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.<p>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?'<p>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?<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mghhLqu31cQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mghhLqu31cQ</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Although anyone can submit content it's very much editorialised and I think that will become more about submitting content for the editors.<p>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.
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?
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.<p>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.<p>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.
The 9gag team is solid.I first met them at 500Startups early last year.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I hope the raise will give them the resources to expand further as I have no doubt they are already doing quite well.<p>As for why YC -- probably to connect more fully in the Valley since they are (or intend to be) based in Hong Kong.<p>Pretty connected names in the investor list over at angel.co/9gag // Ben Ling, Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose etc..<p>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.
"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."<p>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.
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.
What is 9GAG doing that other blogging companies like Cheezburger (failblog, knowyourmeme, etc.) aren't already?<p>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?