In 2016, Imgur raised $40 million in funding from investors, valuing the company at around $500 million. In 2021, Imgur was acquired by the media company, MediaLab, for an undisclosed amount, reportedly around $200-300 million. Alan Schaaf, the CEO and founder, reportedly owned around 40% of the company at the time of the acquisition, which would have netted him a significant amount, estimated to be around $80-120 million.

why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure in light of OP's stated goals? His stated goals are the same as imgur's stated goals. The imgur outcome is the stated goal of most of the people here.

Think a little bit more inside the box.

"why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure"

Because what everyone on the internet wants is a place that will just friggin hold images and respond to HTTP requests with that image

"in light of OP's stated goals"

because op seems to want to build a sustainable business, but at a certain scale it just becomes unsustainable because you become a CDN that is paid for per-seat. So they will inevitably need to either not scale (which makes them not what the internet wants), or scale by either becoming Cloudflare or becoming a social networking site, so that they can either pay their bills via usage-based-billing or pay their bills via sweaty VC money.

> Because what everyone on the internet wants is a place that will just friggin hold images and respond to HTTP requests with that image

But almost nobody on the internet wants to pay for anything. That’s the problem, hence all of the shenanigans around monetization.

So the goal is to make another unsustainable business, make everyone use and love it, then sell it to someone who will make it uterly shitty with the hopes of squeezing at least a bit of money out of the people who now rely on it, before it inevitably dies?

The goal is to make “fuck you money” then tell everyone, including users, to go fuck themselves. The specifics are up in the air.

Don’t forget to talk about the “wonderful journey” it has been when announcing the sale.

Imgur has lasted a good while.

I’d argue that having a service that exists in any form is a success. The fact it’s used so heavily despite your opinions and being loaded with ads means people value it and are better off than if it never existed. If the creator here could create the same but with no monetary upside directly, even just having the notoriety and putting it on his resume would translate to dollars indirectly. It’s a side project, chill.

> sell it to someone who will make it uterly shitty

Imgur is still good. It's just not great anymore, and it's a long way from shitty.

The cycle of image hosting continues

https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-onli...

I've swapped to using the app Dropshare hooked up to a Cloudflare R2 bucket myself

what has been your experience with this alternative you have settled on?

Plenty of ways to send an image to it - right click image in Finder, share menu on iOS from photos etc, replaced the built in macOS shortcuts for taking screenshots with Dropshare so a quick upload button to share a screenshot.

That combined with pointing a subdomain at the r2 bucket means I can share images virtually instantly without thinking too hard about it (the r2 URL is copied to clipboard once the image is uploaded). Having a personalised vanity domain is a cherry on top too http://img.cohan.dev/AXsaG.jpg

Also means it's on me to make sure images are available in the future and I trust me to keep my images online forever more than sites that have to find a way to fund themselves eventually.

Just letting you know; Dropshare is now compatible with Horizon.