/Interview/ The brains behind: I Can Has Cheezburger
11/11/2008 | Filed under Discover > Interview
We talk to Ben Huh, the entrepreneur who bought lolcat phenomenon ICanHasCheezburger.com with a group of investors, created company Pet Holdings around it and has since unleashed sites like ihasahotdog.com, totallylookslike.com, engrishfunny.com and graphjam.com onto an unsuspecting world
.net: Why did you decide to buy I Can Has Cheezburger?
BH: We loved the community and the creativity involved in making Lolcats. We felt the size of the site was large enough to be the foundation for a business.
.net: Why was Lolcats so popular?
BH: Because they simply made people laugh and smile. It gave them an outlet during a tough work day to look at pictures and captions of hilarious and cute cats. We get on average an estimated 8,000 submissions a day. About half a per cent make it to the homepage.
.net: How is it possible to create a whole business around some so-called Friday fluff?
BH: With Pet Holdings we’re buying or building user-generated content websites. Our goal is to make users happy for five minutes a day (not just Fridays). We’re an extension of the entertainment industry whose goal is to help take your mind to a fun place.
.net: How successful is this network of websites?
BH: We currently serve up more than 3.5 million page views a day. That’s our measure of success.
.net: How many people work for Pet Holdings? What do they do?
BH: At the moment, we have 14 people working for us. Some run our content side: moderate pictures, post pictures onto the main site, and manage each of the site’s communities. We have a development team that takes care of all of our technical needs: the lol builder, user accounts and creating new features for all of the sites.
.net: How do you manage and grow the sites’ community?
BH: There are various things that help manage and grow our communities. With our accounts, people can friend other people and message them as well. Also we have contests and other various site-specific features that bring something new to the users to talk about and discuss.
.net: How do you make something go viral and control it?
BH: We don’t. We really concentrate on helping users make good content and showcasing the best. Then we make sure that the users have the tools to share it with others.
.net: How do you make money?
BH: We mainly make our money through advertising revenues and a small portion of our revenues are through our merchandising.
.net: What’s next for Pet Holdings?
BH: We just launched our lol celebrity site, roflrazzi.com. We’re not sure what’s in store for 2009. But I am sure it’ll be fun and exciting as it has been for the last year.
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