While Imgur is not quite as big as Flickr, at least in regards to Alexa, its frequent use in the Reddit community has catapulted the image hosting service into the top 50 sites in the United States, but the numbers go quite a bit farther than that. In the thread that brought this information to light, a link goes to Imgur’s statistics page, and the results are pretty eye-opening.

The graphic, which leads this post, indicates that Imgur boasts the following:

• 8,701,524 images uploaded a month
• 7,831,159,587 images viewed a month
• 1196577471303.7 megabytes of bandwidth used a month

For those who don’t like to convert large numbers into smaller ones, that, as the post title informs us, is over a Petabyte of bandwidth a month, or just in case large numbers are your thing, a quadrillion bytes, or, 1000 terabytes. That’s a whopping amount of bandwidth going to entertain the Reddit masses, but it also shows just how popular images are with the Reddit crowd.

Then there’s all the Tumblr/RSS Reader sharing of the Imgur-hosted images, which helps propel the service to such a respectable heights. As indicated, the Alexa rankings for Imgur are quite strong. In fact, Imgur is actually a more popular site than Reddit, with Imgur coming in at 42. Reddit, on the other hand, comes in at 45.

For comparison’s sake, Flickr ranks 26th, which stands to reason considering just how long Flickr’s popular service been around (Flickr launched in 2004). While the amount of images Imgur hosts in comparison to Flickr may not be equal–Flickr recently announced its 6 billionth image–Imgur does experience almost 9 million uploads a month, and considering it was launched five years after Flickr, it’s easy to quantify Imgur’s exponential growth.

For further comparison’s sake, Imgur is more popular than Photobucket and Google’s Picasa, services that have been around a lot longer than Imgur. Granted, nothing comes close to Facebook’s massive array of image uploads–almost 100 billion images in Facebook’s photo database–but the fact that essentially one site, Reddit, made Imgur what it is today deserves notice.

Funny, I don’t remember Digg making a new image hosting service explode like that.

Though the Photobucket-powered Twitter feature is only available on Twitter.com at this point (as opposed to the mobile apps), Photobucket CEO Tom Munro thinks Twitter will be a major factor in the future. “With Twitter releasing their developer APIs, likely extending photo sharing into their mobile platforms, and Apple’s announcement of deep Twitter integration to all of its iOS-based devices, we believe mobile photo tweets will scale rapidly in the coming months,” he tells WebProNews.

Twitter launched the media upload API earlier this month.

Here are some of the highlights from Photobucket’s survey:

• 45% use a mobile device for capturing video at least once a week
• 17% use a mobile device for capturing video at least once a day
• 9% use a mobile device for capturing video multiple times per day
• Total video uploads (web and mobile) are 3.5x higher year-over-year (July 2010 to July 2011)
• Total video uploads from mobile devices are 14x higher than in December 2010
• 24% of respondents upload personal images to three different online photo sites
• 12% of respondents upload personal images to four sites
• 15% of respondents upload personal images on five or more sites
• Nearly 18 million monthly unique visitors on Photobucket mobile web and mobile apps
• Mobile uploads in excess of 25 million per month – 5x higher year-over-year

Google has made an interesting mark on the photos space with the launch of Google+. Google has had Picasa Web Albums for years, but they’ve made these cool again with the launch of Google+ and particularly the instant upload feature of the Google+ Android app (which is unfortunately missing from the iPhone app at this point).

“Google+ is a very interesting and innovative social network,” says Munro. “That said, Photobucket is designed to be the place you store, organize and share all your photos and videos for life…not just the ones that you post to social networks.”

With all due respect, I’m not sure I take the same view of Google’s features as a user of the Instant Upload feature, which I would consider as a more complete storage solution of photos for my “life” given that it uploads every photo I take, which can then be shared as needed.

Even still, it’s clear that mobile uploads will only continue to trend upwards for the foreseeable future.

“The improved quality of photos and videos from camera phones, ease of uploading and constant availability are making them the default device for image capturing and sharing,” says Munro.

What photo sharing site do you use most often? Let us know.

For a quick history lesson, Photobucket was founded back in 2003 and really became a website for hosting image and video content on Myspace. News Corporation acquired it in 2007, and as Munro explained to us, even though Photobucket and Myspace were together under the same ownership, they, ironically, didn’t integrate.

What’s even more ironic is that Myspace built its own photo hosting solution. However, because of its association with Myspace, Photobucket wasn’t able to make any connections with Facebook. Since the service was declining, Fox wanted to sell it.

In December of 2009, Photobucket spun out from News Corp. and merged with mobile company Ontela. Munro says this move was “the beginning of the road for the turning point.”

This merger with Ontela brought Photobucket not only investors, which funded the spinout, but it also brought mobile technology and patents. In addition to this, Ontela brought 20 million online monthly unique visitors in the U.S.

“What we saw is, early on with Ontela, that photos were moving to mobile devices,” said Munro.

