
9GAG (YC S12) Raises $2.8M - adebelov
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/07/30/funny-funding-humor-website-9gag-raises-2-8-million-and-releases-an-ios-app/
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therealarmen
Over 1 billion monthly pageviews for r/funny in a pretty wrapper. I'm in the
wrong business.

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radagaisus
My impression is that 9gag is a social fad. Memes became mainstream and the
'cool kids' (the early adopters) are already making fun of le upboat XDD I
mustache you a herp derp.

9gag is pretty popular in Israel[1]. My coworkers (20yo) still read it, but it
was all the rage a few months ago, and in a family dinner my 13yo cousin asked
me if I know the site. All this indicates the eternal cycle: 'knew them before
it was cool' -> mainstream -> 'omg are you still into that?'

Dubstep (recent example) stopped being cool because it went mainstream. Memes
will not stop being cool - image macros are the laziest way to get information
- but 9gag (unless they do something crazy) will become just a site. Remember
the esoteric tumblrs?

[1] - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mghhLqu31cQ>

~~~
antidaily
Seems alot like... FunkyJunk. Hopefully they have nicer lawyers.

~~~
dag11
[http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-
better...](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-
you-at-everything.html)

~~~
s_henry_paulson
She really needs to finish her book, so she can get back to being awesome on
the internet.

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brackin
9GAG is Reddit for the 90%. They Cherrypick the best memes from Reddit and
wrap them in a social layer of Facebook comments and timeline integration to
make them even more viral.

This company will never be nearly as big as Reddit but it seems to me that
they're going to become more of a media company than a democratised news
platform.

We'll start to see 9GAG Magazine, the book and TV shows. Like SocialCam, if
Facebook cuts off timeline access I imagine they'll see a huge drop in
engagement.

Although anyone can submit content it's very much editorialised and I think
that will become more about submitting content for the editors.

A huge problem they're going to face as they branch out is copyright. They're
trying to make a more legitimate FunnyJunk and this requires them to start
looking at revshare and how they deal with copyright as they're promoting
copyright content rather than it just being user added.

~~~
killwhitey
>9GAG is Reddit for the 90%.

Content is created in the chaos that is discussion boards (4chan, SA before
that). Then it is peer reviewed on aggregators (Reddit, Digg before that), and
finally it is distributed to the masses in an easy to read format (9gag,
tumblr, FB, etc.)

The problem is the lower the food chain you go the greater the resentment you
see people have. People on reddit hate 9gag, people on reddit.com/new hate
redditors that only view the front page, people on 4chan hate redditors for
copying (or stealing) their memes. And everyone hates that the original
message/humor gets lost or diluted each time to goes up a level.

Now you may not think that's a problem, but people on 4chan sure as hell don't
want to see 9gag succeed, and the people who create the most content also
create the most mischief.

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pg_bot
I was a little confused to see that 9GAG was in this current batch for YC.
9GAG is a 4 year old company, what sort of benefit does YC give them? What
will they demo at demo day? Why not go to traditional VCs at this stage of
operation?

~~~
swampthing
There are plenty of relatively mature companies that go through YC - it gives
you a leg up at pretty much any early stage. Demo day isn't really for demos
anymore.

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mnicole
4chan-initiated and Reddit-fueled, 9gag's content has already been manipulated
and their Facebook wall flooded with horrific imagery, fake memes and general
buffoonery in order to offend and humiliate their community, which is
basically this generation's eBaum's World.

Serious question - for a site that relies on user-generated content, how does
this money help create a better user experience or bring a more intellectual
community? Reddit's main feed is slowly toppling over as the "masses"
overpopulate the number of people that provide true value with the saving
grace being the subreddits. I'd also venture to say that Reddit's only-recent
transformation to having proper staff and a CEO (that were huge contributors
to the community before their hiring) is something a lot of people like about
it too.

I guess I'm confused why a site as content-reliant as 9gag needs funding to
beat out (given that's the intent) what is fundamentally an issue with their
userbase, who have already been the laughing stock of the internet for quite
some time now.

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niketdesai
The 9gag team is solid.I first met them at 500Startups early last year.

At the time they were working on a number of products, but they truly had a
mastery in understanding the creation and sharing process of people between
15-30. It showed within each product they created and it was ultimately 9gag
that went bananas in terms of user adoption.

They also have a pretty neat mission that extends beyond a r/funny wrapper --
though with the myriad of clones and previously created similar sites there is
some credit due to them for their rapid expansion.

I hope the raise will give them the resources to expand further as I have no
doubt they are already doing quite well.

As for why YC -- probably to connect more fully in the Valley since they are
(or intend to be) based in Hong Kong.

Pretty connected names in the investor list over at angel.co/9gag // Ben Ling,
Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose etc..

Oh, and while I agree to some extent that sites like these marginally improve
the internet, humour is a great remedy to many of our ails.

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moistgorilla
I'm still waiting for the 4chan ipo

~~~
moot
Send an e-mail to ipo@4chan.org and I'll be sure to invite you to our
roadshow.

~~~
akanet
Sent an email with the subject "it's time to take this sucker public," and it
bounced. For a minute... I dared to dream.

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debacle
Having only first visited 9gag two minutes ago, what is the appeal of this
website?

