so good, let's just have it stand on its own,'" he remembers. "'I'm not even going to put titles or descriptions or anything on this stuff.' Turns out that's actually a dumb idea, because people need context."
Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use.
It seems like nobody can have a "community-less" image sharing site.
> "I had this insight—that ended up being wrong, by the way—which was, 'This content's so good, let's just have it stand on its own,'" he remembers. "'I'm not even going to put titles or descriptions or anything on this stuff.' Turns out that's actually a dumb idea, because people need context."
Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use.
It seems like nobody can have a "community-less" image sharing site.
> Whats funny to me, is that I stopped liking imgur when when added the community/context stuff. I liked it when it was small and simple. It's gotten so bloated that it's become a pain to use.
Yep, its a pain on mobile, is bloated (so non direct image links like i.imgur/garbage.jpg) load slowly. The sponsored content is annoying too with the adds.
I also find it ironic that the Imgur people hate "reddit" and redditors, even though imgur was pretty much made to service reddit.
Yep, its a pain on mobile, is bloated (so non direct image links like i.imgur/garbage.jpg) load slowly. The sponsored content is annoying too with the adds.
I also find it ironic that the Imgur people hate "reddit" and redditors, even though imgur was pretty much made to service reddit.
And it's growth is pretty much because of Reddit. Reddit (for a while now) even restricts image hosting to Imgur and Gifly on most subreddits now. This is going to bite both them and Imgur at some point.
I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value.
Attempting to add context is a good idea, but Imgur fails at that. Images on Imgur isn't tagged or titled right, which makes search completely useless. If you see an image, and want to find it, even later that same day, you can pretty much forget about it. The community part of Imgur might even make the problem worse, because the users just stay within the confines of Imgur, meaning they don't feel the need for tagging, good titles and search.
Take this example: http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y the title is "useful for arguments", except it's just a bunch of jumbled gif, there are no useful tags, no discover-ability or search-ability.
The community part shows up, because regardless of the original intent, sites do need to make money. There are no real way for sites like Imgur to make money, other than attempting to sell ads. Having a community helps sell those ads.
Attempting to add context is a good idea, but Imgur fails at that. Images on Imgur isn't tagged or titled right, which makes search completely useless. If you see an image, and want to find it, even later that same day, you can pretty much forget about it. The community part of Imgur might even make the problem worse, because the users just stay within the confines of Imgur, meaning they don't feel the need for tagging, good titles and search.
Take this example: http://imgur.com/gallery/X4R7y the title is "useful for arguments", except it's just a bunch of jumbled gif, there are no useful tags, no discover-ability or search-ability.
The community part shows up, because regardless of the original intent, sites do need to make money. There are no real way for sites like Imgur to make money, other than attempting to sell ads. Having a community helps sell those ads.
> I really dislike the community part of Imgur as well, mostly because the people seem weird and childish, but also because it fails to add any value.
Like /r9k/ it had a great three months, and then everyone found it.
Like /r9k/ it had a great three months, and then everyone found it.
This seems like the story of every great Internet site, ever.
It's great until the lowest common denominator finds it then it goes to crap.
Reddit is only spared because you can unsubscribe from default subreddit's and find more niche sub-reddit's that attract a niche audience or subset of users that are less likely to "sh#tpost" for lack of a better term. Not to say all new users are bad or don't contribute anything new, but the noise to signal ratio is way worse the more people pile on and start becoming an echo chamber. I've even seen it a little with HN as its gained popularity, but thankfully this site is so niche its not too bad.
But I kind of wish I could do that with other community sites and social media. I know a lot of people loved twitter, or digg, or whatever back in the day before the celebrities, media, and extended relatives caught on.
It's great until the lowest common denominator finds it then it goes to crap.
Reddit is only spared because you can unsubscribe from default subreddit's and find more niche sub-reddit's that attract a niche audience or subset of users that are less likely to "sh#tpost" for lack of a better term. Not to say all new users are bad or don't contribute anything new, but the noise to signal ratio is way worse the more people pile on and start becoming an echo chamber. I've even seen it a little with HN as its gained popularity, but thankfully this site is so niche its not too bad.
But I kind of wish I could do that with other community sites and social media. I know a lot of people loved twitter, or digg, or whatever back in the day before the celebrities, media, and extended relatives caught on.
I'm not sure this is necessarily an unavoidable fate for internet sites, even communities. You can keep the signal to noise ratio decent if you've got an active team of moderators, fairly heavy pruning of content that doesn't add anything to the conversation and the willingness to say no, my site doesn't offer 'freedom of speech'.
Unfortunately, most big sites seem to be built on the 'leave it as a complete free for all with no moderation whatsoever' model, which immediately stops working the minute the memberbase expands from early adopters to every Tom, Dick and Harry. That's why Reddit, Twitter, etc have had so many problems. They were built with the idea of 'anyone can say virtually anything' in mind, then realised it would lead to massive amounts of trolling and personal attacks and questionable content, then dug themselves an even deeper hole by trying to moderate the site in woefully biased ways.
