Imgur Just Announced Its Analytics Platform That Will Let Users Track How Viral Their Images Are

When you see a picture or GIF on a website like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or Reddit, chances are it was first uploaded to a site called Imgur.

Imgur is the fastest-growing image-sharing platform on the Web, with more than 1.5 million images uploaded each day and 120 million uniques each month (in layman's terms: a ton).

Today, the company is introducing its first-ever analytics platform, a place where users can track the lifecycle or story of their uploaded images as they travel and are shared online. This will allow brands, advertisers and Imgur Pro users to see where their images travel over time and better understand the virality of image content.

Business Insider spoke to Alan Schaaf, founder and CEO, about this new feature for the popular site. Schaaf launched Imgur in February 2009 when he was a junior at Ohio University.

"Imgur Analytics will be useful for everyone who uses the site, but we imagine brands especially will recognize the platform's potential as a vibrant, influential online community and as a distribution mechanism for viral content," Schaaf told us.

Here's what it will look like when you track a photo:

The new Analytics Platform now allows users to:

• Track total image views over time

• Graph image views over time by date range and even by the hour

• See top traffic referral sources (i.e. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter)

• Get detailed traffic referral paths within each top referral source (to know the exact traffic source)

"As feedback from users and brands surfaces, Imgur will continue to improve personalization algorithms and determine how best to optimize features for this new platform," the Imgur team told Business Insider.