It is a story he tells but he made the same claim on Digg and other places as well. It was effective social marketing but there are a few things like that about that just are popular beliefs that are just repeated 'cause the founder was a college student at the time.
Most of the original links/evidence of that are gone from the internet at this point tho and I'm tired of digging for them. :/
> imgur - the simple image sharer. The best in image hosting.
imgur.com — imgur is a free image sharing/hosting service that allows you to quickly upload and edit your photos and share them with friends the Internet. Now you're asking, "How is this different from imageshack, tinypic, or photobucket?" Well that's simple. imgur is free (as in beer), no ads, anonymous, and easier to use. It's my gift to the Internet. Enjoy!
Ah archive.org still has it.
But yeh, it was effective guerilla marketing only. It was posted to Digg slightly before Reddit btw.
Most of the original links/evidence of that are gone from the internet at this point tho and I'm tired of digging for them. :/
EDIT:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090328080325/http://digg.com/od...
http://archive.is/JS5DV
> imgur - the simple image sharer. The best in image hosting. imgur.com — imgur is a free image sharing/hosting service that allows you to quickly upload and edit your photos and share them with friends the Internet. Now you're asking, "How is this different from imageshack, tinypic, or photobucket?" Well that's simple. imgur is free (as in beer), no ads, anonymous, and easier to use. It's my gift to the Internet. Enjoy!
Ah archive.org still has it.
But yeh, it was effective guerilla marketing only. It was posted to Digg slightly before Reddit btw.