INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ten years after its debut, 300-million-monthly-user Imgur is one of the last massively popular yet unpersonalized home pages on the
Because everyone sees the same upvoted posts when they open Imgur, it creates a shared experience full of inside jokes and running gags
But while you can switch to a feed of topics and creators you follow, Imgur has focused on a one-size-fits-all approach over catering to
niche audiences.The gaming community deserved better, and Imgur needed to seize this opportunity
Video and board game tags were the most popular on Imgur, with 46% of users following them
Esports, Twitch and streaming stars like Ninja have gone mainstream
That stuff gets diluted and buried on cross-functional apps like Imgur, is tough to easily browse on Reddit and oftentimes content about all
beyond its flagship product
Melee lets users subscribe to the games from which they love to get a feed of memes and gameplay clips
minutes per day on Imgur despite it being a general-purpose image-sharing network, there was clearly room to build something just for
or Dungeons - Dragons, you can find your people to geek out with
Melee keeps things spicy by combining in one feed content about your picks
format.I was glad to hear that Imgur took safety seriously with Melee after stumbling into building messaging into its main app without
proper protections in 2016
Viewers will benefit as Melee lets them bypass watching a multi-hour stream just for the best parts.Imgur remains one of the biggest
internet communities no one talks about, despite being a top 15 most popular site in the U.S
Schaaf bootstrapped the company from his bedroom and beyond for the first five years before taking a $40 million Series A in 2014 from
The startup took a $20 million funding round from strategic partner Coil, which is going to help Imgur launch a premium subscription tier to
its free site.Imgur started at the end of the web era, and took years to build a full-fledged mobile app
Melee is truly mobile first, and offers a lifeboat to Imgur in case its original tribe disperses
Finally, meme culture is getting purpose-built social networks.
