| URL | imgur.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Image Hosting Service |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Imgur LLC |
| Created by | Alan Schaaf |
| Launched | February 2009 |
| Alexa rank | 84 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
imgur (pronounced imager[2]) is an online image hosting service founded by Alan Schaaf. It offers free image hosting to millions of users[3] a day, serving over thirty terabytes of images daily.[4] No registration or membership is required. The company is based in San Francisco.
The service was created as a response to the usability problems encountered in similar services,[5] which the creator describes as "bloated, confusing and annoying".[6]
The website became a sensation following its rise to popularity on social news websites such as reddit and Digg.[7] On January 10, 2010, Schaaf announced the creation of Imgur accounts, which allow users to create custom image galleries and manage their images.[8] Users can also sign in with Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo accounts.
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The site has a statistics page where users can monitor the site's popularity, from how many images are uploaded, how many hits images get, and how much bandwidth is being used. Imgur has largely overtaken traditional hosts, such as Tinypic, on social networking sites like reddit and Digg.[3]
| # | Per Day | Per Week | Per Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Images Uploaded | 288k | 1.986M | 8.489M |
| Image Views | 278M | 1.975B | 7.899B |
| Bandwidth Used | 39.07 TB | 269.94 TB | 1.08 PB |
| # | Per Day | Per Week | Per Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Images Uploaded | 350.5k | 2.2M | N/A (Server Glitch) |
| Image Views | 385.6M | 2.68B | 11.13B |
| Bandwidth Used | 54.47 TB | 371 TB | 1.51 PB |
Images on the site are not retained indefinitely. If an image is not accessed at least once during a 6 month period[9], it will be deleted. This fact is not clearly advertised on the site and many users who upload their images to imgur (possibly without retaining copies) are unaware of it. Some gallery pages have JavaScript code embedded within them to make it difficult or impossible to simply copy and paste the descriptive text.