CollegeHumor shuts down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/09/collegehumor-shuts-down/

by rahuldottech • 7 years ago

310 214 7 years ago

washingtonpost.com

bhouston• 7 years ago

I can not read the source article.

But I guess its costs were too high such that if it just distributed it all via YouTube it couldn't make any money?

jannes• 7 years ago

They are also blaming it on Facebook:

“In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so [CollegeHumor] pivoted to FB,” former CollegeHumor writer Adam Conover presciently tweeted last October. “So did Funny or Die, many others. The result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated."

ASalazarMX• 7 years ago

I don't understand this. Did they abandon Youtube for Facebook? They could have easily managed their followers in Facebook while continuing to upload to Youtube as usual.

sulkie• 7 years ago

Would there be significant disadvantages in using both platforms at the same time? Or does "pivoted to FB" also imply that the content was adjusted to FB audience?

spamizbad2• 7 years ago

They allegedly fell victim to the whole "pivot to facebook video" craze caused by Facebook misreporting their video engagement figures.

Whether some business unit inside Facebook did this intentionally or not, it's a big reason why I think media companies have turned against Facebook as they feel like they got ratfucked.

tombert2• 7 years ago

Maybe this has already happened, but wouldn't this be grounds for a lawsuit? If businesses are going bankrupt because of outright lies or negligence on a company's part, I would think you have grounds for damages and class-action lawsuit.

I'm speaking out of my butt here, I'm not a lawyer.

rchaud4• 7 years ago

It is completely intentional, and a company-wide initiative. I have been to several digital marketing conferences and at the big ones there is always a FB speaker/panelist that's there for no other reason than to shill for "video marketing" on FB.

paulcole• 7 years ago

I can not read the source article.

Then don't comment? It's Hacker News not Hacker Speculation.

neonate• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/eBzkmT

sitkack2• 7 years ago

CollegeHumor had same damn well written, well produced comedic satire. I hope all of their material is archived.

One thing to watch out for is if this posted under their Geuite account to YouTube, when the gsuite bill isn’t paid, all the YouTube videos will get deleted, leaving a cultural hole.

Of all the Google crimes, this one is accidental but the most damaging to society.

echelon5• 7 years ago

YouTube deletes videos attached to corporate accounts if their bills go unpaid? Have they done this in the past?

sitkack2• 7 years ago

All of the Ricon talks by Basho have been lost to the sands of time for this very reason.

dmos62• 7 years ago

the most damaging to society

While I agree that content archival is important, I would strongly argue that lost content is not on the same level as for example anti-competitive practices, even in terms of cultural impact.

badrequest• 7 years ago

Especially not CollegeHumor content, most of which was scattershot hope-something-goes-viral bro humor.

brokensegue• 7 years ago

Given the residual income from their back catalog I doubt anyone will let that happen.

m-p-3• 7 years ago

Good to know, time to archive with youtube-dl and make a torrent out of it, and/or publish them on a PeerTube instance.

friedegg• 7 years ago

For the content creator, Google's Takeout service will give you an archive of your videos, so if you know you're shutting down, you can get them before then.

antidaily• 7 years ago

NOT ace.

awillen• 7 years ago

I remember when CH was just a site where people uploaded funny pics, and once in a while they had a well-written article. How far they came - sad to see them shut down.

_the_inflator• 7 years ago

Yes, was one of the sites I bookmarked back then.

echelon5• 7 years ago

CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers.

This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture, and it won't be the last.

We really need to de-platform or find a way Facebook can't steal value.

Zhyl• 7 years ago

Some content creators are already doing this. I'm seeing more spinning up their own newsletters or RSS feeds, patreons, direct donations, subscriptions services (or completely independent platforms). There is an awareness of the dangers of putting your eggs in one basket, let alone the dangers of putting them in a basket as opaque and uncertain as Facebook.

CollegeHumor had a lot of hits and spawned some genuine talent that is now earning money on its own merits (Jake and Amir, Adam Conover) but overall the content was not consistent enough to have an overall draw that was worth subscribing to.

