Massively popular online forum Reddit has separated itself from image hosting website Imgur, as it has launched an in-house image hosting platform.
The hosting service will begin to roll out to certain Reddit communities within the week. Specifically, these communities are Art, Aww, Dataisbeautiful, EarthPorn, Food, Funny, Gaming, GetMotivated, Gifs, Mildlyinteresting, Movies, OldSchoolCool, Pics, Photoshopbattles, Space and Sports.
The announcement was made by Reddit product team member Andy through a post on the forum. The post expressed gratitude to image hosting services such as Imgur, as they have been an important part on the growth of content sharing on Reddit. However, the service is now looking to make the Reddit user experience more seamless with the launch of the in-house platform.
The Reddit image hosting service can accept images of up to 20 MB and gifs of up to 100 MB being uploaded by users, which are uploaded directly to the forum once users submit a link.
With the feature, users who click on an image hosted by Reddit from any listing — whether on the front page, a subreddit or user page — will be directed to the conversation and the comments concerning the image. The service will now also allow users to view gifs within the native apps of Reddit with less taps needed and without the need to leave the app.
The 16 default communities mentioned above will be getting access to the service first, followed by 50 more communities next week. The plan is, of course, to eventually have the service available throughout the Reddit community.
The news has largely been welcomed by Redditors, especially with the issues that they say they have been experiencing with Imgur lately. With an in-house image hosting system, it would be much easier for users to send feedback to Reddit for any issues concerning pictures and the forums.
However, for users that are not yet willing to let go of Imgur and other image hosting websites, they will still be given the option to use them instead of Reddit's in-house image hosting platform.
Reddit has been making several improvements on its forums recently. The forum finally allowed users to embed Reddit threads on third-party websites, emulating the functionality from other social media platforms.