Unfortunately, most big sites seem to be built on the 'leave it as a complete free for all with no moderation whatsoever' model, which immediately stops working the minute the memberbase expands from early adopters to every Tom, Dick and Harry. That's why Reddit, Twitter, etc have had so many problems. They were built with the idea of 'anyone can say virtually anything' in mind, then realised it would lead to massive amounts of trolling and personal attacks and questionable content, then dug themselves an even deeper hole by trying to moderate the site in woefully biased ways.
Twitter isn't really a single community, it's many (self-selecting) communities. This means that Twitter don't really need to moderate low-quality content or what have you, but they do need to solve harassment.
Ah, yes. Eternal September. A problem almost as old as the WWW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
There was a picture that I remember describing "The problem with social media" and it had a couple of people sharing something they thought interesting with friends. Then five more people joined and it got noisy. Then a bunch of people showed up, spouting irrelevant noise. Then the first group of people left.
Unfortunately I think it's inevitable. If only there was a site where I could search for images like that |;)
Unfortunately I think it's inevitable. If only there was a site where I could search for images like that |;)
Yeah, I've accepted that, and for the most part, usually something new comes along and replaces it. The trick is to find where people went after X site went to crap. Sometimes though, a suitable replacement doesn't always crop up. I haven't seen a good imgur replacement.
You can't really make money without a community/context. What value is the non .jpg page if all it has is ads?
Though it's true, Imgur is worse off for it, the reason (I suspect) for "community" is to drive income.
Though it's true, Imgur is worse off for it, the reason (I suspect) for "community" is to drive income.
I'll give you an account on https://sr.ht if you like. I think it meets what you're looking for.
Sorry, but I'm not familiar with it. I've heard of it, but what separates it from other image-sharing sites?
It's just a private site. It's intentionally kept small and community-less.
Interesting... Yes please. I might also use that code for another project of mine....
Thanks for pointing it out!
Thanks for pointing it out!
Until quite recently, you could append ".jpg" to get just the image, without all the comments and ads.
His strategy seems to have been to provide the images for reddit to comment and vote upon - and then add those features himself. The outsourcee eventually owning the customer.
His strategy seems to have been to provide the images for reddit to comment and vote upon - and then add those features himself. The outsourcee eventually owning the customer.
It's one of the most 'demanding' website too. It's my favorite web browser pressure test these days. Who's imgur's imgur now ?
How is that Ohanian et al (or whoever was running the Reddit ship around Imgur's launch) weren't browbeaten by Conde Nast for letting another startup parasitically use it as a host organism to sucessfully launch and scale? At some point in the future Imgur could be more valuable than Reddit.
I get the impression that back then, nobody at Conde Nast really cared what those "weird reddit guys" were doing. The team was mostly just struggling just to keep the lights on.
Yep, if I remember correctly, Imgur also started before the 'Digg Exodus', so reddit wasn't the biggest kid on the block yet.
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During the Yishan/Ellen saga, I had wondered whether or not they would shortlist Alan Schaaf for the CEO job given how well Imgur had done and the symbiotic nature between the two companies.
Before Imgur, it was hit-and-miss as to whether an image would load, either because the Imageshack etc would take it down for bandwidth reasons, or the host would get crushed under traffic load.
Think about how many major subreddits exist because Imgur provides free, reliable hosting. Imgur allowed Reddit to scale its audience massively in quick, easy-to-digest content areas... and Imgur did that for Reddit for free.
Can you imagine how much gratitude that would engender?
Think about how many major subreddits exist because Imgur provides free, reliable hosting. Imgur allowed Reddit to scale its audience massively in quick, easy-to-digest content areas... and Imgur did that for Reddit for free.
Can you imagine how much gratitude that would engender?
That's a good point re: cross-scaling. I guess it was a symbiotic relationship.
surely imgur is an epiphyte at worst (and a symbiont at best) rather than a parasite. its existence didn't cost reddit anything (other than perhaps an opportunity to do it themselves, which they could have at any time they wanted, and did not).
I still remember how cautiously negative[1] I was toward the creator in his initial unveiling on reddit many years ago. Contracting at photobucket and seeing the state of media hosting at the time made me very pessimistic of the sector. I'm happy they've grown as large as they have since that moment and broken away from what other image hosting services were doing.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_t...
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_t...
On the other hand, they seem to be going down the road of what other image hosting sites have done in the past. Large, intrusive ads. Most recently, that cat that pops up on mobile that covers the content with a large paw encouraging you to swipe to see the next picture. Focusing on building a community instead of focusing on image hosting. Building value-add stuff like their meme generator while continuing to avoid the actual difficult problems. Like having constant infrastructure issues that keeps their site inaccessible for hours at a time more often than they should be.
I appreciate that it's difficult (costly) to do image hosting, and it's nice that they accept hotlinking and other activities that produce no revenue for them, but the Imgur that we have today is a far cry from the Imgur that was promised seven years ago.