ConsiderCrying2• 7 years ago

The problem with Patreon is that it's also getting quite bad for content creators (at least there were a lot of complaints about half a year ago) with the cut they take, the money transfers, and the fact that they've tried to ban adult content creators. It would have been fine if this was all stated/implemented right away but, much like many other platforms, they're doing this at a slow creep. There are alternatives but they're coming up against a well-known name and stifling competition, same problem as with Facebook, just on a smaller scale.

coldpie• 7 years ago

newsletters or RSS feeds

I'm still miffed that Firefox (et al) nuked the RSS feed button in the URL bar. RSS has a lot of problems, but we could have improved it instead of just giving up entirely in the face of shitty closed platforms like FB, Twitter, etc.

kpennell• 7 years ago

substack FTW

slg2• 7 years ago

Facebook faking viewership numbers is really an under-reported story. So many publishing companies had moderately successful business models. Then Facebook came along with their amazing viewership numbers. Everyone "pivoted to video", switched to targeting native Facebook views, and chasing those unbelievable viewership totals. The views ended up being well lower than reported which means the promising revenue never materialized like expected. By the time companies realized this, it was too late to pivot back to hosting their content on their own site because the behavior of their users had already been broken by Facebook. This destroyed countless publishers including CollegeHumor and the similar Funny or Die. It is amazing that Facebook only paid a $40m settlement for this fraud.

amylene• 7 years ago

I am out of the loop, what were the Metrics that FB falsified? And how did they falsify them before the video was hosted on their site? Just trying to understand how their game numbers caused this post, and I can’t seem to make it connect.

mikepurvis• 7 years ago

Relevant Twitter thread from Adam Conover ("Adam Ruins Everything"):

https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120

An article about the settlement, including a link to the document itself: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/facebook-pay-40-mi...

macspoofing2• 7 years ago

CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers.

Facebook should certainly be held responsible for their part, but let's not let CollegeHumor of the hook. In the end, they are responsible for their business, and moving to an unproven platform is very risky no matter what promises FB sales people tell you.

neaden• 7 years ago

That's ridiculous. If someone commits fraud and you believe them that is their fault, not yours for being a victim.

rchaud4• 7 years ago

Platform giveth, platform taketh away. There used to be a time where you actually had to go to collegehumor.com to watch the videos. Once everyone turned into sharecroppers on FB, Youtube or whatever, this was the risk they took.

RandomBacon• 7 years ago

IF Facebook didn't fake their numbers, then I would be inclined to agree.

linuxftw2• 7 years ago

I agree. They deserve to fail. They had a major hand in the consolidation of the internet onto the major platforms.

GCA10• 7 years ago

Anyone who worked at Zynga in 2013-14 could share some fine stories about what it's like to bet everything on the prospect of lots of good Facebook traffic for the indefinite future.

All or nothing partnerships between startups and giant companies have been toxic/fatal in many cases since the days of vacuum tubes. They can work nicely. But supreme due diligence and even suspicion are necessary along the way.

pfranz2• 7 years ago

Eh. I think that's a bit of oversimplification. I work in computer graphics. All of the "old school" companies (been around for 30+ years; Pixar, Blue Sky, DreamWorks) wrote their own renderer/compositor and other tools because they had to. Today most of those companies have shed (or spun off) most all of their proprietary core software. A very few companies (Sony and Disney) have developed newer generations of rendering software--but both of those have been in business for 20 years.

I was never privy to the numbers, but I know carrying the salaries is a huge burden. As a user, proprietary software will often lag off the shelf features by many years because the teams are smaller and they're focusing on things off-the-shelf doesn't do. That's assuming it's well managed.

On the user side of video content: I'm not the biggest fan of YouTube, but bespoke websites can often lack features that keep me from sharing content (wont work on phone, preroll gets stuck, can't link to timestamp). SNL used to only host clips on NBC.com which I could never get to work. They started serving them on Hulu, which was only slightly better. YouTube has been significantly better.

The focus is always spending time/money on the unique thing your company can provide. In addition, like you're saying, be aware of owning as much as possible of your stack--but spreading yourself too thin or trying to run your business the same way you did 10 years ago can bankrupt you, too.

redisman2• 7 years ago

I worked developing Facebook Games for a little bit. Don't build your business on (Facebooks) platforms and their currently promised functionality because it will completely change in the next 6-18 months. As in a 100-1000x difference in exposure to players.

justinhj• 7 years ago

There are so many ways to make money without going near Facebook that this is a terrible excuse. If you have good content that brings in viewers there will be a way to monetize. Nobody is driving good content off the internet, collegehumor simply didn't keep up with what people wanted.

geddy3• 7 years ago

This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture

You know, I never really thought about it this way, but the way you worded it is perfect.

