[STEEMIMG.COM] Dedicated STEEM Image hosting website.

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

With steemimg.com now passing 5,000 images hosted & requiring it's first server upgrade, I thought I should give everyone an update.


http://steemimg.com

Hopefully most of you know I created an image hosting website that will be dedicated to STEEM Post images.

If Not?! I hope this post finds you and you start using it because I will be keeping it 100% AD free and I will continue to keep it free, even as upgrading is required (which one has already), as a give back to this awesome community!

Make sure to use it from your (introduceyourself Post)!!

I still may need moderators and help as it grows, so anyone interested feel free to jump in and send me your contact info at [email protected].

For now I am handling it just fine, mainly because our community is respecting the service and uploading great images and keeping spamming down so...

Big Thank YOU to Everyone Here!

The server upgrade was a small one, but a good one, and will help with load times and upload speeds!


Some Numbers (as of this post)
  • Images Hosted 5,243
  • Registered Users 257
  • Total Unique Users 1,242
  • Disk Space Used 5 GB
  • Avg. Visit Duration 7:55 Minutes

Countries (Country | Users | Percentage)

  1. United States | 1,134 | 37.65%
  2. Russia | 208 | 6.91%
  3. Canada | 124 | 4.12%
  4. Indonesia | 101 | 3.35%
  5. India | 98 | 3.25%
  6. United Kingdom | 96 | 3.19%
  7. Ukraine | 89 | 2.95%
  8. Germany | 84 | 2.79%
  9. Belarus | 73 | 2.42%
  10. Brazil | 72 | 2.39%

Operating System

  1. Windows | 1,726 | 57.30%
  2. Macintosh | 649 | 21.55%
  3. Android | 220 | 7.30%
  4. Linux | 209 | 6.94%
  5. iOS | 181 | 6.01%
  6. Chrome OS | 25 | 0.83%

Language

  1. en-us | 1,978 | 65.67%
  2. ru | 244 | 8.10%
  3. en-gb | 135 | 4.48%
  4. ru-ru | 127 | 4.22%

Happy Uploading!
Blue

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I think supporting the Steemit dedicated apps is something the entire community should be pitching in and do on a regular basis. When you see a new app announced you need to understand that:

  1. There was the idea behind it. Sometimes a unique idea that nobody though of
  2. It took a lot of hard work and sweat to create the initial version
  3. It takes funding to keep the servers up and running and ensure service continuity. No, you cannot run a stable application on a .99$/month server. You need speed, disk space, multi-day backup as you risk loosing all the user data and that doesn't come cheap.
  4. Continuous development based on new feature requests or improvement.

Keep that in mind every time you see an app launched or updated.

Thank you for your consideration!

PS. Blue, you rock, as always.

No doubt. Lots of apps coming out. I just launched a Steem Marketplace! @msutyler

Yup, I noticed and even upvoted your post earlier when I saw it. Thanks!
Might as well be using soon!

I think I've uploaded well over 100 images @blueorgy. In fact, the images I used for Steem Market are on there!

Thanks for keeping this up. Makes it easier to add the pics and has been very helpful

You welcome, glad I could help! If you have any suggestions let me know.

None. I pulled it up again to try and approach with a trollers criticism and its solid.

Truly seems well thought out. Appreciate the kindness bud!

The Steem platform, I believe, will be the stepping stone for all future social media platforms to follow. It's a breakthrough in social media technology, which rewards its content creators with money. I love the idea, and I'm glad to be apart of this revolution!

May we all continue to contribute to such a beautifully structured social media platform!

I respect the effort, but i would advise against storing your images into steemimg now, simply because it's extremely easy for the person behind the service to pull the plug, considering that he's relying on Steem to gain funds for upgrading. The last thing you'd want is to lose all your images from your uneditable posts. A service like imgur is 99.9% safer. The only thing i would choose besides imgur or flickr would be an incentivised decentralized storage setup like Sia/Storj or Maidsafe. But that is reserved for the future.

You have a point... But I'm not going to pull the plug. Also why would imager be 99.9% safer? Do you personally know the owner? Does he/she/it (company) have any interest in Steemit? I am purely doing this to support steemit and the images used here. Literally all I built this for and I will be open and honest about everything that goes on with the site.

If i was someone living off Steem posts i would definitely choose a proven service. Like i said, i support what you are doing, but there are literally no consequences for you if you pull the plug. All the users that stored their images into your server would have all their posts rendered useless.

I understand. And I wouldn't say no consequences. I myself host every image I post here on it and plan to be here a long time. I am, and will be, heavily investing my time and energy here. If I were to 'Pull The Plug' on this I don't think I would do very well anymore... Hated would more be the word. I defiantly do not want that to happen!

@valentinjesse. Very True on that first part, sorry I missed this comment earlier.
I won't be monetizing the site per say. I will use steem earned via posts about the service here in order to pay for server costs. I will defiantly need to scale and if the site catches on quickly. Hopefully the steem earned from the posts will cover these costs for the site to allow more and more images to be hosted. Now if it comes time where I am running close to the end of my funding and new posts aren't getting any support... I will discontinue uploads and just maintain the hosted images. I will be keeping a very close eye on this and be prepared if I think this might happen. At that point I mould reallocate my server to be better suited to just display and keep images. This I could maintain for quite some time without issue.

At that point maybe on blockchain images would exist.... I wonder...

I just had a very interesting thought. I will get back to everyone on that.

Blue, can you pay off the hosting company for 10 years in advance or something and even if you bail out, the worst that can happen is space will run out and ppl won't be able to add more pictures.

Would that build more trust in the service @valentinjesse?

@anduweb I have websites that I've hosted for over 12 years and yes I could get a dedicated high end server and get it set up for 10 years.

