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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

What's the business model here?

We would never run with such expensive options for this functionality, especially if it was a free/donations powered service. This company raised $7.5M though: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/unsplash-simple-token-seri...

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As far as I can tell they're selling data. Their API requires hotlinking so they can track everything. They know exactly how often each picture is viewed and downloaded. Unsplash knows which images are successful and which ones are duds. I'm not sure who they're selling to, but I'm sure lots of folks would be interested.

They raised money from the crypto-coin outfit run by the former fab.com CEO. At Fab and at his previous company it seems the modus oprandi was to raise millions and then pocket as much as possible before the shit hit the fan.

I ordered so much stuff from Fab back in the day! I thank the investors for their largess

They also have extensive partnerships with certain brands — their homepage currently serves ads disguised as content from a handful of companies.

(I say this as a user of and contributor to Unsplash)

So ads? I thought it would be something a little more inspired.

Yes. Of the first 7 images 3 are adverts. Then you can scroll down a long way on mobile without any more ads.

That's pretty clever, actually. If you're just browsing, you're not going to hover over every image to see that it's sponsored, but a subtle product placement within that image might not be enough for your brain to recognize it as an ad bait. Not bad...

So that's acceptable? Not having any easily visible marks? I'm surprised to see this sentiment on HN which is so averse to ads of any kind.

Acceptable? That's a frame of reference. Is it widely practiced on the internet, on every social channel? Oh, yeah, it's everywhere. They are not doing anything different, but they are executing the ads rather well.

I am curious how far they are going to grow before they turn the ad machine full throttle, and whether or not that will have a huge adverse effect.

We all kind of know that Instagram is a giant online store for everything, at least it has been for a few years now. Unsplash contributors seem to think that free will last forever. It'd be very interesting to see if they stay or leave.

They are probably banking on the Pinterest model. Eventually you will see a picture of the couch and a link that couch from your nearby store. Very profitable business at a scale, even if individual conversions are small.

Given the cryptocurrency involvement, I'd guess some sort of fraud? Probably simply "take money from investors for as long as possible", which doesn't even require a cryptocurrency.

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