After seven years working alongside Imgur to host videos and photos, Reddit has decided to bring its work in-house with a native image sharing tool.
The company announced the new service last night, introducing it as a beta and providing information on how users can put it to good use.
“We’re super excited to begin rolling out in-house image hosting on Reddit.com to select communities this week,” said Andy, a Reddit product team member, with the announcement. “For a long time, other image hosting services have been an integral part of how content is shared on Reddit—we’re grateful to those teams, but are looking forward to bringing you a more seamless experience with this new feature. Starting today, you’ll be able to:
- Upload images (up to 20MB) and gifs (100MB) directly to Reddit when submitting a link.
- Click on a Reddit-hosted image from any listing (such as the front page, a subreddit, or userpage) and be taken directly to the conversation and comments about that image.
- View gifs within Reddit’s native apps with less taps and without leaving the app.”
The tool is said to introduce a “more seamless experience” with posting, according to a Reddit manager, although users can still utilize Imgur and Photobucket if they prefer. The only question is what will happen with the Imgur now that Reddit is moving on, considering how important it was to its growth.
In response, Imgur stated that the change “wasn’t a surprise” and that it will move forward with its own advertising plans. “We’re super focused on our mission to surface up the world’s most entertaining content and making Imgur the best visual community in the world,” Imgur said in a statement to Techcrunch.
