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by adventured 3998 days ago
Right, the critical difference between Reddit and Imgur - Imgur contains the content. They're the host, rather than sending traffic off-platform. Just like eg YouTube. Those types of platforms end up being vastly more valuable; if you don't own or control anything on your own site, it'll always come back to bite you. Imagine Facebook hosting all of its photos on another site like Imgur.

With Reddit's approach, you end up creating lots of competitors; given the right context, or given enough time, those competitors will bleed you out. Twitter figured that out with TwitPic et al.