At SXSW08, U Can Has Cheezburger…Srysly!!!1!
“Oh hai,” greeted I Can Has Cheezburger? co-founder Eric Nakagawa (aka Cheeseburger) at today’s completely packed SXSW Interactive panel LOLWUT? Why Do I Keep Coming Back to This Website?. In undoubtedly the most lulz-filled panel at this year’s Interactive, Nakagawa and I Can Has Cheezburger? CEO Ben Huh expounded on the intricacies, pitfalls and unique thrills of creating an unexpected web phenomenon “despite a shitty design, $0 spent on market, and an impossible-to-spell URL.” Upon receiving this now-infamous picture from co-founder-to-be Tofuburger, self-taught programmer Nakagawa did “what everybody on the Internet does when they find something funny” and bought the domain name icanhascheezburger.com the next morning. Just one year later, I Can Has Cheezburger? has grown into a company with nine salaried employees toiling to ensure that you may enjoy daily procrastinatory LOLcats at work. As Nakagawa attests, it was a rocky surge to the top, full of innumerable server crashes, piles of exceeded bandwidth, death threats (”from people who just don’t like cats”) and skyrocketing cholesterol levels (”Really, after looking at and thinking about them all day at work, I ate so many cheeseburgers.”) Now, that ICHCB? boasts 1.5 million page views a day and Nakagawa has quit his day job, what’s next for Nakagawa? First, he made sure there was a LOLpage for dog lovers, I Has A Hot Dog. And since ICHCB? receives hundreds of political macros every day, he’s providing a service for political bloggers to “spice up” their pages with LOLpoliticians. And watch out for a super-secret upcoming non-caption site: “We can’t give you the URL yet, but I hope someone will send it to you and you’ll find out about it that way.”
Image: Molly McCommons