Imgur

Imgur ( , community and founded by in 2009. The service has been popular with hosting images and memes, particularly those posted on .[4]

The company was started in 2009 in as Alan Schaaf's side project while he attended for . Imgur was created as a response to the usability problems encountered in similar services. Designed to be a gift to the online community of , Imgur became widely recognized following its rise to popularity on websites such as , , and .

In the beginning, Imgur relied on donations to help with the costs. As the site grew, it needed additional sources of revenue to keep up with demand. Display ads were introduced in May 2009;

In order to scale and manage its growth, Imgur used three different hosting providers in the first year before settling on Voxel, then switching to in late 2011.[9]

In January 2011, the company moved from Ohio to . and won the Best Bootstrapped Startup award at 's 2012 Crunchies Awards.[13]

In 2016, Reddit introduced native image hosting, causing a notable decrease in Imgur submissions on the site.[14]

Funding[]

In April 2014, five years after it was founded, Imgur raised $40 million from and Andreessen Horowitz's Lars Dalgaard joined Imgur's board.

April Fools' pranks[]

Imgur has a history of playing pranks on its users. The first prank in 2011 was the Catification feature, which allowed users to automatically add cats to any image with one click. In April 2019 Imgur made yet another April Fools' Day joke by adding the "Meh" button along with the pre-existing "Upvote", "Downvote", and "Favorite" icons.[19] The "Meh" button would vote neither up nor down a post, effectively giving it a +0. The "Meh" button was to be used "When you're plainly whelmed".

In 2013 Imgur overtook other image hosts in interest, such as , , and , according to ., it was ranked 16th among Alexa's Top Sites in the United States.[21]

In its first month Imgur had 93,000 page views. According to in 2012, Imgur's former (CDN), Imgur served more images in 10 minutes than there are in the entire . of data transferred.[22]

Albums[]

Albums were introduced on October 11, 2010.[23] Album layouts are customizable and embeddable.

Accounts[]

On January 9, 2010, Alan Schaaf introduced Imgur accounts, which allowed users to create custom image galleries and manage their images. Accounts gave full image management including editing, deletion, album creation and embedding, and the ability to comment on viral images and submit to the public gallery.[] According to the help section on imgur, there is no image upload limit per account, but there is an upload limit of 50 images per IP address per hour.

Images[]

Imgur used to have a policy to keep images unless they went three months without receiving any views, at which point (unless they were Pro account images) they might be removed in response to space needs.

Meme Generator[]

Since June 26, 2013, Imgur has provided a "Meme Generator" service that allows users to create with custom text using a wide variety of images.[30]

Gallery[]

The public Imgur gallery is a collection of the most viral images from around the web based on an algorithm that computes views, shares and votes based on time. and trophies..

GIFV[]

Since October 2014, Imgur had automatically converted uploaded animated files into and video files, which are much smaller.[36]

Video to GIF[]

In January 2015, Imgur allowed users to link video URLs to create GIFs directly through the website.[37] This was geared towards allowing its users to create GIFs regardless of image editing knowledge.

Topics[]

In February 2015 Imgur announced "Topics" which was a quick way for users to sort and view specific images that belonged to a specific group determined by tags such as science, earth, or cats.[38]

Mobile apps[]

In March and June 2015 Imgur introduced official mobile apps for , respectively.[40]

Trophies[]

In order to reward users for their interactions, Imgur provides a series of Trophies for achievements including being a member of the community for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 years, "Best Post of the Day", "Best Post of the Month", "Best Post of the Year",[41] "Top Comment of The Day", "Top Comment of The Month", and "Top Comment of The Year".

Since the site's creation, Imgur's user community has significantly grown. Self-named "Imgurians" have created much content in an effort to bring the community even closer. At the beginning of 2015, Imgur's director of community Sarah Schaaf announced its first ever "Camp Imgur". Five hundred tickets were sold at $150 each. The camp was created as a celebratory event to bring users of the site together in August 2015, on a four-day retreat at Camp Navarro in . It included hiking, stand-up comedians, and meetings with the staff of Imgur and other users.[42]

Some of Imgur's more well-known community members include former Mythbuster .[44]

On November 23, 2017, Imgur was notified of a potential security breach that had occurred in 2014 and affected the email addresses and passwords of 1.7 million user accounts. On the morning of November 24, 2017, Imgur began notifying affected users via their registered email address to change their password.[45]

1. . Imgur. Imgur, Inc. Retrieved 14 December 2018.
   


2. . . Retrieved January 14, 2020.
   


3. . Imgur.com. Retrieved April 26, 2015.
   


4. 
   


5. . . Retrieved April 9, 2013.
   


6. . AllThingsD.
   


7. . . Retrieved April 6, 2013.
   


8. . Press - Imgur. Archived from on 2016-10-10. Retrieved 2015-12-03.
   


9. ^ . imgur.com. May 15, 2015.
   


10. . imgur.com.
    


11. . imgur.com. May 15, 2012.
    


12. . Buzzfeed.
    


13. . TechCrunch. 1 February 2012.
    


14. . minimaxir. Retrieved 2018-06-23.
    


15. "
    


16. . Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-06-23.
    


17. . imgur.com.
    


18. . Imgur help.
    


19. . imgur.com.
    


20. .
    


21. . www.alexa.com. Archived from on 2016-04-09. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
    


22. . Imgur.
    


23. . Archived from on 2015-10-01. Retrieved 2016-10-06.
    


24. . Archived from on 2014-03-03. Retrieved 2016-10-06.CS1 maint: archived copy as title ()
    


25. .
    


26. . Imgurl. Imgurl. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
    


27. . Imgur. Archived from on 2010-01-12.
    


28. . IMGUR.com. Archived from on 12 January 2010. Normal images that are not viewed for 3 months may be removed. However, images with pro accounts can only be removed by you.
    


29. . Archived from on 17 February 2015. 02/16/2015 Forever! An image is only removed if deletion is requested.
    


30. . Imgur.com. June 26, 2013. Retrieved July 2, 2013.
    


31. .
    


32. .
    


33. .
    


34. .
    


35. .
    


36. . imgur.com. October 14, 2014.
    


37. . Retrieved 2015-12-03.
    


38. . Retrieved 2015-12-03.
    


39. .
    


40. . Fast Company. 2 June 2015.
    


41. . Imgur. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
    


42. . Mic.com. Retrieved 2016-01-30.
    


43. . Retrieved 2016-09-08.
    


44. . 2016-07-11. Retrieved 2016-09-08.
    


45. . Gadgets7.