I talk about the "good old days" of the Internet, and it always comes down to Facebook ruining everything. I'd pin it around 2012. You're spot on though - Facebook outright murders internet culture. God, I despise that company and what it stands for so much.

Zak2• 7 years ago

One of the things I miss that Facebook killed is... Facebook.

Prior to its attempt to dominate media sharing on the internet, most of the content I saw on Facebook was created by people I know, about their personal lives. People share far less content of that sort now, and the algorithm doesn't prioritize it when they do. Personal updates from people I actually know are probably reduced by an order of magnitude from a decade ago.

If I want to see funny stuff, cat videos, news, political memes, pictures of food, or anything else of that sort, reddit serves much better than Facebook. Nothing has come along to fill the gap for many-to-many personal updates though, and I miss that. There's a startup opportunity here. The hard part isn't technical - something resembling the Facebook of a decade ago wouldn't be hard to build - but attracting a critical mass of users would be a significant challenge.

hnick• 7 years ago

Any central gathering point seems to lead to homogenisation.

I've joked a lot about "YouTube Voice" (I didn't invent the idea) where people often seem to talk with a similar cadence and you can see the shift over time in their videos the longer they spend on the platform.

shadowgovt8• 7 years ago

I'm extremely torn between "This is an outrage" and "Buyer beware."

Nobody forced College Humor, Funny or Die, or any of the other companies that shifted resources to believe Facebook. They took a calculated market risk and the gamble didn't pay off (and they don't have enough reserve capital to survive a failed gamble). In an ideal market, the back-stop on this behavior would be "Nobody trusts Facebook's self-reported numbers moving forward."

Is that a sufficient back-stop, or should there be (further) government intervention?

reaperducer• 7 years ago

Nobody forced College Humor, Funny or Die, or any of the other companies that shifted resources to believe Facebook.

Yep. Their mistake was they believed the hype. A bunch of publishers did. "Facebook is the future!" and 90% of newsrooms started pushing their original content to Facebook, sacrificing their own ad views.

Fortunately, most of the big J players have seen the folly in this already and reversed course. Usually they build their own platform because they have many media properties. But I see a lot of small market and independent publishers still stuck in the "Facebook is king" mentality because of middle managers who are still stuck in the old echo chamber.

munk-a4• 7 years ago

Nope nobody forced them to compete on FB. They would've been quite silly had they not at least tried to capture the FB market - but I think the false reporting of views is something that really shocked the folks trying to balance the books - their videos still seemed to be performing great while the revenue was slowing down. FB isn't responsible for tempting CH over (and CH made the right choice giving it a try) but FB is responsible for viewership reporting that borders on fraudulent as they try to boost their own overall numbers.

tracker1• 7 years ago

Even then, it's not like they've been doing that well on YouTube... I mean, you can only do the same tired millennial jokes so many times, as much as I like bashing millennial culture, it's tired and played out.

Aside: If Google Was a Guy series is one of the funniest things online.

A lot of their efforts just don't land very well. Compare this to say RoosterTeeth (Red vs. Blue, RWBY and others) has done very well in terms of adapting overall, including a couple movie releases (not huge, but out there).

munk-a4• 7 years ago

This is going more toward critiquing the content rather than the business which I think is less interesting to discuss on HN, but I wanted to voice that they've put out a lot of interesting stuff - a quite high quality RPG series in Dimension20 along with both short form videos (like A message from the CEO of _____) and longer form vignettes like their summercamp series - I have been pretty appreciative with just how experimental they've gotten lately and I would disagree strongly that they painted themselves into a single formula.

gowld5• 7 years ago

CH has vastly more programs than RT, so the fact that some are better and some are worse doesn't mean much.

yardie• 7 years ago

CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers.

