[TeMPOraL]

Ah, the undending cycle of image hosting services. First they start clean and useful, then they gradually degrade in an increased effort to be profitable, then they get replaced by something new that's clean and useful...

[Cthulhu_]

Only for as long as initial investor money lasts I guess. There's just no money to be made in 'free' image hosting without starting to do some nasty tactics, mostly involving direct (hot) linking.

[TeMPOraL]

How do you make money off hot linking? I thought hot linking was the thing users want to be able to do, that's inherently impossible to monetize.

[marksomnian]

Which is why you directly charge the users for it. cf. Photobucket

[TeMPOraL]

Which is what makes people not want to use the service, and switch to whoever allows hotlinking at the moment. That's how imgur came to be.