SuperConductiveRabbi's Online Testament and User Manual

Yesterday i was browsing Reddit, as i always do, and decided to go to r/Bestof. A user named SuperConductiveRabbi commented on a thread about Imgur and Cookies.

The answer blew my mind and i promised the user i would share his theory. He just said he would like to call it SuperConductiveRabbi's Online Testament and User Manual

Here's the Lifecycle of Every Single Online Service a.k.a SuperConductiveRabbi's Online Testament and User Manual

1.   The Early Days 

The website provides one service and provides it well.

2.   Traction

People recognize that the website's service is excellent, and flock to it.

3.   Maturity

The website's creators are elated at their newfound success, and, seeking to improve their service, begin to perform upgrades, updates, design changes, and create exploratory features.

4.   Bloat

The website is either no longer growing at the rate it once was, leading the creators to start implementing predatory features that return greater revenue per visitor, OR it begins to morph into such a complicated and burdensome entity that it now offers n services instead of just one, where n is a number that increases until step five is reached.

5.   The autumn years

People start to notice that the website no longer provides the one service they care about as well as it used to, and start looking for a competitor that will provide that one service and provide it well.

Imgur is now on Step 4.