<story><title>Imgur Acquired by Medialab</title><url>https://imgur.com/gallery/We6yCM2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robertoandred</author><text>Yeah but who goes to the front page of imgur?</text></item><item><author>BiteCode_dev</author><text>My guess is PR.&lt;p&gt;Regularly, on imgur, you see a pic in interest for a celebrity, a rich person, a movie. It looks organic, but if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things about it. Then it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.&lt;p&gt;I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s probably the same for a lot of communities with a strong influence on trends, like popular sub reddits or hacker news.&lt;p&gt;There is no better ads than the one you don&amp;#x27;t see. There is no better slogan than the one you repeat to your friends as a catchphrase. And there is no better propaganda than the one based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.</text></item><item><author>ChrisArchitect</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t even remember now I did &lt;i&gt;pay them&lt;/i&gt; a small fee and then they removed that option to go it alone with ads and refused to &amp;#x27;take my money&amp;#x27;. 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?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>handmodel</author><text>I one time posted an album on Imgur of my hobby project. I was hoping it would do well on the niche subreddit it involved.&lt;p&gt;It did ok on reddit (100 upvotes) but a few thousands upvotes on Imgur and made the front page with hundreds of thousands of views. I was shocked since I didn&amp;#x27;t even know that was a thing. But my guess is popular with people who are on their phone a lot, are not as tech saavy, or international.</text></comment>
<story><title>Imgur Acquired by Medialab</title><url>https://imgur.com/gallery/We6yCM2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robertoandred</author><text>Yeah but who goes to the front page of imgur?</text></item><item><author>BiteCode_dev</author><text>My guess is PR.&lt;p&gt;Regularly, on imgur, you see a pic in interest for a celebrity, a rich person, a movie. It looks organic, but if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things about it. Then it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.&lt;p&gt;I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s probably the same for a lot of communities with a strong influence on trends, like popular sub reddits or hacker news.&lt;p&gt;There is no better ads than the one you don&amp;#x27;t see. There is no better slogan than the one you repeat to your friends as a catchphrase. And there is no better propaganda than the one based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.</text></item><item><author>ChrisArchitect</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t even remember now I did &lt;i&gt;pay them&lt;/i&gt; a small fee and then they removed that option to go it alone with ads and refused to &amp;#x27;take my money&amp;#x27;. 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?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>corobo</author><text>The exact opposite personality type to people that browse HN I&amp;#x27;d wager</text></comment>