LOL-ing All the Way to the Bank

Tags:: Cats Lolcats 4chan Memes Funny Pictures Videos

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By: techvi
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Updated: 17-Dec-09
Videos: 172

International
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Views: 121
Added: 29-Apr-09

Whether you love them or hate 'em, LOLCats are a strong fixture in internet culture. Ben Huh, the CEO behind the company that owns LOLCat monolith I Can Haz Cheezburger, sat down for a few minutes with TechVi to talk about how he got his company where it is today, how he decides which memes are right, and how he feels about the place where many of these memes originate, 4chan.

Huh originally started Pet Holdings, Inc. by purchasing I Can Haz Cheezburger from its original owners for a seemingly shocking $2,000,000 (that's million, folks). He then moved on to FailBlog, one of the more popular recent meme sites. Huh doesn't view his catalog of properties as "meme sites," but rather just like any other form of media consumption, tied with pageviews and dollars. The model makes sense, and lucky for Huh, memes are likely to be around as long as the net exists. The question in my mind is whether he can continue to ride the wave successfully past his first few sites, but so far he seems to be LOL-ing, all the way to the bank.