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Original post with HD graphics: http://www.randalolson.com/2013/03/12/retracing-the-evolutio...

He touches on reddit becoming very picture heavy circa 2012 but doesn't guess on why. My theory is that it is because RES. RES has a "view all images" feature that automatically opens all links out to images the page and an "endless reddit" feature that loads the next page once you scroll to the bottom. This makes it very easy to mindless scroll through reddit, looking at and up-voting pictures and ignoring any other content.

Its my personal opinion that this has really hurt the depth of content. Its still a fun site, just very different then when I first went there ~6 years ago.

EDIT: Not to say RES isn't a great project and super useful. I use it and really appreciate it. Its just interesting how ease of use can shape the content and culture of an online community.

The other big boost to images taking over was the popularity of imgur. Other picture hosting sites were so poor that I think it actually reduced the amount of picture content prior to 2009.

Here's imgur's creator's post from 4 years ago introducing the site to redditors:

My Gift to Reddit: I created an image hosting service that doesn't suck. What do you think? http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to...

Here's an AMA (ask me anything, reddit interview post) he did: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...

Interesting quote from the AMA: "Imageshack tried to buy it 6 months after I made it". I'm sure everyone is glad he didn't sell. IIRC half of imageshack links were "bandwidth exceeded" messages

If I recall correctly, he specifically created imgur because Reddit links to Imageshack and the like would always die.

I went from Digg to reddit due to digg being heavily saturated with pictures. :( Now it's the opposite.

FYI MrGrim created imgur for both reddit and Digg. He now needs neither though.

I think reddit being picture heavy is just a cause of its exploding popularity. Ever follow a subreddit from infancy to infamy? You'll see as it grows, there will be more and more posts of just pictures/memes, which in turn will cause users to complain, mods to step in to filter these out, more subreddits dedicated solely to memes about this topic, etc.

While I do think RES is awesome, most of my non-tech friends who browse Reddit (usually on their phone) haven't even heard of RES.

>He touches on reddit becoming very picture heavy circa 2012 but doesn't guess on why. My theory is that it is because RES. RES has a "view all images" feature that automatically opens all links out to images the page and an "endless reddit" feature that loads the next page once you scroll to the bottom. This makes it very easy to mindless scroll through reddit, looking at and up-voting pictures and ignoring any other content.

Nah, nothing to do with RES, that's just how things tend to evolve without strict moderation. The race to the shortest, funniest thing always ends in images because it's easy to consume and upvote.

http://www.randalolson.com/2013/03/12/retracing-the-evolutio...

> The race to the shortest, funniest thing always ends in images because it's easy to consume and upvote.

I honestly think that reddit would be better if they killed karma, or at least killed displaying it to the users. The obsession over it dominates the site with people posting cheap shit to get more of it, other people shitposting to see how far negative they can go, people complaining that one thing got karma while another thing did not, etc.

Quite a few subreddits do this, either permanently or time-delayed (i.e., no comment scores visible for some time t after posting).

Performance concerns could also be related. As Reddit got slower and bigger, stuff that looked awesome right from the thumbnail or headline with no loading became more successful.

I disagree. Nothing to do with RES? Before RES you had to click on images. Images in comments were even weirder being an all text site (as in, the opposite of forums with image signatures). RES, with its expando, made this a one button change, especially with the "view all images" button. To say it was 0% RES and 100% moderation is false. It can be both you know.

>Nothing to do with RES? Before RES you had to click on images.

I don't know anyone in 'real life' who uses RES, but many who use reddit. I expect it's less than 10% and maybe much less of readers.

I don't think anyone here but reddit admins can tell us the split. My point is that it's most definitely due to both in share.

If I remember correctly, which is doubtful, picture posts became more popular, and while Reddit has the ability to shape the types of content that make it to the front page, they chose not to as this seems to express the will of the users.

Aw, the data is a year old. I wonder how much more of the site has transformed into video/picture content.

I recently did an analysis using Reddit data between 7/22/13 and 9/26/13. 1 in 3 links go to Imgur or YouTube.

http://minimaxir.com/2013/09/reddit-imgur-youtube/

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