> ~10 years later and Imgur is basically a social network itself. I hate seeing an imgur link now. Photo upload doesn't seem to be something that can be offered in a way that pleases everyone.
It seems like it can start out good. But then, inevitably, some “product owner” or UX designer won’t be able to keep his or her hands off it, and will eventually ruin it with chat, social features, newsletter subscriptions, JavaScript, scrolljacking, clickjacking. It always ends up like “imgur 10 years later”.
This is how so many good software products go bad. People can’t just leave it alone.
In the case of imgur, I think the problem was financial.
Running an image hosting site for you to share memes or screenshots with a couple friends is cheap. But becoming the primary method of posting images to reddit gets extremely expensive fast!
Imgur had to expand. They had to become more. They also had to discourage being only used as a direct image linking site, as they needed a way to serve ads.
I think a lot of site re-designs are make work for designers. I'm of two minds about it tho. I almost always personally hate re-designs; they're almost entirely extraneous for me. But what else are full-time designers going to do?
It seems like it can start out good. But then, inevitably, some “product owner” or UX designer won’t be able to keep his or her hands off it, and will eventually ruin it with chat, social features, newsletter subscriptions, JavaScript, scrolljacking, clickjacking. It always ends up like “imgur 10 years later”.
This is how so many good software products go bad. People can’t just leave it alone.