This is fraud and Facebook employees should feel threatened about going to jail. This was not a sleazy sales pitch. This was outright fraud to convince content producers that they were making more money than they actually were.

gowld5• 7 years ago

How did FB lie about how much money they were making? Views aren't money.

yincrash• 7 years ago

This is a misleading title based on even the article. CH still has an owner (Sam Reich) and still has content that they are still airing (D20 with the McElroy family among other things) through Dropout. Basically they went to being an externally funded company to turning into a startup that has to bootstrap, but still has an entire video subscription streaming infrastructure built out with Dropout and some content to stay afloat.

yoz-y5• 7 years ago

Why does the article start with a false premise that "internet used to be fun" and "bygone era". Come on, if you don't want to follow Twitter drama just go to some other place. Ugh.

echelon5• 7 years ago

It's not a false premise for many of us.

I miss the indie internet, before big corps and big tech started taking over.

I miss IRC and forums and personal websites. I miss the time when Digg was new and hadn't taken over, and memes weren't the most upvoted content. When websites weren't all Javascript and Google wasn't Yahoo.

MySpace and LiveJournal and Xanga were never as sterile as Facebook and Instagram.

The internet that appealed to the Technorati got put on dopamine-fueled monetization rails and turned into a bulk commodity that maximizes engagement over the population.

xamuel2• 7 years ago

When I was growing up, I played on MUD games, which were text-based massively multiplayer games 100% free to play, with no ads or any other kind of monetization, with full staffs of admins, programmers (!!), level designers, and moderators, all 100% volunteers.

Reading that now, it sounds like I'm describing some kind of crazy sci-fi utopia that couldn't even get published because it's too unbelievable.

redwall_hp• 7 years ago

Speaking of Technorati...the site Technorati. "The Web We Lost" pretty much sums up what I miss: https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

The early 2000s had so much promise. The rise of reasonably easy to use blogging platforms, RSS, and web companies that were interested in playing in that world of distributed independent communication. Even Google was a different beast back then. It was the perfect balance: faster paced and more interactive than the days of manually editing files on GeoCities, but still mostly driven by indies doing things because they enjoyed it...instead of the cynical, marketing driven hellscape centered on siloed social media sites.

My pet hypothesis is that we had another Eternal September with the rise of the smartphone. Some of that amazing stuff is still out there, but it's drowned out by the firehose of corporatism and "normal" people. You can even see it with the shift in web sites aiming to be primarily consumed on a phone screen instead of a regular computer.

chasd00• 7 years ago

I was on a neighborhood association board in an arts/music community. Whenever we talked about a new business coming there was a core group that constantly complained about how they wanted the neighborhood to go back to the way it was. After a while, I realized what they really wanted was for their lives to go back to the way it was. So much of their identity was attached to the neighborhood that any change was an attack on them personally. I feel the Internet is that way for many.

shadowgovt8• 7 years ago

I have to be honest; I think a lot of this rhetoric (not just from this poster, but in general) smells like "I miss being in charge of a wonky system that was hard for people who didn't specialize in understanding it to use."

IRC didn't go anywhere. LiveJournal is still there. JavaScript-free pages still exist. What has changed is the network of users has found them wanting and left those spaces ghost towns because they don't feel as good to use, or they're too complicated, or they haven't received any UX love beyond "Bare minimum viable product."

I don't miss that. I don't miss a system that excludes users.

notyourwork2• 7 years ago

I try not to judge people by their respective comments but in this case I would venture to guess you are below 25 years of age.

yoz-y5• 7 years ago

Missed that by almost a decade. I just feel that there is a lot of nostalgia for the old times whereas nothing is actually preventing people from doing what was done before.

Replying a bit transversally here, but I was on IRC 18 years ago and still am every day. Any game you have played before can be played now, easier than before, heck we are just organizing Worms I tournament. Youtube is still full of funny stuff and reddit communities exist, RSS didn't go anywhere and there are many many hobbyists blogs out there still.

Sure stuff got piled on top of all that but nowadays it's easier, cheaper and more accessible to do what we were doing "back then".

rchaud4• 7 years ago

There was a chart posted a while back about how consumer Internet traffic has changed in the past decade or so. Today, the majority of traffic flows through FB, Google or Netflix properties. 10 years ago, it was much more diverse.

With that loss of diversity comes loss of communities and cultures. CollegeHumor used to have all its videos on its own site. If you liked the site, you created an account and interacted with the community, which had its own culture as you wouldn't behave as you normally would on FB or Twitter.

