9gag

Last updated

9gag
9gag logo.svg
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
 Entertainment
Available inEnglish
FoundedApril 11, 2008;16 years ago (2008-04-11)
Headquarters
Country of origin China
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)
Key peopleRay Chan (CEO)
URL 9gag.com
Advertising Banner ads
RegistrationOptional (required to submit, comment, vote or view NSFW content)
Current statusActive

9gag (stylized as 9GAG) is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, [1] which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, [2] it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. [a]

Contents

History

The website was co-founded in 2008 by a group of Hong Kongers including University of Hong Kong student Ray Chan, 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, Chan declined to explain the origins of the name "9gag". [3] Chan later explained that the name "9gag" comes from Cantonese, where it sounds like "gou gag" which means to crack a joke or gag. [4]

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. [5] 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. [6] 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, [7] including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners. In August 2012, 9gag received another $2.8 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including True Ventures and Greycroft Partners, as well as individual investors like Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose, and Naval Ravikant. This funding supported 9gag's engineering team growth both in Hong Kong and in Silicon Valley. [8] 9gag is headquartered in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong, with offices in Mountain View, California. [9] [10]

Mobile app development

9gag has a mobile application on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and BlackBerry 10. [11] [12]

In July 2012, 9gag launched an app for iOS and Android. The mobile application serves as a streamlined version of the web-based content. [13] In summer 2014, 9gag launched 9chat where 9gag users log into their accounts and write to others by sending them a message. 9chat also added support for the creation of groups in different sections. [14] In December 2014, 9gag launched its first game called 9GAG Redhead Redemption. [15]

Authorship and criticism

9gag users and admins may also re-post content (usually without any consent from its respective authors) from other websites (e.g. 4chan, Newgrounds, Reddit, SomethingAwful, FunnyJunk, YTMND, Instagram, 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. [16] [17] Ray Chan argued that "9GAG does not create memes or rage comics, but helps spread them." [3] In a 2015 Slate article, writer Amanda Hess described 9gag's reposting of content from Instagram as part of an "online ecosystem of joke stealing". [18]

9gag has also been criticised for discriminatory content. In 2014, linguist Albin Wagener examined 446 posts found on 9gag's main page; of these, 40 (8.97%) were clearly discriminatory. Most of the discriminatory posts involved misogyny (57.5%), followed by cultural discrimination (25%) and homophobia (12.5%). According to Wagener, 9gag brings people together in an international context, but through masculine and heterosexual symbolism and the devaluation of other groups. [19]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ↑ As of November 2017, it reached more than 38.3 million Facebook likes [b] 16.8 million Twitter followers [c] and 58.3 million followers on Instagram. [d] [ improper synthesis? ]
  2. "9GAG". 9GAG on Facebook. November 2017. Archived from the original on October 30, 2015. Retrieved November 22, 2017– via Facebook.
  3. "9GAG". 9GAG on Twitter. November 2017. Archived from the original on August 31, 2015. Retrieved November 22, 2017– via Twitter.
  4. "9gag". 9GAG on Instagram. Archived from the original on January 30, 2017. Retrieved May 9, 2016.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Chow</span> Hong Kong actor and filmmaker (born 1962)

Stephen Chow Sing-chi is a Hong Kong filmmaker, former actor and comedian, known for his Mo lei tau style, comic timing and stunts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Alvey</span> American journalist

Brian Alvey is an American serial entrepreneur, programmer, designer and blogger. He grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in San Francisco where he is the CTO of Automattic's WordPress VIP Platform. He is best known for co-founding the blog publishing company Weblogs, Inc. with Jason Calacanis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wix.com</span> Israeli software company

Wix.com Ltd. or simply “Wix” is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It offers tools for creating HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag-and-drop editing. Along with its headquarters and other offices in Israel, Wix also has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, and Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fortumo</span> Company based in Estonia

Fortumo was an Estonian company which developed a platform for digital service providers for user growth and monetization.

Greycroft LP is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow. The firm is headquartered in New York City, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imgur</span> American online image hosting service

Imgur is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and memes, particularly those posted on Reddit.

Disqus is an American blog comment hosting service for websites and online communities that use a networked platform. The company's platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. It was founded in 2007 by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan as a Y Combinator startup.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instagram</span> Social media platform owned by Meta Platforms

Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinterest</span> American social media platform

Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pinterest, Inc. was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and is headquartered in San Francisco.

Storify was a social network service that let the user create stories or timelines using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Storify was launched in September 2010, and had been open to the public since April 2011. Storify was shut down on May 16, 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vine (service)</span> Defunct American social network for short videos

Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc., four months later for $30 million. Vine launched with its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with Android and Windows versions following.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scan (company)</span> Software company based in Provo, Utah, United States

Scan is a mobile app development company headquartered in Provo, Utah, United States. The company was founded in January 2011 by Garrett Gee together with his college friends Ben Turley and Kirk Ouimet. The company, owned and operated by Scan, Inc, was acquired by Snapchat in 2014 for $54 million.

