Yfrog

Image hosting service
yfrog
Type of site
Image sharing
Available inEnglish
Dissolved2015
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedFebruary 2009; 15 years ago (2009-02)[1]
Current statusDefunct

yfrog is a defunct image hosting service formerly run by ImageShack. It commenced operations in February 2009 and shut down in 2015. The service was designed primarily to allow users to share their photographs and videos as links on the Twitter microblogging platform.

History and features

Yfrog was launched in February 2009.[1] The name yfrog was based on "yellow frog", which is the logo of ImageShack. The original yfrog logo featured a yellow frog, but in May 2011 was changed to a circle of six speech balloons in different colors.[2]

Images and videos were uploaded to yfrog via the website interface, or by email. The URLs of yfrog links were shorter than on ImageShack (e.g. http://yfrog.com/1upend), in order to fit within the 140 characters limit of a tweet. The yfrog website was optimized for mobile viewing, and aimed to capture a market similar to TwitPic's.[3][4] As of October 2010, 25 applications supported the yfrog upload API, including the official Twitter for iPhone app, TweetDeck, Seesmic, Twitterrific, and Twittelator.[5]

Yfrog had approximately 29% of the Twitter photo sharing market in 2011.[4]

In summer 2011, Twitter began hosting its own images natively through its web and mobile interfaces, which caused usage to go down.[6] Yfrog pivoted to run its own social media service, Yfrog Social, in 2012.[7] Yfrog Social shut down in 2015, while Yfrog for Twitter also redirected to ImageShack and replaced former images with unrelated ads.[8]

See also

  • Flickr
  • Photobucket
  • TinyPic

References

  1. ^ a b Wauters, Robin (February 18, 2009). "ImageShack Launches Mediocre TwitPic Alternative". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
  2. ^ Frog Loses Battle to Speech Bubbles Brand New, May 17, 2011.
  3. ^ "Example of yfrog mobile viewing". Archived from the original on January 22, 2011. Retrieved 2012-09-06.
  4. ^ a b "A Snapshot Of Photo-Sharing Market Share On Twitter". TechCrunch. June 2, 2011. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
  5. ^ http://yfrog.com/partners.php - yfrog Partners
  6. ^ "Twitter Photo Uploading Now Available For 100% Of Users". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
  7. ^ "ImageShack Launches Yfrog Social, An Ambitious New Full-Service Social Network". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
  8. ^ "Ban ImageShack images because they are reusing old URLs for advertising". Meta Stack Exchange. Retrieved 2020-12-16.

External links

  • Yfrog Says It Wasn’t Compromised in Wake of Weiner Photo Mashable, June 3, 2011.