Previously, Photobucket was Web-focused, but with Ontela, the company began to target mobile. Through this focus, the company has developed apps such as the photo-filtering app Snapbucket and built up its mobile user base to nearly 6 million.

Now, the company wants to tie these goals together and provide a “ubiquitous experience between Web and mobile.”

Photobucket is also reinventing itself in other areas such as its recent partnership with Twitter. As part of the partnership, Photobucket will host the images that users upload to Twitter. Munro told us that the partnership would not only bring in revenue, but that it would also help drive awareness and traffic since every photo will have a caption that says, “Powered by Photobucket.”

“From a branding perspective, it really helps bring some of that mojo back that Photobucket had,” he said.

He went on to say that they were currently in talks with other companies in regards to more partnerships.

As for the future of Photobucket, Munro indicated that the service would make advances in video. He said they had noticed a 300 percent increase in video uploads in the last 3 months and that they believed this trend would continue. They are planning to add a video feature to Snapbucket soon as well.

“It a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video has to be exponentially more,” he added.

It appears that Photobucket is on the right track to making a full comeback, but the road getting there was anything but easy. Munro said, “In some ways, I think a spin off is even more difficult than even a startup.”

He told us that the biggest challenge was changing the culture from a corporate one to one that was innovative and more aligned with a startup. To help encourage this new environment, Photobucket shuts down for a week every six months to concentrate only on innovative products. The company has seen new apps and services born as a result of this endeavor.

Do you think Photobucket is moving in the right direction?

Twitter is all about a formal and uniform experience. Earlier this year, they cracked down on third-party clients that serve to “mimic” the functionality of the native Twitter app by amending their API terms of service. This new photo sharing move enforces that idea, that Twitter wants to provide everything you need to fully enjoy the Twitter experience.

Social media monitoring company Sysomos has just released some stats on their blog that detail the currents state of image sharing on Twitter. They looked at every tweet from May 30th and found that Twitpic is the top image hosting service among users, followed by yfrog and Lockerz.

So who needs to be worried? Obviously Twitpic and yfrog, both with substantial shares of the image hosting duties currently. It’s possible the services like Instagram may stay relatively unharmed or even grow when Twitter’s PhotoBucket feature rolls out. Instagram has found a niche with its quick photo effects similar to Hipstamatic.

There’s really no telling how popular these photo sharing services will remain when Twitter’s native function is fully up and running. Will they have to adapt and add new features that Twitter’s photo sharing may not provide?

It’s important to note that photo sharing on Twitter is still a very small percentage of the total Twitter activity – 1.25% according to Sysomos.

According to the company, mobile uploads have increased over 600% over the last year with users uploading more than 20 million photos and videos to Photobucket.com each month.

“We are seeing explosive growth in mobile, and at the same time we are adding a million new users a month on our website,” said CEO Tom Munro. “With our integrated platform, Photobucket is uniquely positioned to bring together the simplicity and spontaneity of mobile with the creativity and permanence of the web. In the coming months, we will continue to expand our leadership in mobile with additional products, including the release of a new creative video app.”

For now, they’ve launched Snapbucket, a new companion app to Photobucket, which provides filters, effects, frames, etc. Snapbucket is drawing comparisons to the popular Instagram (which is only available for iOS), with the added bonus of the ability to unlock new filters for pictures.

“Our users have been asking for more creative ways to express themselves through visual media,” said Kate Hare, VP of products at Photobucket. “Snapbucket gives our users what they’ve asked for – a simple, on-the-go application to capture, personalize and share their photos.”

“In working with users, they wanted enhanced creativity, original photo preservation and seamless ties to their Photobucket account,” Munro tells WebProNews. “Snapbucket brings those unique features together by allowing users to apply pre-loaded filter sets to their photo, or even create their own. In all, there are 9,500 unique combinations that can be created. Once a unique filter set is created by a user, it can be saved and used again and again. All original photos are saved to the user’s Photobucket account, along with the filter applied photo.”

He says he wants Photobucket to be “THE one place” where users can save, edit, create, and manage photos/videos. “We don’t want to just tell the story of what happened to you yesterday, but we want to tell the whole story of your life,” he says.

He considers the cross-platform compatibility lacking from some competitors “very important.”

“What is also interesting for Photobucket is how we integrate both our mobile and web platforms,” says Munro. “The ability to be deeply creative on our web site and then push down to mobile, or to have fast, easy on-the-go experience on mobile and push up to the web, provides a unique opportunity that you will hear more about from us in the near future.”

According to Munro, Photobucket is the largest dedicated photo hosting site, whether you are counting by the number of photos or by comScore stats, with 8.5 billion photos and videos and 24 million unique visitors on the web and over 15 million on mobile.

The site has launched a feature that allows users to simultaneously share content with social networking and blogging sites. Users can now distribute photos, videos and slideshows to social media sites including Facebook, MySpace, BlackPlanet, Bebo, Blogger and others.

