9gag

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9GAG
File:9GAG new logo.svg
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Entertainment
Available inEnglish, German
FoundedApril 12, 2008; 16 years ago (2008-04-12)
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA, USA
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)Ray Chan
Key peopleRay Chan (CEO)
URLOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata
AdvertisingBanner ads
RegistrationOptional (required to submit, comment, or vote)
Current statusActive

9GAG is an online platform and social media website. Users upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the website was launched on April 12, 2008,[2] it has grown in popularity, reaching more than 31.2 million Facebook likes,[3] 6.99 million Twitter followers in June 27, 2016[4] and 29.6 million followers on Instagram in May 2016.[5]

In December 2015 it had 164 million visitors: 7.82% from Germany, 7.02% from the United States, 5.35% from France, 4.77% from Brazil and 3.93% from Turkey.[6] As of 2015 the company had raised $24.5 million in total funding. Investors included 500 Startups, Benjamin Ling, BoxGroup, Adam Rothenberg, David Tisch, Freestyle Capital, James Hong, Philip Kaplan, Scott Banister, Stapleton Inc, and Y Combinator.[7]

The website is widely known for content stealing from other sites like Reddit, 4chan, funnyjunk, and various other websites, and placing 9GAG's watermark on the picture, censoring every evidence of the original poster. Based on this fact, "Cyber Wars" between these sites occurred, resulting some of the sites' servers to go down for some time.

History

The website was co-founded in 2008 - 2009 by University of Hong Kong student Ray Chan, his brother Chris Chan, and others, with the intention of creating an alternative online platform to email on which users could easily share humorous photos or videos. In a 2012 interview, Ray Chan declined to explain where the name "9GAG" is derived from.[8]

Starting the company under a “Just for Fun” mentality, 9GAG's co-founders began using 9GAG as a résumé-builder for the 500 Startups accelerator program. During the summer program, the 9GAG team worked on other startup ideas, including StartupQuote and Songboard. [9] Following the 500 Startups accelerator program, 9GAG participated in Y Combinator's incubator and its user-base increased to 70 million global unique visitors per month.[10] The 9GAG co-founding team discontinued all other projects and shifted their focus exclusively on 9GAG. 500 Startups was given equity for their aid and mentorship.

In July 2012, 9GAG raised an additional US$2.8 million in funding from Silicon Valley-based venture capital,[11] including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners. In August 2012, 9GAG received another US$2.8 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners, as well as individual investors like Christopher Sacca, Kevin Rose, and Naval Ravikant. This funding was able to support 9GAG's engineering team growth both in Hong Kong and in Silicon Valley.[12]

Mobile app development

9GAG has a mobile application on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and for BlackBerry 10.[13][14]

In July 2012, 9GAG launched an app for iOS and Android. The mobile application serves as a streamlined version of the web-based content.[15] In summer 2014 9GAG launched 9CHAT. 9GAG users are able to log in to their account and write to others by sending them a message. 9CHAT also added support for the creation of groups in different sections.[16] January 2015, 9GAG launched its first game called 9GAG Redhead redemption.

Content

  • The website's content is generally referred to as "internet memes", and is upvoted, downvoted, and commented on by users.[17]
  • Similar to other social media websites like 4chan, Reddit and Digg, 9GAG utilizes user-generated memes that are shared with the entire 9GAG community. While memes have different categories, they are typically displayed as humorous images, or comic strips, with captions conveying certain messages.[18]
  • Most of 9GAG's content is presented in the form of image memes, whereby animal-related image memes (e.g., Advice Animals or Good Advice Mallard) tend to be popular.
  • These image memes are typically formatted, whereby a given image has both top and bottom captions. While the top caption describes a certain situation, the bottom caption usually complements the top caption by presenting a humorous follow up message to the original situation.
  • Memes are commonly presented in a 4x4 comic strip.
  • A featured section shows current, popular content. As of January 2016, sections such as Fallout 4, Star Wars, Anime and Manga, One-Punch Man and others have been added.

