Word: petted
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These spellbindingly inane blogs were built with the kind of user-generated content that has made Facebook and YouTube tremendously popular. But unlike these bigger sites, Huh's company has been in the black since its first quarter. Pet Holdings managed to haul in seven figures from advertising, licensing fees and merchandise sales during the first six months of this year, according to a report given to Huh's investors. His advertising model is low rent; 30% of ads go for premium prices of up to $8 per 1,000 page views. The rest can sell for as little...
...working, exactly, is a series of viral humor sites intended simply "to make people happy for five minutes a day," as Huh puts it. Huh, 31, a journalist turned dotcom entrepreneur, was born in South Korea and moved to California when he was in his teens. He launched Pet Holdings in 2007 when angel investors helped him buy a new website called I Can Has Cheezburger?, which is a compendium of "Lolcats," laugh-out-loud feline photos captioned in "kitty pidgin," or artfully misspelled imaginings of cats' inner monologues. (The original Lolcat features a fat gray fur ball gazing longingly...
...Guardian staff and some 1,000 techies at the 2008 Future of Web Apps Expo in London - Huh said the key to making a site take off is connecting it to a cultural phenomenon. I Can Has Cheezburger?, for instance, pokes fun at an oft-maligned, inscrutable household pet, appealing to cat lovers and others. (Huh is allergic.) FAIL Blog has helped popularize fail as both a noun and an exclamation, not to mention an easier-to-spell synonym for schadenfreude. Another site, This is Photobomb, gives a name to otherwise perfectly good photos spoiled by an interloper - think streakers...
More than anything else, Huh seems to have a knack for nailing the zeitgeist. Any of his sites, after all, could easily have become yet another passing online craze. (Remember the Numa Numa Guy?) Pet Holdings' page views, however, are growing at an annual clip of 300%. Huh admits some sites fall flat: "There's stuff you will never even hear about because it sucks so bad." For example, My Wedding is a Big Deal!, an assortment of bridal fails, Photobombs and other snafus, didn't quite gel. Another contender, called That's So Racist - for posting public examples...
...whole, Pet Holdings shows no sign of losing steam. Just the opposite, in fact: the sites are making inroads off-line. A Cheezburger-inspired book spent 13 weeks on the New York Times paperback best-seller list last winter, and three follow-up titles are on their way this fall. FAIL Blog ink stampers and Lolcats magnetic poetry sell like hotcakes. Contributors to the LOLCat Bible Translation Project, which launched in 2007, are almost through translating the entire Good Book into kitty pidgin. (It opens, "Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs...