[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.