Authorship

9GAG users may also re-post content (possibly without any consent from its respective authors) on other websites (e.g. 4chan, Newgrounds, Reddit, SomethingAwful, FunnyJunk, YTMND, etc.), replacing the source site's watermark with their own. In 2011, 9GAG and 4chan disputed authorship of internet memes published on both websites, whereby each company claimed the memes originated from their own website. As stated by 9GAG co-founder Ray Chan, "9GAG does not create memes or rage comics, but helps spread them." 9GAG also adopted 4chan's "legion" and “hearth of the internet” nicknames.[19][better source needed][20][better source needed]


Censorship and The Repost Machine

Introduction

9Gag is closely controlled by the administrators. They steal posts from all around the internet, mostly from reddit, and delete comments/posts at will. Trying to warn 9gaggers about this is useless, they will never see your comments. Here are some known facts: Almost 20% of the images found on 9gag were taken from reddit. Most of the images found on 9gag's front page were uploaded by the administrators of the website. All of the posts made by the administrators were taken from other websites, mainly reddit. All of the posts made by the administrators receive automatic upvotes as soon as they are submitted. Certain words such as "reddit" or "repost" are filtered, and comments/posts that contain them are deleted. Images stolen by 9gag are watermarked with the 9gag logo, even though they were not generated by them.

Repost machine and fake upvotes 9Gag employs what we call "Repost machine". It is a system that takes popular posts from reddit, repost them on 9gag and adds fake upvotes. This used to be a manual process (more about the old system can be read here), but it is currently automated. The system removes any existing watermark and adapts the title so it is appropriate to 9gag. The Repost Machine is not perfect, and it sometimes reposts images that makes no sense/can't be understood by 9gaggers. Administrators add fake upvotes to posts to create the illusion that there is good original content on 9gag. 300 upvotes are added soon as they post something and some more thousands after some time so it can reach the frontpage. Reddit is not the only source of their content. They also steal from other websites (Currently, the username of the original poster is not shown. This means its impossible to know whether the image was submitted by the administrators or the users)

Censorship

The list includes:

Reddit

4chan

FunnyJunk

Admin Post

Repost

And many more

EDIT: They are now censoring any comments that contain special characters

References

  1. ^ "9gag.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-01-01.
  2. ^ "9GAG.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. 2016. Retrieved 2016-02-25.
  3. ^ "9GAG". 9GAG on Facebook. Facebook. December 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
  4. ^ "9GAG". 9GAG on Twitter. Twitter. December 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
  5. ^ https://www.instagram.com/9gag/
  6. ^ "9Gag.com Traffic Statistics". SimilarWeb. SimilarWeb. Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  7. ^ "9GAG | CrunchBase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  8. ^ Fiona Ren (24 July 2012). "How Ray Chan started 9GAG, and a career in fun". Meld Magazine. Meld Magazine. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  9. ^ Mott, Nathaniel (2012-08-21). "9GAG, the Biggest Little Startup at Y Combinator's Demo Day | PandoDaily". Pando.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  10. ^ "Jokes aside, 9GAG's co-founder Ray Chan shares about the serious side of their latest US$2.8M round". E27.co. 2012-08-08. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  11. ^ "Project st@rt-up | South China Morning Post". Scmp.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  12. ^ "Meet 9GAG, the Community Comedy Site That's Growing Like Crazy - Liz Gannes - Social". AllThingsD. 2012-04-12. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  13. ^ "Behind 9gag. Its business modelFix Need". Fixneed.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  14. ^ http://9gag.tv/
  15. ^ "Humor Website 9GAG Ups the Ante for Fun, Launches New Mobile App and Receives $2.8 Million in Seed Funding". Marketwired.com. 2012-07-30. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  16. ^ http://9chatapp.com/
  17. ^ "Y Combinator S12 Demo Day Batch 1: Meet 9GAG, Double Robotics, Hubchilla, SmartAsset And More". TechCrunch. 2012-08-21. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  18. ^ "Meet 9GAG, the Community Comedy Site That's Growing Like Crazy - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD". AllThingsD. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  19. ^ Seitz, Dan (September 12, 2012). "Redditor Details 9Gag's Theft Process". UPROXX. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  20. ^ Eördögh, Fruzsina (June 4, 2012). "Internet pounces on 9GAG after joke theft". Daily Dot. Daily Dot. Retrieved 17 June 2014.

External links

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