ben huh keynote: lolcats, fails, and other blunders from the cheezburger network

The Cheezburger Story (@benhuh)

Before that...

Before THAT...

1/07: A couple in Hawaii

3/07: 2TB in 2 weeks

9/07: Investment

I Can Has Cheezburger?

FAIL Blog

Failbook

Very Demotivational

+50 others

Who We Are in Numbers

2007

23 Mo.

3 Mo.

16

How We Got Here

Scaling is a function of business

I am the obstacle

Ego, pride, assumptions, sacred cows, secrets,

coverups, reputation...even some users.

Tough Decisions

From your perspective.

“If I wanted to work 4 hours per week,

and still be successful, what would I do?”

From their perspective.

“If my users had 40 seconds on my site, what would they

want to do?”

Beautiful alignment.

Detailed specifications for one of the most highly scalable and popular image manipulation

software on the Web.

CAPTION A

CAPTION B

CAPTION C

What happens if the caption is too long?

Options (Smartest to dumbest)

Auto scale down the font-size

Wrap the text

Warn the user

Do nothing

OMG ROFLCOPTER BBQ WTF

1 folder. 1MM+ images.$6/month shared host.

Videos:#1 Comedy Channel

1 Billion+ views

When Will the Madness End?

Earth Sun

Media Users

GoogleFacebookTwitter

Complexity has an inverse effect on your

business’ ability to scale.

Who are you trying to impress?

How to Stay Simple

Introducing the MPH Methodology.TM

Mr. Potato Head

Applies to technology as well as org. charts,

product dev., IT, etc.

If a significant component is lost, it’ll be ugly,

but no one dies.

Apps with structural independence

MPH on partners with proven scalability.

WordpressJS-Kit

ViddlerGoogle Apps

SkypeAmazon S3, EC2+ dozens of open source apps

Fire-up and forget

Try before you buy?

Prove before u spend.

Free up dev time to:

90%

10%

CoreOff-The-Shelf

If WE build it, it should be a

competitive advantage

When to MPH?

Can you plug in/out a better, cheaper, faster

solution?

One Final Lesson Learned

Human nature has a tendency to

admire complexity but reward simplicity.

@benhuhbenhuh.com