9GAG attracts $2.8M with viral memes

The 500 Startups graduate hits 70M unique visitors, releases iPhone app for humor sharing

One of the greatest accomplishments of social sharing is the flourishing world of memes and Internet humor. People are now able to virally spread graphically-compelling comics at light speed and even comment on popular culture events faster than most TV broadcasters can share the occurrences.

Now, a rapidly-growing community dedicated to memes, comics, and other humor-related content, 9GAG, announced Monday that it has raised $2.8 million to help increase its growth and technology.

With investors such as True Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Greycroft Partners, 500 Startups, Scott Banister, Chris Sacca, David Tisch, Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ben Ling, Karl Jacob, James Hong and Philip Kaplan, 9GAG has a promising future ahead of it.

The young San Francisco-based company has already reached the milestone of exceeding 70 million global unique visitors and more than a billion page views per month.

And, as of this announcement, is releasing an iPhone app, with  an Android version is on the way.

Like the 9GAG website, the new mobile version also provides a simple mechanism for users to select and vote for their favorite content. 

The investment will be used to increase staffing, expand internationally and deliver continued platform enhancements in order to meet the explosive growth of the 9GAG community. 

The company, which launched in 2008, lets users easily post and spread entertainment content on Facebook and Twitter. 

“Humor is one of life’s greatest pleasures,” said Ray Chan, co-founder of 9GAG, in a statement. “At 9GAG, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to have fun by sharing the things that make them laugh for the universal enjoyment of anyone on the web. With this funding, we will continue our journey, making it effortless to spread laughter throughout the world and enabling our entertaining visual content to be immediately accessed through innovative mobile apps.” 

In just nine months, 9GAG has more than quadrupled the number of monthly unique visitors to its site, going from 16 million to more than 70 million with its strength in viral sharing.

Sites dedicated to new, funny content have been booming since Funnyordie gained traction and investments a few yers ago. I mean if you use the Internet as a source of endless humor than I think you are just doing it wrong.

The site, much like Reddit, could mean hours of lost time at work but it's far better than the chain joke mail I get Re:Re:Re-sent to me by my family.