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If the start location and end location for a user are reddit, why go through the trouble to capture some portion of the middle traffic as well? That's the beauty of an aggregator, you prosper through other people's content by providing additional value, not by competing with it. Also, I don't think there's an expectation from reddit users to be able to store images on reddit so you wouldn't be adding much perceived value in the first place.

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The problem I see is reddit isn't an aggregator in the strict sense. Look at the front page, it's riddled with imgur links. How many of them (advice animals, original content, etc) were posted there just for reddit? I'll just say unscientifically, a lot. (After all, that's why imgur was born.)

So you're a site with a major feature that (a) drives publishers to another site, and (b) drives viewers to the same site, even though (c) the content was created for your site. And now (d) that site is adding some of your core features. I guess I can't see how that isn't a blindingly obvious concern if you're running reddit.

What I don't understand is what you gain by adding the ability to store images? Is the point to reduce the need to use imgur? Yes, imgur is adding the ability to add comments to images, but their functionality is a far cry from that of reddit. Let's assume they add for w/e crazy reason the ability to have nested comments and groups with admins and other similar things. Only at that point are they really encroaching on reddit's ground, except, they've just manage to make a rather limited imitation as it's only for images. And even then, how does it hurt reddit? Reddit is an aggregator of largely varied content. Imgur simply isn't and can't be.

imgur becoming a credible threat to reddit's eyeballs (and ad dollars) does not require them to have feature parity. See: Facebook vs Instagram.

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