If you already know about imgur, its hugely likely that its because you saw once of those funny images on digg / twitter / reedit or facebook. Well, 90% of people have known imgur that way.

Little background info. imgur is the most popular image upload tool today on the internet. Look at the stats and you’ll know why the image upload tools you’ve known since your first job are obsolete.

And guess who runs it ? A 21 year college student, single handedly with no funding what so ever. But he’s got the most powerful tool he can get online – social media.

Alan Schaaf, a 21 year college student started imgur in his free time, and the idea struck him while he was attending “boring classes” according to his interview here.

He was an active Reddit user and he initially used imgur for submitting photos to it, and later to Digg.

I don’t know what happened next, but Digg and Reddit users embraced imgur and many of the photos they submitted were hot on those social networks. And we all know that many top users on Digg and Reddit still use imgur and it has helped bring a sort of “authority” for the site. So much that for an onlooker, images submitted on imgur are genuine and are guaranteed to go hot, so you gotta click !

But there are some genuine points about imgur that makes it the crowd’s favorite.

1 – Clean and clutterless design.

2 – Photo upload in incredibly easy steps compared to other photo upload sites.

3 – Amazing arsenal of third party applications available.

4 – No stupid popups or ads.

Its a nice example to show how social media can help someone even with no venture capitalist backing him can make it to the top of the world. In this case, Alan made a genuine tool that answered a lot of questions and ensured a smooth user experience with no noise what so ever, and he offered it to the best folks in the world to test an app – the social media. And here’s where we are now – no surprise !

So, what’s the moral of the story ?

- Build applications for people.

- Money is essential, but you can start cheap these days,  utilize the opportunities.

- You don’t need a crew to build something awesome, you just need to know your stuff.

- Stalk social media, its the best place to find out what the needs are, and what the best look like. Improvise.

Wishing all the best to Alan and imgur.

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