Alex Welch

"As the first Website to provide users with embed codes to share photos back in 2003, sharing has always been at Photobucket’s core," said Alex Welch, President of Photobucket.

"Our newest updates make it easier than ever for Photobucket’s users to quickly share their favorite memories online through any number of Web outlets."

Photobucket users will also be able to embed "live" photo and video slideshows that are updated in real time as users upload new content to their account. Additionally, Photobucket is launching its "My Photobucket" application for Facebook that allows user’s entire photo album to be displayed on their Facebook profile.

Photobucket has expanded the functionality of its mobile WAP site, the new version offers better navigation of the site and allows users to view ratings and comments.

The latest efforts by Photobucket may help it to maintain its lead in market share despite a recent decline due to fewer visits to MySpace.
 

The move, which accounts for 5% of employees across the board, is another sign that MySpace and Photobucket are falling increasingly behind in the social networking battle. With Facebook and Flickr taking away much of the core audience of Fox Interactive’s babies, the signs aren’t good for Tom Anderson and his friends.

But is it such a surprise?

Despite MySpace’s redesign last year to offer a better advertising platform as well as a more open network for users to access multiple social accounts, they’ve been falling behind Facebook for a while. While there’s no denying MySpace’s popularity in the US, outside of the States it’s Facebook that’s enjoyed a wider uptake.

Recent figures from comScore show Facebook receiving almost twice as many unique visitors as MySpace worldwide. Why the difference?

MySpace seems to be suffering from the “too much of a closed niche” syndrome. Right or wrong, the network is viewed as a place solely for bands to promote their music. Facebook is more of a “social” social network with more personalization available. With the likes of iLike and blip.fm available, there’s even less reason to be on a music-dedicated site (or at least that’s the view).

Add the growing presence of Twitter and MySpace seems to be the social network that nobody is really talking about anymore.

It’s not all bad news. According to a MySpace spokeseperson, they are still looking to take on new staff over the remainder of the year. And NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox Interactive Media, isn’t exactly a slouch in the monetary department.

The question is, with monetization of social networks still a thorny issue and advertising spending down, how much money will NewsCorp be willing to throw at MySpace, and for how long?

Comments

The site has introduced a new "Themes" feature that allows users to customize their photos and videos by choosing from a variety of pre-made themes in categories such as holidays, entertainment, sports, nature, art and travel. Musical artists will also be offering custom themes.

Photobucket users can create a custom theme by changing the background image by choosing a pre-made option or by selecting an image that already exists in their album. They will be able to select border styles for photo and video thumbs along with choosing the color of the theme.

Themes can be added to individual albums and to group albums and will appear to a visitor when viewing an entire album, an individual photo or video and when photos are shared.

Photobucket is also introducing a new album organizer feature that allows user to manage photos and videos with drag and drop features, descriptions and tags along with being able to search through albums based on title, description or tag content.

"Photos and videos are how we keep and share the most important moments in our lives and our goal with this release was to put even more control and creativity in the hands of users," said Alex Welch, president of Photobucket.

"The Photobucket deal — $3 million for a 20% stake in a social media company with "nominal" revenue — wasn’t the kind of deal IVP’s LPs signed on for," explains Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider. "Instead, the $3 billion fund generally makes late-stage investments of about $35 million in companies that that have upwards of $25 million in sales."

While Valleywag and others have similar takes on the matter, Donna Bogatin from Startup Chatter says Kafka’s article "throws cold water on an informative account of the inner workings of venture capital funds." She is probably right in that this is a topic worth noting, but this particular case might be a poor example to shed light on it.

The WSJ article itself even quotes one of the firm’s lawyers, "The investment was made in full compliance with the letter and spirit of all of Insight’s agreements with its limited partners." Then there’s the quote from the IVP investor that even downplays the story:

"Perhaps they should have told us about this, but it was such a small deal. Would we have wanted a piece of it in hindsight? Sure. But for every one of these successes, there are a hundred failures."

The article is somewhat interesting in the story about these guys getting lucky with Photobucket, but as a scandal it seems to be playing second fiddle to the motives of the story itself.

Among image sharing services, Photobucket ranks among the leaders in usage and traffic. People use it to store images and display them throughout the world of social networking sites like MySpace, and on other places too.

Arrivals to the site who are just looking for images have a new option for doing so, one that’s been quiet for quite a while. Ask.com picked up a deal to be Photobucket’s search engine of choice; it’s on display on Photobucket’s home page right now.

The deal includes more than the search box on Photobucket. Ask.com said in a statement they picked up the syndication of sponsored listings and display advertising for Photobucket in the partnership too.

That could add up nicely for Ask, as Photobucket enjoys traffic of some 44 million uniques per month by comScore Media Metrix’s rankings. Ask.com Partner Network executive Andrew Moers sais the deal “furthers our strategy to bring