~~~
brianlovin
1\. Repost popular content on Reddit, 4chan 2\. Spam the shit out of social
links 3\. ...? 4\. Profit

~~~
vgurgov
actually they manage to build their own community around it. there was even
'war' 9gag vs 4chan sometime ago and surprisingly their members were able to
defend against 4chan spam and even counter attack.

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angrydev
Can we call it a bubble yet?

~~~
benmccann
They have a _billion_ page views a month. I have no idea how well they're able
to monetize, but at a $.20 CPM that's $2.4 million in revenue a year.
Presumably they're still growing too. It seems pretty realistic that the
investors could make their money back on this deal.

~~~
kbanman
I would guess that the majority of those visitors are minors without a credit
card. Even if you could convince advertisers to pay for those impressions
today, they would soon become wiser and realize that they have no value.

See facebook's steadily falling income as an example of this happening: sure
they have a stupid number of pageviews, but people are learning the real value
of a pageview today.

~~~
jmcgough
"they would soon become wiser and realize that they have no value"

Children don't need a credit card to be a valuable audience to direct
advertising at.

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untouchable
"In less than nine months, 9GAG has more than quadrupled the number of monthly
unique visitors to its site, going from 16 million to more than 70 million,"
said Tony Conrad, founding member and venture partner at True Ventures. "With
its ability to easily and quickly spread entertaining visual content via
Facebook and Twitter, the potential of 9GAG as a viral distribution platform
is huge, and we look forward to working together with them to maximize this
opportunity."

This seems like a large, risky bet to make on a humor site with fast growth
but not much track record. I don't know a lot about 9GAG, but it seems like a
case where since Funnyordie and Reddit were successful, any site with growth
deserves investment.

~~~
fredsters_s
1+ BILLION pageviews per month. With a team that can kick enough ass to
produce those metrics in such short time, doesn't seem so risky.

~~~
freehunter
Pageviews are easy, especially on a social picture aggregator. It's not hard
to imagine one person clicking on hundreds of images per day. The hard part is
trying to monetize these pageviews.

It doesn't take a kick-ass team to put up a link farm and spam it out. It
takes a kick-ass team to profit from it and not tank the reputation. Digg
failed. Reddit is struggling. I'm not sure 9gag will do any better.

~~~
adebelov
9GAG is killing it! This is an extremely competitive and cluttered space on
the web. They were able to carve out their own niche and build one of the
largest websites in the world. This wasn't a 1 night trick or hack, it takes a
lot of time and patience to build anything remotely close to what 9GAG has
built.

~~~
seiji
You sound slightly brainwashed and cultish in your reply.

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tosbourn
Oh man, Imgur users are not going to be happy, not happy at all.

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alecco
I don't understand why reddit doesn't do the same thing on Facebook, perhaps
in a mor ethical way with links to sources and sparing a few donations once in
a while.

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RandallBrown
What is 9GAG doing that other blogging companies like Cheezburger (failblog,
knowyourmeme, etc.) aren't already?

The site doesn't seem like anything more than a wordpress template. What value
do they add to the reddit content that people are posting on there?

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cluda01
Did the 9GAG team join YC before or after developing this site?

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netvarun
If what is stated in the title ('YC S12') is true, then definitely yes. 9Gag
has been around for close to four years. But that begs another question? Why
did they choose to join YC then? They already had their product out and had a
pretty large user base - what does YC have to offer them?

~~~
debacle
A rubber stamp for funding?

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astrange
Why did YC fund a content theft website?

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bryanh
I kind of see 9gag as the new College Humor, maybe bigger and more inclusive.
Congrats to the team!

~~~
thetabyte
The big difference was that College Humor was/is a content creator, not just a
content aggregator.

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Devilboy
9GAG in YC. What the fuck.

~~~
10098
That was my initial reaction.

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dreamdu5t
What makes 9Gag different? Why did they succeed? How do they make money (right
now, not tomorrow)?

~~~
juan_juarez
They put links to blast content to all your friends on Facebook right at your
fingertips. Easy for an image to go viral. Not really sure about a revenue
stream but it's probably something shady about getting access to lots of
people's Facebook profiles.

