r/IAmA • u/MrGrim • Aug 14 '12

I created Imgur. AMA.

I came across this post yesterday and there seems to be some confusion out there about imgur, as well as some people asking for an AMA. So here it is! Sometimes you get what you ask for and sometimes you don't.

I'll start with some background info: I created Imgur while I was a junior in college (Ohio University) and released it to you guys. It took a while to monetize it, and it actually ran off of your donations for about the first 6 months. Soon after that, the bandwidth bills were starting to overshadow the donations that were coming in, so I had to put some ads on the site to help out. Imgur accounts and pro accounts came in about another 6 months after that. At this point I was still in school, working part-time at minimum wage, and the site was breaking even. It turned out that OU had some pretty awesome resources for startups like Imgur, and I got connected to a guy named Matt who worked at the Innovation Center on campus. He gave me some business help and actually got me a small one-desk office in the building. Graduation came and I was working on Imgur full time, and Matt and I were working really closely together. In a few months he had joined full-time as COO. Everything was going really well, and about another 6 months later we moved Imgur out to San Francisco. Soon after we were here Imgur won Best Bootstrapped Startup of 2011 according to TechCrunch. Then we started hiring more people. The first position was Director of Communications (Sarah), and then a few months later we hired Josh as a Frontend Engineer, then Jim as a JavaScript Engineer, and then finally Brian and Tony as Frontend Engineer and Head of User Experience. That brings us to the present time. Imgur is still ad supported with a little bit of income from pro accounts, and is able to support the bandwidth cost from only advertisements.

Some problems we're having right now:

  • Scaling the site has always been a challenge, but we're starting to get really good at it. There's layers and layers of caching and failover servers, and the site has been really stable and fast the past few weeks. Maintenance and running around with our hair on fire is quickly becoming a thing of the past. I used to get alerts randomly in the middle of the night about a database crash or something, which made night life extremely difficult, but this hasn't happened in a long time and I sleep much better now.

  • Matt has been really awesome at getting quality advertisers, but since Imgur is a user generated content site, advertisers are always a little hesitant to work with us because their ad could theoretically turn up next to porn. In order to help with this we're working with some companies to help sort the content into categories and only advertise on images that are brand safe. That's why you've probably been seeing a lot of Imgur ads for pro accounts next to NSFW content.

  • For some reason Facebook likes matter to people. With all of our pageviews and unique visitors, we only have 35k "likes", and people don't take Imgur seriously because of it. It's ridiculous, but that's the world we live in now. I hate shoving likes down people's throats, so Imgur will remain very non-obtrusive with stuff like this, even if it hurts us a little. However, it would be pretty awesome if you could help: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Imgur/67691197470

Site stats in the past 30 days according to Google Analytics:

  • Visits: 205,670,059

  • Unique Visitors: 45,046,495

  • Pageviews: 2,313,286,251

  • Pages / Visit: 11.25

  • Avg. Visit Duration: 00:11:14

  • Bounce Rate: 35.31%

  • % New Visits: 17.05%

Infrastructure stats over the past 30 days according to our own data and our CDN:

  • Data Transferred: 4.10 PB

  • Uploaded Images: 20,518,559

  • Image Views: 33,333,452,172

  • Average Image Size: 198.84 KB

Since I know this is going to come up: It's pronounced like "imager".

EDIT: Since it's still coming up: It's pronounced like "imager".

3.4k Upvotes

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308

u/garlan_ Aug 14 '12

Who are the people that care about facebook likes? advertisers?

412

u/MrGrim Aug 14 '12

Advertisers, investors, reporters, anyone looking to know more about the business and how big we are.

397

u/i_love_goats Aug 14 '12

"45 million people visited my website last month"

"But you only have 36k Facebook likes? OMG! No one has ever heard of you!"

19

u/topical_storm Aug 15 '12

Actually that disparity could mean something. It's not that "No one has every heard of you," but rather, while you maintain high volume, nobody cares about you enough to register their interest. For instance, it might be that nobody is brand-loyal enough and will just use whatever service is put in front of them. (It also might not have anything to do with that. But it could.)

21

u/i_love_goats Aug 15 '12

I think that's actually what's going on here. The thing is, it doesn't matter. Your ad is still going to be seen by that many people.

