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Imgur Launches Video 56

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
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.
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Imgur Launches Video More

Imgur Launches Video

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  • Why not remove the 30-second limitation and start competing with YouTube? The timing would be perfect with so much discontent over YouTube.

    • Re:Why only 30 seconds? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dbrueck ( 1872018 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @09:06PM (#56696786)

      Two guesses:

      1) Money: Transcoding, storing, and delivering video is vastly more expensive than static images and most GIFs. A limit of 30 seconds lets them control that some, and it's a restriction they could always lift later (while going the other way - starting with unlimited and then later forcing a 30 second limit - would cause lots of whining from users).

      2) Memes: Imgur's whole angle is centered on sharing funny / amazing / shocking / whatever images and short clips via GIFs. It's their brand, that's what people know them for. Letting people upload lectures and TV shows and long home movies doesn't fit with that.

    • A 30 second limit encourages content providers to be creative. So much youtube content is too long and too slow to the point where it's a thing now to set youtube to 1.5 speed to make it bearable.
      Youtube already has competitors such as Vimeo, so there's nothing to be done by crowding out that space.
      • Ahhh, I see you are a millennial as well. More than 30 secs really is too much!

        • Ahhh, I see you are a millennial as well.

          Nope.

          More than 30 secs really is too much!

          It's about efficient information uptake. When the Internet was mostly text you could skim read to the relevant bits, but with this fascination of video it makes it harder to scan through a lot of information quickly.

    • I agree (as I have commented below). My guess is that they want to start with baby steps and increase their platform and resources as they go.

  • Holy shit (Score:4, Funny)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @09:05PM (#56696782)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Seems if you're going to make decent money on youtube, your youtube channel is your ad. You build your brand with your videos and use it to promote other products or services. Maybe that involves convincing people to support you on patron. Maybe that means selling T-Shirts. Or cookbooks. Or driving traffic to your blog. Maybe that involves promoting other products that you agree to promote external to YouTube. Seems like you can't count on a lot of advertising money from Google, so any video service popular

  • More Like "Imgur Launches SOUND" (Score:3)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @10:47PM (#56697020)
    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.

    • 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.

      Interestingly, about the same time the patents on it expired.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by corezz ( 1603659 )
      You can also thank its endless refusal to die, so as to make way for better alternatives like Animated-PNG, largely because most Millennials incorrectly began mispronouncing "GIF" since it looked and felt like a "Gift" from their friends on social media. And technically, it is "since 1989" not "since the 90s". All GIFs made today still make use of the good ole "GIF89a" starting header.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Ah yes, well video on the Internet is somewhat intentionally a shit sandwich. WebM/VP8 (or VP9)/Vorbis seems to be the most compatible with most browsers (Except for Safari and older internet explorers, and they can all fuck off.) I set up a ffserver demo project [github.com] a while back to stream some webm audio and video on localhost with the ffserver utility that comes with ffmpeg, along with how to manipulate the video with some javascript. Ffserver is deprecated in more recent versions of ffmpeg, although I believ
  • 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.

  • 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).

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