An Ohio University alum's photo-sharing website is quickly rising as one of the most popular websites in the United States.
Now ranked 35th in the U.S. and 95th globally for overall traffic page views among websites according to the web information company Alexa, the image-hosting site Imgur (pronounced image-er) has received over 4 billion page views and counting.
The site will have a definite Athens flavor this weekend when it uploads a Halloween gallery, based on the uptown block party Saturday night. It will be similar to the much-viewed Eight Fest gallery from last May. In addition, Imgur and The Athens NEWS are working in partnership for Halloween, with the newspaper promoting Imgur's Halloween gallery and the photo-sharing site doing the same for The NEWS' Halloween photo gallery.
Imgur, whose name comes from text-speak abbreviations for "image" and "your" ("img" and "ur") did not begin with the intention of becoming a full-fledged business. As a junior at OU in 2009, Imgur founder and owner Alan Schaaf created the site in response to flaws he found in other photo-hosting sites. (Schaaf graduated in computer sciences.)
Schaaf said that as a member of the social news aggregator Reddit, he became frustrated when images on the site that took up too much bandwidth or hard drive space would regularly be taken down. So he began his own personal project to create a complementary website to Reddit that fixed the problem. When the Reddit community began embracing his site and Schaaf started hosting ads, he said the business grew organically.
"The main goal of Imgur is to make it as easy and painless as possible to share across whatever social media you use. Imgur strives to be the best at sharing across all those platforms at once," Schaaf said.
This means that once an image is uploaded onto Imgur, it can easily be shared on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr and Stumble Upon. It also serves as an image-hosting site for professional or amateur photographers and others who use it to upload a picture before using it in another outlet, such as a blog.
However, Imgur's biggest draw is the gallery, Schaaf said. By creating an algorithm that measures which Imgur photos are trending on social media sites, he was able to create a gallery of the most popular images from all across the web.
"Really, the end result of all that is (that) the stuff in the gallery is the best on Imgur and really the best on the Internet," he asserted.
Because of its enormous growth, the company recently moved to San Francisco to be closer to the talent, connections and websites it would be working with, Schaaf said.
However, he still has strong ties with the OU and Athens communities. Imgur's business manager, Matt Strader, is also an OU alum, having graduated from the School of Business in 1999 (and acquiring an MBA in 2011).
"Imgur was born in Athens. I really love it there," Schaaf said. "We still have interns there. Even though we're in San Francisco, it's still a part of Athens, I think."
Junior online journalism major Karah Finan is currently interning with the website.
"I really believe it's a worthwhile website. Alan, he believes that this photo sharing should be simple, it should be user-oriented, it shouldn't be cluttered with ads. It should be all about the consumer, the audience," she said.
Finan explained that Imgur recently implemented new editing tools to make it a powerful photo-editing website along with its hosting capabilities.
"The simplicity is really, I think, what's making users see this is really a great website," she said. "It's not intimidating at all. It's very user-oriented."
Finan was part of the Imgur team in the spring for Eight Fest when it hosted its fest-specific gallery.
Junior mechanical engineering major Joe Finney said he visits the site on a regular basis.
"It is really simple; it's easy; it's low commitment," he said. "You don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get what you want. What it boils down to is it's just interesting pictures or silly pictures. You don't want to go through a lot of effort to get that… product. It's just super clean and quick, which are in my opinion the two most important things."
Finney added that he also uses the site to upload photos for a 365 project that requires posting an image ever day for a year.
"We're doing that every day so we need a reliable and a good image hoster. Imgur works flawlessly for that that. It's simple and really easy," he said.
This, Schaaf said, has always been the basis of his website.
"I want to make the overall goal, which is enabling sharing across however many platforms as possible as easy as possible," he said.
