Yahoo!!!

Imgur seems to be getting more and more popular as of late.  In 2012, Imgur was getting about 2 billion page views per month.  Currently, they could be getting as many as twice that.  In September, the site surpassed 100 million unique users per month.  Per Month.  That's an incredibly large amount of people.  And now, it seems that someone is taking a keen interest in this huge market share.  The CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer, is considering purchasing the site in order to further monetize the site.  Imgur already makes a little cash selling Pro User account subscriptions and from advertising.  Future business ventures may also include selling T-shirts and maybe even publishing a book.
 I don't know about all this.  I think the initial draw that Imgur had was that it is pretty non-invasive.  You never really get bombarded by advertisements like some other sites (Buzzfeed), or distracted by a plethora of distracting fluff and fillers.  Imgur's tagline is even 'The Simple Image Sharer.'  I don't know if you have been to the Yahoo! page recently, but it is far from simple.  Weather displays, ads, sponsors, headlines, trending stuff, a comic strip, etc.  There's a search bar in there somewhere I think.  If Yahoo! absorbs Imgur, is the site going to lose its soul?  Other questions that should be raised here are ones concerning content control and censorship.  All the content on Imgur is user submitted, and it can range from cute kitty pictures to disturbing content and pictures NSFW (not safe for work).  Yahoo! would ultimately put its own stamp on the way Imgur's site operates day-to-day.  I foresee that in the near future, like the next 48 hours, their will be a hilarious backlash to this news on the site.  Memes and Gif's galore!
             

Oh, Canada.

So this trend really isn't odd, but some strange and creative posts have come out of it.  Everyone knows Canada absolutely killed it in hockey at the Olympics this year, Men's and Women's.  Imgur was filled with pictures of Canadians in bars at 6 in the morning, and signs outside of bars saying the soup of the day, or the drink special is "America Tears". Canadians sure do love to drink.  It seems like a stereotype that all Canadians love hockey and beer, but if you followed the things they've posted on the website recently, that would seem to be a true one.  Oh, and Maple Syrup.  They also love that.  The Alberta Liquor and Gaming commission also decided that, due to the broadcast time of the gold medal game, they would alter the hours bars are able to serve alcohol to 5am.  Starting at 5am, mind you, not ending at 5.  Imgur and Reddit too were flooded with pictures of Canadians dressed in red and white, with maple leaf shirts and hats, getting rocked in bars at 6am, watching the Canadian hockey team beat Sweden in a shutout.  One particularly funny post was a hilarious shot at Sweden. It was of a silver medal being constructed using Ikea instructions.  Too funny.
 

Top posts of the wekk.

One of the features of Imgur is the ability to vote on a particular posting, they're called upvotes or downvotes.  Basically, you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down and the site tally's there votes into a points score for each post.  It always amuses me the random assortment of content that receives a large number of points.  This usually shows that there is no formula for a posted item to become popular, they're always so different.  This weeks top five posts with the most points are:
#5:  An animated, comic book style cartoon with an inspirational message about how to not become overwhelmed with the stresses in your life.  It gives some good advise on how to approach a bunch of daunting tasks one at a time.  Very inspirational. 14,920 points.
#4: This one is my favorite, this is the reason why this website amuses me so much.  The person who posted this way very actively polling the website community, basically asking them to upvote the post if they agree with it.  The title is "Guys, just one simple upvote helps me prove her wrong."  The post isn a simple white text on a black background that says, "My girlfriend thinks I am the only guy that puts my hands on my balls when just lazing around at home."  It has 15,362 points as of today, more than that inspirational post from before.  Priorities, right?
#3: A .gif (a series of pictures placed in series to make it look animated) of a woman who is reacting to her boyfriend proposing to her.  A little more heartwarming than the balls post, i guess.
#2 A long series of photos with accompanying story of a woman who lost her leg in a car accident, her surgeries, and her subsequent recovery.  Another inspirational story.  Inspirational stories of triumph over adversary are usually pretty popular, as long as they don't seem forced or made up.
And the #1 highest scoring post of the week: Another .gif, this one of a baby kangaroo and an anteater, both wearing vests.  It's pretty cute.  I think the kangaroo is even wearing a diaper.  That's the most popular thing on the website all week, cute animals in vests.  I would have chosen the Hands on Balls post, myself.
 

