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A comment on Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur. Parent comment

Re:Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur by enjo on Thursday May 26, 2016 @02:49AM (#11776097)
I assume your familiar with their operating costs somehow? I have direct experience at a different (older) host. It was simply not possible to serve the tremendous bandwidth needs without increasingly aggressive monetization. I have no idea what they're costs look like and bandwidth is much cheaper than it was 10 years ago, but I'd wager that there was no profitable business for them at any point without intrusive ads.
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Re:Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur by mbesto on Thursday May 26, 2016 @09:34AM (#11777752)
> but I'd wager that there was no profitable business for them at any point without intrusive ads.

5 years ago: "but it's profitable enough to hopefully hire another guy or two this summer."[0]

The founder has completely bootstrapped the site since day 1, and has done an AMA on Reddit talking about the whole situation[1]. Ads are absolutely necessary to make it profitable, but clearly taking investment now means they are going to squeeze every ounce of dollar out of the site and hence the sentiment of "aggressive monetization".

[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_gu...

[1] - https://www.quora.com/How-profitable-is-Imgur-com

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Re:Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur by enjo on Thursday May 26, 2016 @01:54PM (#11780068)
That was five years ago, they've experienced explosive growth since then which changes the equation. Because they were profitable then doesn't mean that you can simply linearly grow that as the amount of content being served grows. Particularly when you rely on ad revenue which has been on a downward trend over the last few years.

Point being: unless you have been directly involved in the decisions accusing them of either malevolence or greed is a pretty tough accusation to make. Sometimes (usually) it's cold hard business realities that drive people to adopting these sorts of monetization strategies.

So now the cycle will repeat. Someone will start a host that simply serves images. People will use it. They'll add some ads, people won't care much. They'll start serving more aggressive ads and someone will start another host... over and over again.

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