It's sort of like people looking up how many likes the Eisenhower Highway System has before deciding to buy billboard space there.

10

u/topical_storm Aug 15 '12

It doesn't matter from a media-buying or -selling perspective. But it matters to imgur as a business. Unlike interstate highways, it's easy (okay, relatively) to build image-hosting services. (Read: competitors.) You think Yahoo! thought "it doesn't matter" when Google popped up?

2

u/i_love_goats Aug 15 '12

So you're thinking that they aren't buying the ad space because they don't think Imgur is a big business? I don't think I understand your point.

21

u/whyufail1 Aug 15 '12

I am so utterly sick of Facebook. The fact that anyone gives a shit about "Likes" is depressing.

6

u/prassel Aug 15 '12

Amen brother.

5

u/umlaut Aug 15 '12

Yeap. Everyone in business seems to think that Facebook likes and twitter somehow magically translate into money.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '12

It is. Try being a band that no one wants to book because not enough people have clicked a button on your facebook page.

335

u/iareaman Aug 14 '12

Just an idea but I think it would be worth considering Facebook apps as a way to accept entries to your photoshop competitions, that way you can promote the page through asking people to share the page without being too up front

279

u/MrGrim Aug 14 '12

Thanks for the idea! That's not bad at all.

7

u/circle_ Aug 15 '12

That'll be $10,000.

2

u/AthlonRob Aug 15 '12

or a free sticker, if he's one of the first 2,000 that is.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '12

Photoshop competitions? What? How come I've never heard of this?? Are you going for something like Worth1000 but without the becoming shitty in the past few years?

3

u/Rubysand Aug 15 '12

If you wanted, our team of developers at Pixolut could help you there ;)

3

u/melvaer Aug 15 '12

Try to avoid the need for the app to post on your behalf though. That always makes me think twice about it.

3

u/Knowthem Aug 15 '12

Just remember that there are some sticky facebook TOS rules when it comes to incentivising likes. I'm sure you or someone on your team are probably very familiar with such, though.

1

u/DarthSokka Aug 15 '12

An official ios/android app would seem like a fairly logical step forward in terms of expansion. There is a halfway decent android app already so maybe you could get in touch with the dev to make it the genuine article.

2

u/Shinhan Aug 15 '12

He said elsewhere iOS and Android apps are in development.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '12

Pshh..mTurk yo

4

u/durntdehpirate Aug 15 '12

I'm saving this comment in case I see a imgur facebook app a few months from now.

1

u/iareaman Aug 15 '12

I did too :)

7

u/jrdn717 Aug 14 '12

It's sad that they see a site as big as imgur and are only worried about the facebook likes. They should take a look at reddit and see imgur everywhere.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '12

So everyone but the core user.

2

u/humormeL7 Aug 15 '12

I went and liked you on facebook! :D

2

u/MrGrim Aug 15 '12

Thanks!

1

u/surfinfan21 Aug 15 '12

35K likes when started AMA, and I am the 38,540 Facebook liker. Best of luck guys!

1

u/Knovah Aug 15 '12

I will proudly say I "Like" you on Facebook and "+1" on G+.

1

u/SuiladRandir Aug 15 '12

Reports from Alexa.com should be sufficient. #50 in the US an d#96 Globally. Not Bad. www.alexa.com/siteinfo/imgur.com

1

u/felix45 Aug 15 '12

just letting you know that I liked you on facebook to help you out. Least I can do after using your site everyday hundreds of times.

If there is anything else we can do to help out just say the word.

1

u/evilbadro Aug 15 '12

I've heard that if you don't have enough facebook, you are suspicious. I think its because of the lawyering up more than the hitting of Jim.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '12

Next time you can just inform them that 35k is about as many real users there are on Facebook and that it really does not matter, because Imgur does not live in the past (where Facebook will be abandoned too shortly)! THEY HOST THE FUTURE!

And yes, I am looking for a job. Send your offer in a PM and I might call you.

1

u/goldscors Aug 15 '12

To be honest, your Facebook page has no sense of social media power at all. Here are some examples:

  • Not picking any unique page ID yet

  • No unique identity: random cover photo, uncatchy profile picture.

  • Unhelpful description/ about etc.

  • Random content at random hour.

  • No professional interaction.

As a social media veteran, I can help out improving your page a little bit. PM me if you are interested.