Ten years following its debut, 300-million-monthly-user Imgur is one of the least massively popular yet un-personalized home pages on the internet.
How Imgur Works
Since everyone views the same upvoted posts when they start Imgur, it produces a shared experience full of inside jokes and working gags.
However, while you can shift to a feed of topics and creators you support, Imgur has centered on a one-size-fits-all method over providing to niche audiences.
The gaming area deserved better, and Imgur wanted to seize this opportunity.
Video and board game tags were most famous on Imgur, with 46% of users supporting them.
Esports, Twitch, and streaming stars like Ninja have advanced to the mainstream.
And there is an entire world of private memes about crazy in-game moments, highlights from historic wins and commentary about the industry.
That stuff gets diluted and concealed on cross-functional apps like Imgur; it is difficult to browse on Reddit, and frequently content about all games is crushed together, even though you may only play certain ones.
That is why today, Imgur is starting Melee, the company’s first app, past its flagship product.
The Story of Melee
Melee allows users to subscribe to the games from which they prefer to get a feed of memes and gameplay clips.
It is a sophisticated way to block you from seeing jokes you don’t follow or feats of skill you don’t bother about.
You additionally can scroll through a long post’s feed if you are interested in unfamiliar games.
Melee debuts now on iOS, with an Android version arriving in Q1 2020 and a desktop version down the way.
Imgur originator and CEO Alan Schaaf say that gamers are regularly taking recordings and screenshots of the games they are playing.
But they saw that there is no room for gamers to share those clips.
He said that they want to provide those highlights a home.
If 92% of examined Imgurians think of themselves as “gamers,” and the common one already consumes 30 minutes per day on Imgur, there was room to build something only for them.
Schaaf says that Imgur is inspired to build things that the internet requires.
Melee is definitely mobile-first and gives a lifeboat to Imgur in case its primary tribe disperses.
It is a clever way to control the massive untapped energy of gamers.
Ultimately, meme culture is making purpose-built social networks.
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