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Imgur Launches Video
The online image sharing community Imgur is launching video after years of hosting still images and GIFs on its platform. "This is a monumental shift for our future, and it furthers our commitment to becoming the world's greatest community powered entertainment destination," the company said in its blog post. The Verge reports: Roy Sehgal, Imgur COO, tells The Verge that the company is "breaking the sound barrier to make Imgur an even better community-powered entertainment experience." Videos play everywhere you can use Imgur (on both mobile and desktop), but so far, only iOS users are able to upload them. The feature is expected to come soon to other platforms. Imgur has also told TechCrunch that it plans to add video editing tools in the future. Videos will thankfully have sound off by default but you can click or tap to play the audio. You can search for videos with the hashtag #unmuted. Like GIFs, videos on the Imgur platform are meant to be short and have a limit of 30 seconds. And Imgur is likely going to use the opportunity to insert video ads to help make the service more profitable.
Why not remove the 30-second limitation and start competing with YouTube? The timing would be perfect with so much discontent over YouTube.
Wow. Video... on the internet. This shit is gonna change the fucking world as we know it.
And Imgur is likely going to use the opportunity to insert video ads to help make the service more profitable.
Video advertising is dramatically more profitable than static ads, so everyone and their dog is trying to find ways to get video onto their website. That's why sometimes you see 3rd rate websites with five video ads that autoplay.
But the money is there. So if you're an aspiring millionaire, find a way to get people to watch video ads on your site.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
much less videos that take so much more bandwidth. Why would they overreach like this?
AFAIK all their stuff already technically had video (most were even mp4s), but you could count on it being silent. Looks like Imgur links will no longer be relatively safe to open in a quiet environment.
As a side note, the animated gif is a testament to the importance of compatibility and adoption for a file format. It sucks at compression and quality, and doesn’t support any sound whatsoever.
How many expert committees and standards organizations and patent wars revolved around implementing and promoting dozens of “superior” video formats (including codecs and containers and server/client software)? Despite all that effort and conflict, the animated gif reigned supreme as THE most widely used video format of the internet, at least until the rise of Youtube (and it was still competitive for a while afterwards). Because it works absolutely everywhere, since the 90s.
I'm more in awe there is a legitimate company structure in place when it's clear the site can run itself, being that it relies solely on 15 year old boys uploading hastily made gifs at random moments in a day.
...since the videos are max 30s long.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
There have been rumblings among YouTube creators about the issues with demonetization, subscribers not getting notifications, random shut-downs of channels, and a host of other problems. Many have moved to alternative platforms such as BitChute. But BitChute is little whereas Imgur has the hardware necessary to handle a significant creator and user exodus from YouTube.
Most importantly, Imgur has the mindshare (the brand).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
They can barely keep their servers up hosting static images. How do they plan to host larger videos?