With the pivot to FB, that's gone. Now, it's no longer a friendly conversation between people who have CH in common, it's a free-for-all comments section featuring everyone from spambots, trolls and random users who stumbled across the video and just have to add their 2c.

Numerous other forums and blogs, all with their own communities have suffered this fate. That is why the Internet isn't fun anymore.

hawski• 7 years ago

I think I agree with you somewhat, but I think you can't argue that noise floor raised. Either way one must remember Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

yoz-y5• 7 years ago

Oh yes. I’m not contesting that. And I agree with the fact that the “good stuff” (from a geek’s point of view) is harder to find. I just don’t want to blame everybody for not sharing my interests and enjoying the Internet how they like.

40four2• 7 years ago

Unrelated... but on the Washington Post I clicked through to the page that sells subscriptions, only to find that they hijack you back button and do not allow you to go back in your browser history.

What a joke. Makes me want to never visit their site again. That is unacceptable.

MisterTea• 7 years ago

The bigger joke is a web page can hijack your browser.

3xblah• 7 years ago

This joke must be too highbrow because no one seems to get it.

https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020

jlmorton• 7 years ago

That wasn't my experience (on Firefox, at least). It just opened in a new tab. The only history in that tab is the subscription page, so the back button doesn't work.

vmchale• 7 years ago

It's so massively user-hostile. Why would I buy a subscription at a site like that?

munk-a4• 7 years ago

I've seen history manipulation used really well to emulate page navigation on an SPA... which is why it's always disappointing to see it abused.

unwiredben• 7 years ago

Title isn't completely accurate - WP article says that the site was sold to Sam Reich, one of their execs, and some servicess will continue for a while as he works on retooling the site.

sirzarmo• 7 years ago

When Jake and Amir was canceled I was quite disappointed, When they made an awful soulless return in the form of an anti-trump video, my fury was immense. they held out for quite a while making original content and as of recently once in a blue moon they made something interesting but the company became very corporate, and their main product was incompatible with that, compatibility is a feat I think only Adult Swim can manage today...

skinnymuch• 7 years ago

Really? You’re just butthurt over the Trump Jake and Amir video? It wasn’t even that bit of a deal. It was also mocking people in general as much as Trump.

ErikAugust• 7 years ago

CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself:

“In words that I’m sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will soon become the new majority owner of CH Media,” said Reich, a longtime executive at CollegeHumor. “Of course, I can’t keep it going like you’re used to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose.”

Dropout, its streaming service, will continue for at least the next six months while it churns out content already slated for release, Reich said. The future of CollegeHumor itself, and other humor sites run by the company, are less certain.

“In these six months, I hope to be able to save Dropout, CollegeHumor, Drawfee, Dorkly, and many of our shows,” Reich said. “Some will need to take on bold new creative directions in order to survive.”

The CH Media staff contracted from more than 100 to between five and 10 employees, according to Bloomberg News.

Waterluvian2• 7 years ago

I don't follow. How is that not "shutting down"? It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses.

Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus kind of thing. They get rid of almost all employees, empty the pipeline, and then retool. What's left of College Humor?

badloginagain• 7 years ago

I take "shut down" as an immediate stop to all services. Domain doesn't resolve, etc.

stagger87• 7 years ago

What's left of College Humor?

The company.

sct202• 7 years ago

Yeah with that kind of RIF, they're basically setting themselves up to be purchased for branding/existing content.

dwild4• 7 years ago

It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses.

Is it really life support? Or simply, what is always should have been?

Do you really need 100 staffs for College Humor? For the production side, sure you may need quite a bit of staff for each individual production, but once a production is done, you no longer need them, but you still have to pay them. How long you'll have to pay them will be mostly based on luck (what are the odds that you can always produce something that require each individual staff qualification...).

It makes much more sense to have a minimal team, and then hire on a contractual basis based on the production needs.

ohples• 7 years ago

I think it's more accurate to say CollegeHumor is no longer a going concern.

jtaillon• 7 years ago

CH is passed on! CH is no more! CH has ceased to be! CH has expired and gone to meet 'is maker!

ccsnags• 7 years ago

It’s pining for the fjords.

tempsy• 7 years ago

I think it will just basically become an archive and net passive ad income, but assume they won’t create any more content

hexane360• 7 years ago

BTW, Sam Reich also acted in a bunch of CollegeHumor videos (e.g. https://youtu.be/N0ps6HuThMs). Of any executives to have control of the company, Sam seems the most likely to preserve CollegeHumor's style.

