New Way To Build User Generated Content Sites?

In: Business Ideas By: Brian Armstrong

23 Oct 2009

I’ve noticed a trend of sites coming out recently that are built around the idea of taking short, funny, user generated content. Often users can submit them as text messages or emails. Sort of like Twitter but on a particular topic.

It might sound stupid, but some of these sites are getting over 1 million unique visitors a month, and probably doing about $1 million a year in advertising revenue from it.

For example, fmylife.com let’s people submit funny one liners about how much their life sucks. Users rate them or bury them based on how funny they are.

TextsFromLastNight.com does something similar with funny text messages you probably shouldn’t have sent when you were drunk.

Juvenile? Worthless? Maybe, but they are also pulling an insane amount of traffic and dollars from these sites.

Two people I’ve talked to recently are starting similar sites.

The first is TextsFromTheGame.com, a similar idea based around sports and all the trash talking that guys love to do. These guys are just getting started so if you’re a sports fan please help them out and go submit the best trash talk you’ve heard recently. Also add “text at textsfromthegame.com” to your phone so you can easily forward them good ones you hear in the moment.

It’s easy to forget these after the fact, so the idea is that when someone says something really funny you can shout out “that’s going on textsfromthegame!” and forward it right there from your phone.

The other one is still being developed but it will be exfiles.com (a great domain) and will feature short quips about, you guessed it, your crazy ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. Follow them on twitter or add your email to their website to get notified when it launches.

I have to say, these don’t strike me “change the world” type of projects or see them as helping a ton of people. But who knows, maybe making people laugh is all the value you need.

What do you think? Passing fad, or new way to build a big site with user-generated content?

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

12 Responses

Markus

October 23rd, 2009 at 7:45 pm

Interesting. Do you know any open source platforms that exist for these sites? Like WP or Pligg, but focused on this type of site?

Brian Armstrong

October 24th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

Good question. I don’t off hand but I know you could do it with Wordpress if you had to. You’d just need a plugin that allowed people to submit content without logging in/ creating an account (saw one once). And some kind of voting plugin. Might not be clean without some hacking, but would work. The TextsFromTheGame.com guys are using Joomla I believe (or had someone do it for them).

CollegeTownMenus (CTM)

October 23rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm

I completely agree with all of this. Funny you mention this because I just ran a very similar idea to FML past one of my best friends this same week asking if he wanted to start it with me on the side. We’ll see. I agree with Markus — any open source would be greatly beneficial.

Damon M.

October 24th, 2009 at 12:26 am

I already frequent Fmylife, and find it neat that there’s an app for my iPhone where I can view random ones when I’m bored or waiting in line somewhere. There has been an upward trend in user generated content websites and I don’t see this as a passing fad.

You can also check out:

http://itemnotasdescribed.com

and

http://thereifixedit.com

Brian Armstrong

October 24th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

Haha, both great examples! Thanks Damon.

Markus

October 24th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

http://slinkset.com/ might work for a project like this

Brian Armstrong

October 26th, 2009 at 3:23 am

Interesting, hadn’t seen that site. Do they let you control the advertising or sponsored posts? