Fark.com

Screenshot of the Fark.com main page
URL	http://www.fark.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	News Aggregator
Registration	Required to post (free)
Owner	Drew Curtis
Launched	1999
Current status	Active

Fark.com is a community website created by Drew Curtis that allows users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. As of June 2009, the site boasts approximately 4 million unique visitors per month, which puts it among the top 100 English language websites. The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day, and about 50 of them are displayed on the site.

The site is frequently used as a humorous source for news by major media outlets such as CNN and Fox News, late night comedy shows like The Daily Show or The Tonight Show, as well as many radio stations.

Links are submitted by Fark members (collectively referred to as "Farkers"), which moderators can approve ("greenlight") for posting on either the main page or one of the subsidiary tab pages. All links, whether approved or not, have associated threads where users can comment on the link. Greenlighted links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient, such an enormous amount of traffic that smaller websites are often "farked," meaning that their servers have crashed.

Contents 1 History 2 Features 2.1 Tags 2.2 TotalFark 2.3 Photoshop contests 2.4 Fark Parties 2.5 Foobies 3 Traffic and users 4 Publicity 5 Controversies 5.1 Political bias 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] History

Curtis states that the word "fark" originated either from a chat room euphemism for the word "fuck" or from a drunken misspelling, although he tells people it's the former because it's a "better story that way."^[1] He registered Fark.com in September 1997, when a friend mentioned that all the four letter domain names were disappearing.^[2] Originally, Fark contained no content except for an image of a squirrel with large testicles. This photograph is that of a Cape Ground Squirrel in Etosha National Park, Namibia, taken by photographer Kevin Shafer working for the Corbis Corporation, ca. 1993.^[3]

Since 1993, Curtis had frequently read morning news stories and exchanged them with friends.^[4] Although this would later become the inspiration for Fark, Curtis toyed with the idea of starting an online curry recipe database.^[2] In 1999, eighteen months after registering the domain name, he launched Fark as a way to share interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails.^[5] The first story posted was an article about a fighter pilot who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot.^[2]

In Fark's first year, it received 50,000 page views, and 1 million the year after.^[6] Features such as link submission and forums were added as popularity and participation grew. By January 2008, according to Curtis, the site received an estimated 52 million page views per month from 4 million unique visitors.^[5]

Fark was officially incorporated in the state of Delaware as, "Fark, Inc.", on January 31, 2008.^[7] By June 2008, the site had more than 450,000 registered users.^[8]

Compared to other popular websites, such as Daily Kos and del.icio.us, Fark is a relatively small operation, run more or less singlehandedly by founder Drew Curtis from his home in Lexington, Kentucky.^[9]

The site earns revenue from advertising and membership to its TotalFark program.^[10] Although Curtis won't release official revenue figures, he estimated that, in 2006, the site earned just under $600,000 per year.^[4] Its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year.^[10] Technology writer Mathew Ingram described Fark.com as "staggeringly successful" and noted the disparity between Fark's revenue and the amount of press given to sites like Digg.^[9] Fark has also spoken about its steady, above average CPMs.^[8]

Despite a fairly high revenue, Drew takes a yearly salary of just $60,000.^[10] The rest of the money goes to the site's legal, "war chest", as well as to pay other expenses, such as hosting, website design, and forum moderation.^[10] Additionally, Fark has been known to turn down advertising that interrupts the user experience, such as pop ups or ads with sound.

While most of the story links on the main page are submitted by users and selected for placement based on merit, there was an incident in August 2004 in which Fark was accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page. The accusation stemmed from an exchange between Mahalo.com CEO Jason Calacanis and third party sales employee Gogi Gupta, where Gupta claimed Calacanis could buy an editorial on Fark for $300 to $400.^[11] Curtis dismissed the incident as the result of an overenthusiastic salesperson, and subsequently fired Gupta.^[12] Gupta worked for a company called Gupta Media and according to Curtis did not have the authority to speak for the company.^[12]

On January 17, 2007, Fark launched Fark TV.^[13] The first video was a spoof ad for a mock product called "Meth Coffee."^[13] In May 2008, Turner Broadcasting announced that it would be folding SuperDeluxe, Fark TV's host site, into the Adult Swim brand, and laying off most of the staff, effectively canceling Fark TV.^[14]

On April 25, 2007, a new design for the website was launched with the comment, "Fark site redesign is now live. Hope nothing breaks, we're all out drinking."^[15] The new design was initially received with some controversy by many users, mostly due to the change in layout and a seemingly indifferent attitude by site moderators to user impact or feedback. In response, Drew Curtis noted the following reasons for the redesign: "Websites have to evolve over time. Otherwise you end up with a layout anachronism like the Drudge Report. The old design was put into place years ago, over time changes were nailed on to the design like loose shingles on a leaky roof. It was time to reformat and remove a bunch of the clutter while trying to keep the core design intact."^[16] The site layout was refined over the next few weeks in accordance with many suggestions.

In May 2007, Curtis published the book, It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News. The book critically explores the mass media industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report.^[6] The book sold 25,000 copies in its first 12 weeks on the market.^[17] Despite its initial strong reception, the book only received mild attention from reviewers. Salon.com gave it a favorable review, although the only major newspaper to review it was the Tucson Citizen, which only gave it a mini-review.^[18]

[edit] Features

[edit] Tags

Submitters can give stories several different tags such as stupid, interesting, obvious, or dumbass. Tags that say photoshop, audioedit or videoedit are used for threads where digital content is edited for a humorous or artistic effect. In addition, the newsflash tag is used for news which is a matter of important breaking news, and an email is sent to the administrators notifying them that someone has submitted a Newsflash. Members are told to use this tag very sparingly and only for matters of extremely important breaking news. (In fact, members who submit Newsflash tags for subjects obviously not worthy of the tag — e.g. celebrity news or political commentary — can be suspended for a period of time).

