This looks useful

June 21, 2004 3:23 PM

TinyPic.com - "is a very simple, fast, reliable free image host. It is perfect for linking to auctions, message boards, journals, and other websites. There is no registration or login, all you have to do is submit your picture." This looks very useful. I find the most popular pictures on the site curious though.
posted by CunningLinguist (30 comments total)

Wow, sorry, suddenly a lot of those pix aren't loading.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:47 PM on June 21, 2004

Weird! I was just about to post the addictive random peeks into other people's images from uploadyourimages.com as an FPP. More free image hosting here.
posted by iffley at 3:49 PM on June 21, 2004

Its a cool site but yeah, those top pics are pretty well stupid. I'd guess most people are using it to have pics to use in chats but it could be useful for auctions.
posted by fenriq at 4:05 PM on June 21, 2004

By the way, how'd they get the pics to load from the bottom up? That's a pretty cool trick.
posted by fenriq at 4:05 PM on June 21, 2004

rofl
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:06 PM on June 21, 2004

The bottom-up images are bitmap (BMP) images, the huge uncompressed things you get from Paint. For reasons unknown to me, they load, or at least appear, from bottom-up.
posted by punishinglemur at 4:18 PM on June 21, 2004

When I posted this, the top few pictures were all stalkery pix of the same woman walking on the street, apparently unaware of the camera. I didn't realize the list updated to quickly.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:22 PM on June 21, 2004

I didn't realize the list updated to quickly.

looks like when an image has 10000 hits it drops off the list. maybe they're doing mod(x,10000). yes i'm a loser for figuring that out.
posted by jacobsee at 4:55 PM on June 21, 2004

Cool. Yet another way to track users. Any connection to that other spy scheme, TinyUrl?
posted by Ayn Marx at 5:01 PM on June 21, 2004

I don't understand - how does this site, or the same-owner photobucket.com, pay the bills? Hosting images and bandwidth is expensive. Is there some upsell from the free product?
posted by Nelson at 5:44 PM on June 21, 2004

ugh
posted by bob sarabia at 5:58 PM on June 21, 2004

Can it be? Brittney? Now that's stalking.
posted by majikwah at 6:08 PM on June 21, 2004

Right now the top pics (with 10K hits) are of a man wearing a visor walking on a city street with a cute blonde toddler girl.

The "furry" cartoon of metalhead animals with the caption "Insanity: Brother and Sister Forever", which was number 5, did seem odd, though.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:09 PM on June 21, 2004

When I posted this, the top few pictures were all stalkery pix of the same woman walking on the street, apparently unaware of the camera.

You mean this lady?
posted by bob sarabia at 6:13 PM on June 21, 2004

2008 will always rule
posted by cadastral at 6:16 PM on June 21, 2004

Is that Sarah Michelle Gellar dropping a wad of cash to gas up her Navigator? Three of the photos are inconclusive, but this one sure looks like her.
posted by Dreama at 6:31 PM on June 21, 2004

Isn't that Calista Flockhart in bob sarabia's links?
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:31 PM on June 21, 2004

I meant Sarah Michelle Gellar (the one who was on the TV "Buffy") not Calista Flockhart (the one who was in the stupid TV show about lawyers) but I always get those two confused.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:32 PM on June 21, 2004

You mean this lady?

No. That's the weird part - there are a few candids of celebs in there (I think I saw Gwyneth) but the one I meant was a very ordinary looking brunette who was not, as far as I could tell, famous. It was creepy.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:43 PM on June 21, 2004

Completely fascinating. This is my new favorite.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:53 PM on June 21, 2004

No, wait, this is.

I may never finish my novel at this rate.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:56 PM on June 21, 2004

i'm willing to bet those photos were of someone "famous" to a certain extent. I see a lot of these pictures are of celebs and are stalkerish
posted by bob sarabia at 7:08 PM on June 21, 2004

This means something. This is important. /neary
posted by SPrintF at 8:36 PM on June 21, 2004

I saw Sarah Michelle Geller, Rob Mills from Australian Idol/Popstars (he used to date Paris Hilton too), Hugh Jackman and his son Oscar, Brittany Spears, and finally, Penn and Teller. So I guess a couple of them are kinda "famous".
posted by supershauna at 8:47 PM on June 21, 2004

"looks like when an image has 10000 hits it drops off the list. maybe they're doing mod(x,10000). yes i'm a loser for figuring that out."

It not only drops off the list, it's deleted and replaced by an image of the TinyPic.com logo.

I guess I'm the biggest loser.
posted by spazzm at 9:33 PM on June 21, 2004

It not only drops off the list, it's deleted and replaced by an image of the TinyPic.com logo.

Yes. That sucks royally.

Nearly every one of the above links I clicked appeared as the TinyPic.com logo.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 9:45 PM on June 21, 2004

Sucks, but explains their business model. You can host your pics for free *for up to 10,000* impressions - then you advertise for us...
posted by benzo8 at 2:44 AM on June 22, 2004

...and then we get more people using the free hosting, which sucks more bandwidth, and so on and so on. Still doesn't make much sense to me as a business model.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:01 AM on June 22, 2004

Unless we've been sucked into a time warp and it's 1999 again, in which case VC's will shower them with millions and it's IPO ahoy!

Heh.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:02 AM on June 22, 2004

Hey the upload progress bar is amazing.. never seen anything like that before, does anyone have any idea how they did that?
posted by cmicali at 9:01 PM on June 22, 2004