In the world of free image hosting, one of the biggest players for some time now has been Imgur, in large part due to its consistency. In fact, the last time that the image-hosting service made a significant change to the features or functioning of the site was all the way back in 2012, when they added user subgalleries — but that changes as of Wednesday.
A core process — the image upload feature — just got a major overhaul. Cutting down the clutter and complications, Imgur has unveiled a new site uploader that takes the old five-step upload process down to just two steps. “Today, it’s a super-important part of our mission to surface up the world’s most entertaining content. We wanted to remove the friction and make it easier to share with the Imgur community,” a company spokesperson tells Digital Trends.
But Imgur did not stop there. It also made some improvements to the rest of the site, including a cleaner user interface design and an all-new comment system design. The UI improvements have the same mission as the revamped image upload process, to make navigating the site simpler. While the comment overhaul should make leaving comments a better experience overall, they will also look better on the site itself.
These changes come after it was announced earlier this year that Reddit, the online community hub, would be introducing its own integrated image uploading functionality, something that threatened to severely cut usage of third-party image hosts like Imgur. The move from Reddit was thought to be in large part a response to the complaints of users regarding the third-party options available to them.
Imgur is likely hoping that the changes to the UI, upload process, and comment system will be enough to keep Reddit users — thought to be one of their biggest user groups — coming back despite Reddit’s new integrated system.