I appreciate that it's difficult (costly) to do image hosting, and it's nice that they accept hotlinking and other activities that produce no revenue for them, but the Imgur that we have today is a far cry from the Imgur that was promised seven years ago.
> and it's nice that they accept hotlinking
They are cracking down on that, unfortunately. For example, FIMFiction users can no longer embed imgur images:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/595986/imgur-problems
They are cracking down on that, unfortunately. For example, FIMFiction users can no longer embed imgur images:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/595986/imgur-problems
Oh wow, their ToS actually prohibits hotlinking now? The ability to hotlink was one reason it was so popular!
> On the other hand, they seem to be going down the road of what other image hosting sites have done in the past. Large, intrusive ads.
I hate how they've broken their site completely if one browses with JavaScript off (which I suspect was a deliberate choice to force people to accept being tracked and exploited). imgurl is definitely not a site I trust to run just any JavaScript or ad.
I hate how they've broken their site completely if one browses with JavaScript off (which I suspect was a deliberate choice to force people to accept being tracked and exploited). imgurl is definitely not a site I trust to run just any JavaScript or ad.
And you shouldn't. http://www.dailydot.com/technology/imgur-4chan-8chan-exploit...
That's because Imgur let people upload and serve HTML files from their servers, and not related to js requirements.
They don't do this anymore.
They don't do this anymore.
That means at one point, their security model did not prevent malicious javascript. They may have stopped allowing it, but why trust that they've changed their model? It's not like they were audited or something, and they're known to have not cared about javascript security as recently as 6 months ago.
I see no reason to trust them.
I see no reason to trust them.
I noticed they've made it much harder to hot link, now. I tried to post a direct link to an image on facebook, and no matter what link I used, once clicked it is redirected to the "community" link where discussion and stuff is happening (and the "community" at imgur is...well, they're fucking morons and I'd be embarrassed to post anything to my friends that included that shitshow of racism, drunk-uncle-isms, and misogyny). So, I ended up "uploading" the image to my own imgur account without sharing to the front page, or whatever, and then shared the direct link.
But, that hassle is the kind of thing that might make me consider other image sharing options. I have enjoyed using imgur for a long time, and I've generally trusted the fellow running it had good intentions. But, if them making the cash register ring is going to cause me to accidentally share a link to a cesspool of stupid comments, I'm gonna start being real cautious about using imgur for anything. We've all gotta make a living, but I'm not comfortable with that kind of thing.
But, that hassle is the kind of thing that might make me consider other image sharing options. I have enjoyed using imgur for a long time, and I've generally trusted the fellow running it had good intentions. But, if them making the cash register ring is going to cause me to accidentally share a link to a cesspool of stupid comments, I'm gonna start being real cautious about using imgur for anything. We've all gotta make a living, but I'm not comfortable with that kind of thing.
> But, that hassle is the kind of thing that might make me consider other image sharing options. I have enjoyed using imgur for a long time, and I've generally trusted the fellow running it had good intentions. But, if them making the cash register ring is going to cause me to accidentally share a link to a cesspool of stupid comments, I'm gonna start being real cautious about using imgur for anything. We've all gotta make a living, but I'm not comfortable with that kind of thing.
Yeah, this is the cycle that keeps repeating with image hosting.
1) Start with a good, low-ad option + donations/memberships that is bootstrap profitable [e.g. It can pay a salary for a skeleton crew of 3-5 people + servers]
2) Raise VC money [this sometimes is step #0]
3) Attempt to increase revenue to justify VC money.
4) A substantial portion of the population abandons ship for the next image host that is at #1.
Yeah, this is the cycle that keeps repeating with image hosting.
1) Start with a good, low-ad option + donations/memberships that is bootstrap profitable [e.g. It can pay a salary for a skeleton crew of 3-5 people + servers]
2) Raise VC money [this sometimes is step #0]
3) Attempt to increase revenue to justify VC money.
4) A substantial portion of the population abandons ship for the next image host that is at #1.
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I remember that thread. I actually think they took my advice to heart.
My 15 yr old spends lots of time on imgur. He gets news from it, as well as humor and gamer stuff, much like the previous generation got news from The Daily Show, though the imgur news is very much more watered down than what one would get from The Daily Show. He often has a warped sense of what's going on in the world, but he often knows stuff before I do (because it hasn't percolated up on HN or reddit).
https://web.archive.org/web/20090227183112/http://www.reddit...?
In 2009 Imgur was clean, neat and fast. Everyone sane questioned (including in that announcement thread) how that could possibly stay true in the long run. The founder just kept saying "we'll try to solve it if it comes to that", refusing to go into details or presenting anything resembling a plan.
Based on this "commitment" which I would say was either naive or not truthful, the Reddit userbase propelled Imgur to its current position.
Today Imgur looks like this:
https://i.imgsafe.org/102b850.png
(I picked the top link from Reddit 3 minutes ago. Please excuse the Swedish language ads - but I think you get the picture without being able to read the language.)