There are two things that seem to be necessary for an image host to be successful on Reddit: 1) be extremely fast (why people hate i.minus compared to imgur), and 2) don't provide any content that can have sound.

I don't know what your service speed is like, but you break that second rule which seems really important to Reddit. Redditors don't actually seem to want "more featureful" in a n image host. Gfycat has an unquestionably clear sole purpose: to be a faster "GIF" host (by providing an HTML5 video option).

You need a flashier, more colorful logo and a bright red BETA tag and a cute name and silly slogan and a login link and a moving number counter on the front page. gfycat looks alive, yours looks static and cold. mediacru.sh is hard to type and not as memorable of a name. Average internet user won't care about "open source" or features they don't know are missing.

Other than that, great work. You can do it.

From a real user who uses gfycat all the time

Your site requires some nits & bits of polishing here and there. Make it more fancy.It looks like any other github project. The page of gfycat is very minimalistic,only fetch url and upload file no fancy drag an drop or documentation or api stuff. Talk to some 4chan & reddit users for some pointers ,they will gladly(I have done my part ;)) Sorry for the harsh word.Nothing but suggestions.

I've been rooting for MediaCrush from the beginning, but there are two things I prefer about gfycat:

1) Their scrubber handle is REALLY slick and easy to use.

2) I never have to worry that gfycat will make noise if I blindly open a link in a new tab.

If you could give me a cookie so that mediacrush links will ALWAYS start muted for ME, no matter what the author or URL say, I'd be much happier.

And something neither one of you get right (I think):

If I open five animated GIFs each in their own tab, the images don't start playing until I switch to that tab. So once I make a given tab active, I get to see the animation starting from the beginning. Both gfycat and MediaCrush start playing the animation right away, so when I eventually make that tab active, I have to rewind to see from the start. (Or, in your case, click play if autoplay is off. Which isn't as bad but still less convenient than "play on focus" that I get with animated GIFs.)

Anyway, my $0.02. I care about quality and open source, but the average Redditor/4chan'r cares not about such things.

Ohh and i forgot /fetch like feature just like in gyfcat can be nice addition. http://gfycat.com/fetch/https://mediacru.sh/static/demo.gif