Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

My take on why imgur is on top (I've been using & evangelizing it for a couple years): They initially picked one thing (image hosting) and did everything possible to remove barriers & friction to getting that task done.

Ways to upload to imgur include clicking upload button, using file dialog; dragging and dropping onto the webpage; OSX dashboard widget (used this one when I was on mac); windows context menu (right click send to imgur); chrome extension; FF extension; bash script; wordpress plugin... basically any way you can think of, you can put images on imgur quickly. Oh and not blocking 3rd party referrers, and actually doing a good job of handling images makes a big difference. To the latter point: I was uploading images from iOS to wordpress but the orientation was in the EXIF data. WP ignored this so my images were rotated the wrong way... use `convert` to fix them 1x1 = pain in the ass. Select images, drag/drop onto desktop, group as album... surprise surprise: imgur orients the pictures properly automatically.

The UX on imgur is what I'd call a case study of good UX, basically the best I've seen on any website. Kudos to imgur, they deserve all the success they're getting. /fanrant

Absolutely, 100% in agreement.

It took me less than 5 seconds to upload this image and get my hands on a unique, neat URL leading to said image: http://i.imgur.com/1o3iJe1.gif

The process:

* Type: imgur.com & hit enter

* Drag image from desktop and drop

* Hit enter

* Click (optional)

* Done.

No prompts to log in or create an account. No need to navigate to an 'upload' button. No prompts to share on various social media sites. No intrusive adverts.

The sheer simplicity and convenience is immense.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Probably not worth worrying too much, but it is important to keep in mind the terms of the site. Your cute or clever meme may end up on a T-shirt.

> With regard to any file or content you upload to the public portions of our site, you grant Imgur a non-exclusive, royalty- free, perpetual, irrevocable worldwide license (with sublicense and assignment rights) to use, to display online and in any present or future media, to create derivative works of, to allow downloads of, and/or distribute any such file or content. To the extent that you delete a such file or content from the public portions of our site, the license you grant to Imgur pursuant to the preceding sentence will automatically terminate, but will not be revoked with respect to any file or content Imgur has already copied and sublicensed or designated for sublicense. Also, of course, anything you post to a public portion of our site may be used by the public pursuant to the following paragraph even after you delete it.

http://imgur.com/tos

Yeah, I'm really not concerned about that. Honestly, it's about what I would expect. Especially since they're totally fine with breaking off the agreement for anything you choose to delete, if they haven't already used it.

So what you're saying is, Imgur needs to partner with a clothing and accessories company and REALLY make some money.

They already have a store, but I don't see them trying to sell anything based on user uploaded content although it seems to be within their rights if they wanted to.

http://store.imgur.com/

Wow. I'm an amateur photographer who's uploaded some of my best photos on imgur to show to people. Never again.

Do you know hosting sites with different terms?

That's just the standard disclaimer anyone would use if they allow user submitted content. If you change your service in the future, then you need to protect yourself from litigious users.

I wrote a simple temporary image hosting service that is very similar.

http://img42.com

In some WM is not possible to "drag&drop" files. I use i3 without an X file manager.

If you double click the background it should prompt up a file picker, I'm not really sure if that solves your problem though.

You forgot to mention something I only discovered recently, but now use all the time: you can even ctrl-V (that's right, paste) an image from the clipboard onto Imgur. Super useful if you just made a quick sketch of something in GIMP, just ctrl-C, go to imgur.com, ctrl-V, click to upload, click to copy URL, done!

Only thing that would be easier if GIMP had a "save to Imgur" feature (and I bet there's a plugin for that ...).

I totally agree with your fanrant. I think they did an excellent job paving the way with images, but there are still gaps to be filled with audio, video, etc. I've started working on audiour ('The imgur of audio') in my spare time and there has been a decent amount of traffic. I feel that giving the ability for users to fully participate on a site before they create an account is going to become more popular over time.

Suggestion: even though you are explicitly imitating imgur for a different medium, don't say it out loud. If you want to convince imgur to work with/buy/fund you first, fine, but otherwise, two things intuitively make it seem like a bad idea:

1. potential legal issues with referring directly or indirectly to imgur

2. it really comes off as a cheap copycat rather than a unique product serving a different (albeit somewhat similar) purpose.

Come up with a creative name indicative of the fact that it is in fact a standalone, not dependent on or related to imgur itself in any way.

That's fair criticism - I'm open to the idea of changing the name. However, I'm not too concerned about the legal issues with imgur - I've spoken with Alan (the creator/CEO) in person and directly told him I would change the name - he said not to worry about it. I think the idea that Audiour is coming off as a 'cheap copycat' is a concern though. It's something I'll definitely think about.

I agree that the name "Audiour" has a few issues, but the cheap copycat issue isn't that big in my opinion. You're clearly doing something else. A copycat name would be if you were using the name "imgour" or something like that.

The problem with the name "Audiour" is that it's not easily pronouncable. If I remember correctly, imgur was aimed to mimic the word "imager". When I read "Audiour" the first thing I think of is an audiotour in a museum. When I try to pronounce it, I have the choice between "audi-our", "audio-er" or "audi-oor".

If you're interested, I bought soundur.com because in my opinion that's a much better name.

You can have it if you want - contact me at username @gmail.com :)

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