However, I know you guys don't know me in real life, but they only way I wouldn't continue to host the site is (atleast all images currently hosted):
if I died suddenly and the person I have set up in my will to continue running my servers (Yes I do have this person - Because I own A LOT of servers and websites, trust me) also died without enough time to set up someone to continue for him

Sorry a bit morbid and... Knock on Wood

@anduweb - Nope, you can't pay for 10 years in advance, because you cannot predict the rate of adoption of the service. If all of a sudden thousands or hundreds of thousands of users would start storing their images into steemimg, it would go over the quota and useless very fast. In the case of a dedicated high end server it would be the same. You need to scale, otherwise your business dies. There's a reason for why Imgur needed 40M in funding. Secondly, how do you monetize the business ? There are countless of issues

Blue, knock on wood indeed! I know what you are saying. The thing is, people need some sort of proof that the system will be working. Not always our word (or resume) is enough unfortunately :(

@valentinjesse: I'm not saying you are emphasizing a wrong point. What I'm saying is that by paying in advance you are making an investment into the solution (not 40M but still).
For starters, this should be proof that whatever happens, already stored images are safe for 10 years and you don't have to worry about broken links in your editable posts for 10 years.
Secondly, it shows you are dedicated to the solution and going with it for long term.

When you evaluate such tools, I have to give @blueorgy some credit that you also need to look at the dev's resume. That should also count as trust.

I respectfully disagree. This is an investment of trust and money from which i gain nothing back (if i use his service and upvote for the cause). I need to be incentivized in order to use such a risky platform instead of a proven one (the killer features that could make me risk and switch are not there). From what i see, i'm not getting any shares into the company either.

In regards to those 10 years, i hope that you've read my post on the subject. You can't pay 10 years in advance when the unpredictability of the adoption is this high. If thousands/hundreds of thousands of users start using the platform, you will have to deal with scalability issues. How do you solve the scalability issues when you don't have a monetization plan or VC funding ? You simply can't. You just shutdown the service and let everything die or just rely on some whales for the upvotes, but that won't last for long when your expenses will start going up exponentially.

Even if you could pay for 10 years, we're adopters of blockchain technologies in here, so 10 years would be a joke. As blockchain supporters we want decentralized services with as much uptime/file availability as possible. Recording the history with possible broken links is not the way to go.

You have the right to disagree. Absolutely, no problem.
I did read your post but you haven't really read mine. I'm not saying that paying for 10 years includes new user adoption but at least provides some insurance that what is currently there remains there and doesn't impact current users of any platform because the information is still there. I don't find the 10 years as a small amount of time. At the rate things are advancing I'm quite sure solutions will soon include all the post information (including images) directly into the blockchain and have them there forever. Or any other solution. 10 years is a long time in which innovation is sure to happen and tbf, in 10 years, I think we'll look at this post and laugh of its stone-age style.

What I do feel to emphasize is that the devs need to be creative and provide some sort of assurance that encourages users to use the platforms and assure them that we are in for the long run. Each dev's resume is one thing to be considered and I also happen to suggest a 10 year commitment for the minimum functionality to be available as ensured. Is that too small? Is that enough? I don't know. But it's 10 years where your posts (int his case) will have their images listed. If anything happens down the road it would be plenty of time to think about backup solutions or maybe those 10 year old posts won' matter anymore.

I really don't want to turn this into a contradictory discussion. I respect your position but I also think what I'm saying is feasible.

If i know the owner of IMGUR ? He's definitely not a guy named blueorgy. He's Alan Schaaf and his company has 7 years of activity and over 40M USD in funding.

Well my real name Isn't Blueorgy... I get your point. However my full name will defiantly be coming out at some point on here... I can already feel it.

Good luck with your service in the future. I hope that you got my point. It's a risky approach for the steem users (including me) to adopt your platform, considering that they have nothing to gain in doing so. The most important question that you should ask yourself is: "Why would anyone choose Steemimg instead of Imgur or Flickr. Do i have any new killer features that could be worth the risk of moving from those proven services to mine?". I will keep my eyes on your project, though. Thanks for understanding.

I understand @valentinjesse and I appreciated your comments! I always love to have a great dialogue.

That being said I (Or someone out there) needs to get PM up and running on the blockchain. I've looked into it and It may be above me , I'm being honest. Would have to really read up on it.

sure we need a community effort to archive images

good point but also, we are all here to experiment too. Imgur is the Old Way. For example, an idea like this could spread into the STEEM inflection itself; imagine having images posted on steemimg.com that get paid when thy are linked to by other posters, even those not on steemit.com. I could see how this could become the de facto way a free market allocates capital to copyrighted material, for example (i.e., a previously copyrighted image getting uploaded eventually gets downvoted).

I'm not saying this is currently possible, but it is certainly plausible, and it's these kinds of paradigms that make me excited about the Steem community looking forward.

Essentially we need to get images on the blockchain. If that day comes I will make sure to get all images hosted on steemimg.com linked over correctly. Something we should be looking into.

(i.e., a previously copyrighted image getting uploaded eventually gets down voted)

also cool

Thanks, But I would like to have the official stable image server

Well the server is very stable and has 99.999% uptime and I will be upgrading it as needed to handle the traffic.

If there is ever a time when it gets so big that I need to stop excepting new photo uploads (Highly Doubt) then I will... but the images will be hosted forever.

Is there something wrong with the app/website?
Can't access it.

You are the hero steemit deserves. Now to invent some system to put multiple URLS (hostings) for the same article image.

Another idea, is to put image hash to article,like sha://a5db8a2d0...

Another interesting project, while Steemit is still young, would be to archive all steemit images posted in previous articles.

Cheers blueorgy, will use from now on.

Great! Love getting it out there to new members! Enjoy

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