_nedR• 7 years ago

How can you talk about Sam Reich in CollegeHumour videos in a hacker news thread and not choose "Startup guys" as an example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Looking at it now, this video seems to have been particularly relevant, considering that the company went bankrupt because they trusted a bunch of silicon valley frauds i.e. Facebook..

eyeinthepyramid• 7 years ago

The website is gone, it just redirects to a Youtube account. For all intents and purposes, it's shut down.

lgleason• 7 years ago

The did a great parody of many startup pitches that I've heard over the years. Hopefully they can save it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

brianbreslin• 7 years ago

Wasn't Vimeo a byproduct of CollegeHumor or am I mixing up my 2000-2005 internet history?

chx• 7 years ago

Jake Lodwick co-created Vimeo while working as the inital web developer for CollegeHumor.

agotterer• 7 years ago

Connected Ventures, the company that owned CollegeHumor and Bustedtees was acquired by IAC. At the time Vimeo was a side project of Jake Lodwick and was part of the Connected Ventures business, but it wasn't making any money and didn't impact the IAC acquisition price. Long story short, Vimeo's cost to operate became very expensive and started to impact Connected Ventures core business (CollegeHumor and Bustedtees). So Vimeo was spun out of Connected Ventures and made its own division in IAC.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

Presumably Sam now owns the rights to all the content. He could shop it around to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I’ll bet one of them would pick it up and maybe even give him a budget to hire some of the writers back and make new content again.

geddy3• 7 years ago

Putting it all behind yet another walled garden? Before you know it, 90% of the internet will be gated behind paywalls or signups.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

Seems like a better business model than ads. And Netflix is worldwide. So really it’s a question of do you want to pay for the content with money or with your personal data.

shadowgovt8• 7 years ago

The previous business model was ad-revenue supported. That business model screwed them.

It's up to the new owner, but I don't expect him to take that risk a second time if the risk model for a better walled garden looks lower.

ceejayoz6• 7 years ago

Before you know it, 90% of the internet will be gated behind paywalls or signups.

I'll take that over "gone".

ViViDboarder2• 7 years ago

As far as I can tell, for a business online the options are ads, crypto mining, or a paywall.

jedimastert• 7 years ago

Is there an alternative between this and ads?

nerevarthelame• 7 years ago

Their parent company, IAC, has been trying to sell CH for months now. I'm sure they tried shopping around Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I'm skeptical that Sam on his own will be able to accomplish a more desirable deal than what IAC would've been able to get. (Skeptical, but hopeful.)

jedberg3• 7 years ago

Sam might be willing to take a lot less money than IAC.

Raed667• 7 years ago

Sad to see CH fall like Cracked did. Facebook single handedly killed both these very entertaining companies.

emodendroket• 7 years ago

The speed these behemoths fall is incredible, isn't it?

8bitsrule• 7 years ago

"You have to learn how to stay in a good mood as you overthrow the sour, puckered hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality." - Rob Brezsny

IanDrake• 7 years ago

PC comedy isn't funny. Who knew?

mkane848• 7 years ago

THAT'S what you gleamed from this article?

Domenic_S2• 7 years ago

CH used to run a facebook competitor called "Campus Hook". I met who would later become my wife there in the early 2000s. Online dating was yet to become mainstream, so we made up a story about how we met lest we look like weirdos. Now that app dating is a thing, we can just tell the story as it happened.

Thanks, CH!

jlodwick• 7 years ago

That's amazing! We started Campus Hook in 2002 (I think) but the timing was bad for a few reasons: 1. A few years early in terms of college student adoption of internet 2. A few years later in terms of founders' ages (we were seniors and didn't really care about campus dating anymore)

So happy to hear you met on there, and, apparently, are still married! Perhaps it wasn't a failure after all :)

Domenic_S2• 7 years ago

apparently, are still married!

10 years now, and 2 kids! Thanks so much for building it, in our eyes it wasn't a failure at all :)

tomaszs• 7 years ago

The situation is already so heavy that one tiny thing can cause a snowball effect. We all know it. Now one knows when but it is happening

CollegeHumor shuts down

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