This Is The Future Of Imgur, The Massive Photo-Sharing Startup Yahoo Wants To Buy

Tim Hwang, founder of Internet meme convention ROFLCon, is joining Imgur as its Head of Special Initiatives.

Given how vague that title is, Business Insider caught up with Hwang to learn about what he'll be up to at Imgur.

Ultimately, Hwang in charge of making Imgur a little more mature.

"There's been an interesting shift from infrastructure to more like a Reddit in its own right as a community," Hwang tells Business Insider.

After starting out as a companion to Reddit, Imgur has found itself a strong property in its own right. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was reportedly negotiating to buy the site last fall, but nothing has materialized from that yet.

Back in September, Imgur passed 100 million unique visitors per month, making it bigger than Reddit. In 2012, it was doing 2 billion pageviews a month. By now it could be doing 4 billion per month.

Imgur is already profitable thanks to its paid Pro subscriptions and deals with advertisers, but now it seems that Imgur has its eyes set on other types of monetization.

As head of special initiatives, Hwang will be responsible for forming partnerships with brands, and throwing in-person events for the Imgur community. Hwang will also dive deep into the data to analyze who uses Imgur, and why, where, what, and when these people share images.

Down the road, Imgur sees itself getting into merchandise with everything from t-shirts to a book filled with the best images from Imgur.