Due to the large amount of headlines submitted to the site from the state of Florida, and because "so many stupid things happen in Florida, it deserved its own Fark tag." So the Florida tag was created at the suggestion of users.^[19][20] Similarly, articles discussing Wil Wheaton — a Fark user himself^[21] — are given the Wheaton tag and articles discussing Christopher Walken are occasionally given the Walken tag, though Walken has never participated on Fark.

On August 19, 2008, a new fail tag was introduced, to be used for submitted articles where the subject does something ignorant or when a major gaffe occurs.^[22]

[edit] TotalFark

In February 2002, Drew Curtis introduced TotalFark as a subscription service, charging $5 per month.^[23] By May 2007, there were an estimated 2000 subscribers, generating $120,000 per year.^[10] Subscribers, known collectively as TotalFarkers, or TFers, have the privilege of seeing and commenting on all links submitted to the site, as opposed to only those approved for inclusion on the main page.^[23] In a typical 24-hour period, TotalFark's main page includes 2,600 links with associated comment threads, whereas Fark's main page includes only 60 to 80 links from among this number.

Subscribers that purchase a 6 or 12 month subscription are also eligible to receive an @ultrafark.com email address. The UltraFark email service is provided through Google's Gmail service.^[24]

[edit] Photoshop contests

The site features regular Photoshop contests, in which users use a graphical editing program (such as Adobe Photoshop, from which the contest draws its name) to manipulate an image provided by the creator of the contest. The image is usually manipulated for humorous effect, but can also be edited to create an aesthetically-pleasing image or to showcase a poster's image manipulation skill.^[25] A similar site, Something Awful, sponsors Photoshop Phriday contests, and there is usually some friendly competition among users of the two sites.^[26]

[edit] Fark Parties

At periodic intervals throughout the year, Fark Parties are organized, usually in conjunction with the travels of founder, Drew Curtis. The practice began in 1999, when Curtis was doing some database consulting in Spartanburg, South Carolina, staying in a hotel with nothing to do. So he posted a note up on the site asking if anybody that lives in the area wanted to grab a beer, to give him an email.^[20]

[edit] Foobies

In 2006, Curtis launched Foobies as a NSFW (not safe for work) offshoot of Fark. Curtis sells NSFW links through Foobies at a price of $400.^[11][27]

[edit] Traffic and users

As of June 2009, the site receives approximately 4 million unique visitors per month,^[28] which puts it in the top 100 of English language websites.^[29] Fark.com's Alexa rating is 3,170, with the average user spending 5.8 minutes per day on the site and 4,636 sites linking in. 70% of users originate from the United States.^[30] The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day from users, and about 50 of them are displayed on the main page of the site, or "green-lighted".^[31] Subscribers to the subscription TotalFark service, are able to view all 2,000 submissions per day for a $5 per month fee.^[32] There are around 500,000 user accounts on the site (TotalFark and unpaid accounts), although only about 5% actually read comments, and only 1% actually post in the forums.^[28] Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient,^[33] which is such an enormous amount of traffic that smaller websites are often "farked," meaning that their servers have crashed.

Most of the time, when there's no major events occurring, comments in the forums on the site tend to be of a more sophomoric nature, with plenty of sex jokes and comments about various bodily functions that you're more likely to see in a high school lockerroom. However, during major events, such as the September 11 attacks or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, usage spikes and the site can actually be seen as a more serious outlet for news.^[28] Some users can also contribute greatly to reporting actual events, such as Farker Tatsuma,^[34] whose detailed coverage and citizen journalism of the events during the 2009 Iranian election protests was recognized by several major media outlets.^[28][35] In response to this coverage, Drew Curtis placed a green band on the letter "K" in the site's logo at the top of the page, to show support for the Iranian protesters.

[edit] Publicity

As the site has gained in popularity, Fark has appeared numerous times in popular media outlets. In 2006, Curtis and Fark were featured on the cover of Business 2.0 magazine as part of the feature story about successful websites.^[36][37] In 2007 and 2009, Fark was referenced on the game show Jeopardy!, with a category entitled "Fark.com Headlines."^[38][39] The site is also frequently used as a humorous source for news by major media outlets such as CNN and Fox News, late night comedy shows like The Daily Show or The Tonight Show, as well as many radio stations.^[5][40][41] It is also generally seen as a destination for strange news stories and snarky commentary.^[42] Although much to Drew Curtis' dismay, it is very rarely cited as a source for many of these stories.^[40]

Several celebrities have also stated that they either checked the website regularly, or participated in its discussion forums using an account. Some of these celebrities include: Alan Colmes of Fox News,^[43] Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage,^[44] science fiction author John Scalzi,^[45] and actor Wil Wheaton.^[21]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Political bias

To dispute claims of political bias, Curtis has stated that rather than trying to keep it in the middle, admins enjoy running both far-left and far-right articles.^[31] The top four hated “groups” on Fark.com are (in no particular order) PETA, Catholic priests, the French, and Duke University, according to Curtis. ^[46]

[edit] See also

• Aggregator
• Digg
• Internet meme
• Slashdot
• Worth1000

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Website
• Farktography – site for Fark photography (NOT Photoshop) contests
• Fark Photoshop Scrutinizerc Fark Photoshop contest results and statistics
• Grampy's Cliché City – a reference to many clichés used by users