https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c...
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.
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.
But almost nobody on the internet wants to pay for anything. That’s the problem, hence all of the shenanigans around monetization.
Don’t forget to talk about the “wonderful journey” it has been when announcing the sale.
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.
Imgur is still good. It's just not great anymore, and it's a long way from shitty.
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
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.