Been a while.

Welp, haven't been here in some time, sorry Regina.  So the big thing on Imgur.com recently has been all about Twitch Plays Pokemon.  The basis of this is that it is a social experiment where as an unlimited number of users can can control the character in one single video game, all at the same time via a chatroom-type social media site.   It's like 80,000 people holding one remote. Users can input commands to move the character, have him select various game options, etc.  At its height there were 81,000+ users inputting commands into the game.  Two sides have emerged from this experiment; Anarchy, those who ignore any order and planning in the game, and Democracy, those who wish to vote on moves together in the game.  Despite 80,000 people trying to operate one controller, there seems to be some progress being made in the game.  Although, not at any great speed or efficiency.  One pretty great post that stuck in my head was an animated .gif of what is happening to the character in the game. It depicted a cartoon version of the game character repeatedly being slammed into a wall.  It's great how creative people can be when these strange kind of internet occurrences happen.  I don't really know much about Pokemon, so a lot of this stuff is confusing since I really have no point of reference.  I do, however, know that Imgur loves content about Pokemon, so it was no surprise that the site picked up on this cool little phenomenon.      

So here's what's going on in the Imgur world right now.  As you all know, we are in the midst of a viscous and unrelenting meteorological phenomenon know as the "Polar Vortex."  Everyone in 'Murica is dealing with it right now.  From the mild tempered states of the Pacific Northwest to the frigid Northeast to the usually warm and balmy south.  It sucks pretty much everywhere, relatively.  So, what does this mean for the Internet world?  Image posts about the weather and how BooHoo cold it is and 'look at me, my normally warm state is cold and there's this cold white shit everywhere and the whole GD city is shut down.'  Well, it started about two weeks ago with users posting pictures of their thermometers.  -2F in Ohio, -10F in Minnesota, etc.  Then it spread to images of places like Georgia and Texas.  Same temperature, but people freaking out.  The the Canadian users came in and said, 'Hey look, it's -30F here and we're wearing shorts and barbecuing' or something Canadian like that.  Single images would get tens of thousands of views, thousands of comments and responses, and thousands of 'Upvotes.'  Sometimes for just one image, and there are hundreds associated with this trend over a short amount of time.

     This kind of trend carried on for about two weeks, seeing a bit of a resurgence with our last spell of inclement weather.  People from all over the US and all over the world hopping onto this trend of uploading stories and images about the weather in their areas.  It's easy to see here that a single idea is gaining the attention and even participation of a large number of people out there in internet land.  Now, this doesn't seem like a trend that one could capitalize on monetarily.  But if you were able to gain the attention and participation of so many thousands of people, how would you use it?  Make money?  Gain exposure artistically? Send a message to the masses?  These are all ideas that have been done before, and occasionally, they work.  What would you do with the attention?

Hello fellow internet adventurers, my name is Matt, and as a requirement for my Media Delivery Systems and Distribution class (I think that’s what it’s called), I’m here to unload on you about the what’s and why’s of viral internet images.  I will be focusing my studies on the Reddit sub-site Imgur.com.  In a nutshell, Imgur is an online image hosting service where anyone can upload original or copy-written images to be view publically.  I’ve been browsing this website for a little under a year thus far and found many peculiarities in the behaviors of users and the kinds of subjects and ideas that become viral.  Once an image becomes popular or viral on the website, the image is then allocated to a “Front Page”, which displays a collection of the days viral images more prominently for all registered and non-registered users to see. I think this is a great place to observe and study the phenomenon of viral images and what makes them happen.