What constitutes a successful community website? There are many features that determine if I personally am willing to invest my time and emotions into an online community. These include the type of community, the entertainment value, how it operates, its corporate culture, functionality and the platforms it utilities. Imgur is an image hosting website that I believe objectively and subjectively fulfils these criteria. This subjective report will provide a personal and analysis of Imgur, and justify why I believe it is a well thought through and effective website that accomplishes both its user’s expectations and its company’s corporate objectives.
Background
Imgur is an image hosting service which is updated and maintained through user submitted content. It was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009 (Slater-Robins, 2013). His intention were to create the web’s most popular image sharing site. Imgur was fostered through his own experiences with the popular news website Reddit, which provides its community with a place to discuss political issues (Slater-Robins, 2013). Reddit is known for not being visually pleasing and having a hard to navigate interface. Imgur was therefore created out of this unfulfilled demand in the market, providing the online community with an easier user experience, but with the same innovative content.
Business Model: Community
Imgur uses a community business model that facilitates the connection of millions of users around the globe. They currently have over 70 million devoted consumers visiting there site (Slater-Robins, 2013). Imgur has enabled a global village, where distances are negated, and opinions from all different cultures and countries come together to be shared. This has produced a likeminded subcult...
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... and loading speeds of Imgur. Altogether it provides its community with a safe place for social interaction of likeminded people. This Website not only meets its community’s expectations but also uses its community to meet its corporate objectives therefore creating a mutually beneficial relationship. I believe there are no negative aspects to this website.
Works Cited
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Imgur. (2014). http://store.imgur.com/pages/privacy-policy. Retrieved from http://imgur.com/.
Pingdom. (2014). Pingdom Website Speed Test. Retrieved from Pingdom: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/duFDXv/http://imgur.com/
Slater-Robins, M. (2013, April 21). From rags to riches: the story of Imgur. Retrieved from neowin: http://www.neowin.net/news/from-rags-to-riches-the-story-of-imgur
Weilenmann, A. H., T. , & Jungselius, B. (2013). Instagram at the Museum: Communicating the Museum Experience through Social Photo Sharing. Paper presented at the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, Paris.
Nair, M. (2011), Understanding and measuring the value of social media. J. Corp. Acct. Fin., 22: 45–51. doi: 10.1002/jcaf.20674
Tice, D.M, Butler J.L., Muraven M.B. & Stillwell A.M. (1995). When modesty prevails: Differential favorability of self-presentation to friends and strangers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(6), 1120-1138 doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.69.6.1120
Further Reading Mullen, B., Atkins, J. L., Champion, D. S., Edwards, C., Hardy, D., Story, J. E., & Vanderlok, M. (1985). The false consensus effect: A meta-analysis of 115 hypothesis tests. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 262-283. Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus phenomenon: An attributional bias in self-perception and social perception processes.
Steele, C., Spencer, S. J., & Aronson, J. (2002). Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat. (In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 379-440. New York, NY: Academic Press.
In a growing world, relying on education and intelligence, judgments in a social environment are still continuously based off of appearance. A study of the importance of outer looks was produced through a TV game show. Contestants fought to answer questions correctly to improve their personal score. At the end of the game, the player with the highest score was asked to eliminate a team member. Although many times an unattractive player would have higher scores and could be more beneficial than another teammate, only 27% of unattractive members were chosen to advance to the next round (Belot, Bhaskar, and van de Ven 852-853). When society overlooks qualities and characteristics of high value for looks, discrimination conquers.
Social comparison and positive distinctiveness. Our social identity contributes to our self-image so we look for positive social identities to keep a high self-esteem. Comparing in groups and out groups allows us to enhance superiority of a group. The Social identity theory explains that the in group will discriminate against the out group to en...
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Twitter and Instagram are Social Media sites that allow users to communicate with others. Twitter is used to communicate small thoughts. Pe...
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Keen, Andrew. The cult of the amateur: how blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.
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