Skimlinks is a content monetisation platform for online publishers. It specializes in automatically generating affiliate product links from content creators' commerce content, from which the content creators earn money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spacious</span>

Spacious千居 is an online residential real estate marketplace, connecting buyers and tenants with residential and commercial properties throughout Asia. Spacious was founded in 2013 by Asif Ghafoor, former Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered Bank development manager, senior IT director and application architect, and was part of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation incubator program. Spacious is headquartered in Hong Kong.

Ray Chan Chin-ching is a Hong Kong businessman, known for being the CEO and co-founder of entertainment online platform 9GAG. Along with his team of four based in Hong Kong, he started the website as a side project.

Carousell is a Singaporean smartphone and web-based consumer to consumer and business to consumer marketplace buying and selling new and secondhand goods. Headquartered in Singapore, it also operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Carousell is available on both iOS and Android devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pepe the Frog</span> Comic character and Internet meme

Pepe the Frog is a famous comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "§ Rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1CAK</span> Indonesian entertainment website

1CAK is an Indonesian entertainment site that provides images and videos uploaded by users, including Internet memes. 1CAK users can select and comment on images. Popular images appear on the main website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casetify</span> Hong Kong-based company

Casetagram Limited, trading as Casetify, is a Hong Kong company that produces phone cases and electronic accessories. Founded on 1 November 2011 by Wesley Ng and Ronald Yeung, the company first featured custom phone cases by using Instagram photos. It later expanded to selling accessories with different designs. It has sold more than 25 million phone cases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meta Platforms</span> American multinational technology conglomerate

Meta Platforms, Inc., doing business as Meta, and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among other products and services. Advertising accounts for 97.8 percent of its revenue. Originally known as the parent company of the Facebook service, as Facebook, Inc., it was rebranded to its current name in 2021 to "reflect its focus on building the metaverse", an integrated environment linking the company's products and services.

References

  1. ↑ "9GAG CEO Ray Chan: 'Building a healthy community is a never-ending battle'". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on May 19, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  2. ↑ "Whois Record for 9Gag.com". DomainTools. 2016. Archived from the original on May 29, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Ren, Fiona (July 24, 2012). "How Ray Chan started 9GAG, and a career in fun". Meld Magazine. Archived from the original on July 24, 2019. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  4. ↑ "9GAG Memeland- I'M ON A BOAT! @9gagtv" (video). youtube.com. Cryptonauts. November 18, 2023.
  5. ↑ Mott, Nathaniel (August 21, 2012). "9GAG, the Biggest Little Startup at Y Combinator's Demo Day". Pando. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Jokes aside, 9gag's co-founder Ray Chan shares about the serious side of their latest US$2.8M round". E27. August 8, 2012. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  7. ↑ "Project st@rt-up". South China Morning Post. June 27, 2013. Archived from the original on August 13, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  8. ↑ Gannes, Liz (April 12, 2012). "Meet 9GAG, the Community Comedy Site That's Growing Like Crazy". AllThingsD. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  9. ↑ "9GAG Office / LAAB Architects". ArchDaily. February 23, 2016. Archived from the original on September 12, 2022. Retrieved January 1, 2018.
  10. ↑ "9GAG, Inc.: Private Company Information". Bloomberg . Archived from the original on November 11, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Behind 9gag. Its business model". FixNeed. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014.
  12. ↑ "9GAG.tv". 9gag.tv. Archived from the original on December 17, 2014. Retrieved December 16, 2014.
  13. ↑ "Humor Website 9GAG Ups the Ante for Fun, Launches New Mobile App and Receives $2.8 Million in Seed Funding" (Press release). 9GAG. July 30, 2012. Archived from the original on March 22, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014– via Marketwired.
  14. ↑ "9CHAT". Archived from the original on November 13, 2014. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Redhead Redemption". MobyGames. Retrieved August 29, 2024.
  16. ↑ Seitz, Dan (September 12, 2012). "Redditor Details 9Gag's Theft Process". Uproxx . Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved June 17, 2014.
  17. ↑ Eördögh, Fruzsina (June 4, 2012). "Internet pounces on 9GAG after joke theft". Daily Dot. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved June 17, 2014.
  18. ↑ Hess, Amanda (August 26, 2015). "Laugh Factory". Slate. Archived from the original on April 6, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  19. ↑ Wagener, Albin (2014). "Creating Identity and Building Bridges Between Cultures: The Case of 9gag". International Journal of Communication. 8. Archived from the original on March 21, 2017. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.