SEATTLE -- Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures -- and saw vast potential.
Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.
Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.
It was a white-knuckle decision, he said. I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?
Mr. Huh has since found that the appetite for oddball Internet humor is insatiable.
Traffic to the Cheezburger blog has ballooned over the last three years, encouraging Mr. Huh to expand his unlikely Web empire to include 53 sites, all fueled by submissions from readers. In May, what is now known as the Cheezburger Network attracted a record 16 million unique visitors, according to the Web analytics firm Quantcast.
Full story link: http://finance.yahoo.com/career-wor...es-and-now-a-web-empire?mod=career-leadership
Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.
Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.
It was a white-knuckle decision, he said. I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?
Mr. Huh has since found that the appetite for oddball Internet humor is insatiable.
Traffic to the Cheezburger blog has ballooned over the last three years, encouraging Mr. Huh to expand his unlikely Web empire to include 53 sites, all fueled by submissions from readers. In May, what is now known as the Cheezburger Network attracted a record 16 million unique visitors, according to the Web analytics firm Quantcast.
Full story link: http://finance.yahoo.com/career-wor...es-and-now-a-web-empire?mod=career-leadership
