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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, Inc. operates an online platform and social media website. "Users" upload and share content either "user-generated content" or found on other social media websites. 9GAG, Inc. is based in Mountain View, California. Since the website was launched on April 12, 2008,[2] it has grown in popularity, reaching more than 28.4 million Facebook “likes”[3] and 5.99 million Twitter followers in December 27, 2015.[4]

In December 2015 it had 164 million visitors with the following country break-down for the largest traffic to the 9Gag website: 7.82% from Germany, 7.02% from the United States, 5.35% from France, 4.77% from Brazil and 3.93% from Turkey.[5] As of 2015 the company raised $2.8 million in total funding. Amongst others, investors include 500 Startups, Benjamin Ling, BoxGroup, Adam Rothenberg, David Tisch, Freestyle Capital, James Hong, Philip Kaplan, Scott Banister and Y Combinator.[6]

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.[7]

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. [8] 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.[9] The 9GAG co-founding team discontinued all other projects and shifted their focus on solely 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 behemoths,[10] including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners. In this month the company also released a mobile application for iOS and Android.

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.[11]

Mobile app development

9GAG has a mobile application on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and for BlackBerry 10.[12][13]

In July 2012, 9GAG launched an app for iOS and Android. The mobile application serves as a streamlined version of the web-based content.[14] In summer 2014 9GAG launched 9CHAT. 9GAG users are able to log into their account and write to a stranger by sending them a message. 9CHAT improved by allowing the creation of groups in different sections. It's possible to write with more people at the same time.[15] 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 (similar to liking on YouTube), downvoted (as in disliking a video on YouTube), and commented on by users based on its popularity at a given time.[16]
  • Similar to other social media websites like 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.[17]
  • Content is separated into the following general categories of hot, trending, fresh, TV, girl, comic, NSFW, cosplay, geeky, timely, meme, WTF, and a few others such as cute, food, and Gifs. The website allows users to up-vote or down-vote memes, followed by long comment threads where users comment on the image/video content and on each other's comments.
  • 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 new featured section is now added depending on what is popular at that time. As of Jan 2016, sections such as Fallout 4, Star Wars, Anime and Manga, One-Punch Man and others have been added.

Website "culture"

  • Most of the website's traffic occurs at locations like school or the workplace.[citation needed]
  • According to cofounder Ray Chan, 9GAG should be a platform "where people will go whenever they want to kill some time and have a laugh."[17]
  • Leonardo DiCaprio is commonly referred as the King of 9gag by its users with them uploading a reasonably amount of requests for him to get an Oscar. This trend gained power after Leo shared on his personal twitter account a post from 9gag.[18]
  • Emma Watson is commonly referred as the Queen of 9gag, however after the Star Wars: The Force Awakens film was released, some 9gaggers started calling Daisy Ridley - Rey - Queen as well.
  • There is a common misconception that because Leonardo DiCaprio and Emma Watson is viewed as royalty on 9gag, it is grand blasphemy to not create a subsection on 9gag's Wikipedia page detailing this as if it is the Ten Commandments.
  • The banana-scale is commenly used to describe an objects size. For example when an object is bigger than usual, is posted on 9Gag, then the OP (original poster) can write banana for scale as its title.

Authorship

9GAG users may also re-post (possibly without any consent from its respective authors) content found on other humor related websites like 4chan, Newgrounds, Reddit, SomethingAwful, FunnyJunk, and YTMND, often with the source site's watermark, and adding their own to it. In 2011, 9GAG and 4chan disputed authorship of internet memes published on both websites, whereby each company claimed the memes originated in their own website. Evidence seems to support 4chan's claim that most of the disputed content was created by 4chan users. 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]

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. ^ "9Gag.com Traffic Statistics". SimilarWeb. SimilarWeb. Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  6. ^ "9GAG | CrunchBase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  7. ^ Fiona Ren (24 July 2012). "How Ray Chan started 9GAG, and a career in fun". Meld Magazine. Meld Magazine. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  8. ^ Mott, Nathaniel (2012-08-21). "9GAG, the Biggest Little Startup at Y Combinator's Demo Day | PandoDaily". Pando.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  9. ^ "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.
  10. ^ "Project st@rt-up | South China Morning Post". Scmp.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  11. ^ "Meet 9GAG, the Community Comedy Site That's Growing Like Crazy - Liz Gannes - Social". AllThingsD. 2012-04-12. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  12. ^ "Behind 9gag. Its business modelFix Need". Fixneed.com. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  13. ^ http://9gag.tv/
  14. ^ "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.
  15. ^ http://9chatapp.com/
  16. ^ "Y Combinator S12 Demo Day Batch 1: Meet 9GAG, Double Robotics, Hubchilla, SmartAsset And More". TechCrunch. 2012-08-21. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
  17. ^ a b "Meet 9GAG, the Community Comedy Site That's Growing Like Crazy - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD". AllThingsD. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  18. ^ Leonardo DiCaprio's twitter account. 12/2/2014
  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.

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