FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Serious Business: Cat Photo Meme Site Chomps Up Site About Cat Photo Memes

We know there's lots of funny in memes, but just how much money is in them? Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, has some idea. Since buying "I Can Haz Cheezburger" in 2007, he's spent millions crafting a small empire dedicated to chronicling and...

We know there’s lots of funny in memes, but just how much money is in them? Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, has some idea. Since buying “I Can Haz Cheezburger” in 2007, he’s spent millions crafting a small and successful empire dedicated to chronicling and helping to produce the artifacts of the undeniably bizarre but pervasive zeitgeist of the World Wide Web.

Advertisement

And he just placed another bet: Cheezburger Networks has acquired the famed viral video and picture database Know Your Meme for a low seven-figure sum.

The site, a spin-off web series from Andrew Baron's long-running Rocketboom franchise, picks apart memes with a scientific method and zeal that remains unparalleled on the Internet. (4Chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica are more like meth labs to KYM’s semi-serious workbench.) It’s used to getting millions of views per episode and over two million monthly visitors; the entry chronicling the insufferable madness around Rebecca Black’s insufferable “Friday” video, racked up record traffic for the site, at over 500,000 page views.

Know Your Meme: “Tenso” (read more here)

Cheezburger meanwhile has established itself as a formidable online culture presence, with more than 40 comedy Web sites, including Fail Blog, Engrish Funny, I Has a Hotdog and Pundit Kitchen, which have made the company a healthy profit. In January, Huh’s company completed a massive $30 million venture capital round, led by Foundry Group, with Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures and SoftBank Capital also participating, in the hopes, said a Madrona executive, of turning “this into the next great media property if we can.”

What does it all meme?

Though the future of the Know Your Meme video series is up in the air (Baron still owns Rocketboom, and the lab-coat-wearing hosts – Elspeth Rountree, Kenyatta Cheese, and Jamie 'Dubs' Wilkinson – have jumped ship), the site will certainly be getting more attention and resources to do what it does best: keeping a pulse on the weird Internet.

Now that mission will also include further expanding Cheezburger’s reach into the increasingly lucrative meme-o-sphere. That will likely leave die hard Internet culture enthusiasts wondering about the conflicts of interest when a site that makes memes also distributes them, and the continued commercialization of memes, a concern that’s fueled some hostilities amongst 4chan users towards sites like Know Your Meme and Cheezburger. And it will certainly help focus the attention of investors and marketers on a world where cat photos can certainly be serious business.

See Andrew Baron’s letter

Related: