yfrog
yfrog is a defunct image hosting service formerly run by ImageShack. It was designed primarily to allow users to share their photographs and videos as links on the Twitter microblogging platform.
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Type of site | Image sharing |
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Available in | English |
Registration | Required |
Launched | February 2009[1] |
Current status | Defunct |
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
References
- Wauters, Robin (February 18, 2009). "ImageShack Launches Mediocre TwitPic Alternative". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
- Frog Loses Battle to Speech Bubbles Brand New, May 17, 2011.
- "Example of yfrog mobile viewing". Retrieved 2012-09-06.
- "A Snapshot Of Photo-Sharing Market Share On Twitter". TechCrunch. June 2, 2011. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
- http://yfrog.com/partners.php - yfrog Partners
- "Twitter Photo Uploading Now Available For 100% Of Users". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
- "ImageShack Launches Yfrog Social, An Ambitious New Full-Service Social Network". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
- "Ban ImageShack images because they are reusing old URLs for advertising". Meta Stack Exchange. Retrieved 2020-12-16.