Imgur has a little piece of my heart.

On long days (or really any day), as news picks up and I’m writing like a work horse or when news screeches to a halt and I’m bored out of my mind, Imgur is there for me. Paired with the imaginations and (sometimes creepy) senses of humor of my dear colleagues, I get a fun little surprise every hour or so in the form of a hilarious photo or gif.

But I’m not the only one to enjoy the photo-sharing service. The company just announced that it’s reached 2 billion page views a month, up from 1 billion page views a month on February 1 of this year. Imgur has also surpassed 3 million daily uniques — a milestone in and of itself.

Users are currently uploading half a million images a day, and viewing over a billion images a day — that’s a 1,200 percent increase since the beginning of 2011.

Back at the Crunchies at the end of January, Imgur won the Best Bootstrapped Startup award. Founder Alan Schaff then explained where he sees Imgur fitting in in the crowded photo-sharing and hosting space, explaining that an image is different from a photo. “You would put your photos on places like Facebook or Flickr,” said Schaff, “but if you just have an image – which can be like a screenshot, a meme, something you hacked together in PhotoShop – you need a place for those too. We want to be that place.”

Much of this is possible thanks to a service called EdgeCast, which Imgur tapped into in June of 2011. It’s a content delivery network that helps ensure Imgur users enjoy quick upload times and no outages.

And we’re glad the partnership is working out so well for both parties. I, personally, can’t imagine a world without images like these, previously hosted on Imgur, but re-uploaded to our servers:

I’m pleased to let you know that on Monday we will formally announce a
Series C financing of $10 million, led by Menlo Ventures, one of
Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms.

As you know, we have been profitable since late last year, so this was
not a case of needing to raise money. But customer demand has been
exploding – faster than even we, in our entrepreneurial optimism,
expected. We wanted to be in a very strong position to take advantage
of it, so we felt it a wise strategic move to scale up more quickly.

This cash will help us do exactly that. We have a strong pipeline of
cool new products, services and features, and the additional resources
will help accelerate their development and launch. We are adding to
the team and expanding our sales and marketing programs. And perhaps
most important, we will also be able to grow the network faster.

Under the deal, Menlo Ventures’ managing director, Pravin Vazirani, will join the company’s board of directors. Explaining his investment, Vazirani says: ” users demand a high-quality, instant-on experience – something legacy CDNs weren’t built to deliver. As both supply and demand for content continue to surge, EdgeCast is ideally positioned to capitalize on that growth.”

Founded in 2006 by CEO Alex Kazerani and President James Segil, Edgecast competes with other CDNs (like Akamai, Limelight Networks) to help websites around the world deliver multimedia (i.e. music, video, live stream, etc) to the end user. One of the company’s strengths is its flexible pricing model, there are no fixed bandwith contracts. Customer prices are tied to actual bandwidth costs. Edgecast serves over a thousand clients including IMAX, WordPress, ESPN, Kelloggs, LinkedIn and Lionsgate.

While it has several big names on its roster, the company has been aggressively targeting smaller businesses. Last month, the company announced a partnership with ClickStream TV to offer no-committment delivery services. “Enabling ClickStreamTV’s pay-as-you-go CDN service is exciting for us, because it enables us to help smaller businesses we might otherwise miss,” Segil said in a press release.

EdgeCast has experienced spectacular growth over the past year. To put it in perspective the company had roughly 300 customers in early 2009, it past the 1,000 mark last September. EdgeCast has relied on a two-pronged marketing strategy: direct selling and a network of resellers. By working with its resell partners, like Deutsche Telekom, Edgecast has been able to expand its sales force without additional overhead costs. The bulk of their customers now come through the resell channel.

Every website that streams content (live video, music) needs a CDN. The flurry of new media online has made it a prime time for companies like Akamai, Limelight Networks, Level 3, VitalStream, BitGravity, and EdgeCast who provide fast and efficient ways to deliver rich media to millions on the internet. The market is estimated to be around $800 million, of which Akamai controls about half.

One of the newer networks, EdgeCast (2006), has closed a $6 million in Series B financing led by Steamboat Ventures, which is affiliated with The Walt Disney Company, bringing their total financing to $10 million. Steamboat joins Series A investors such as Mark Amin, Chairman of CinemaNow as well as Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate films. The new funds will be used to expand internationally, scale the network for additional capacity, enhance features, and market to more businesses.

EdgeCast has distinguished itself from other CDNs by charging for bandwidth instead of lumping the cost in with the cost of other CDN services. This means customers should see declines in their bill as bandwidth costs drop.

But these businesses are as much defined by their customer list as pricing plans. Level3 provides the backbone for YouTube’s content. Limelight handles Microsoft and Amazon Unbox. BitGravity serves Revision3. EdgeCast’s most recognizable customer is IMAX, but their investment from Steamboat Ventures leads me to believe they’ll be the CDN of choice for Disney as well.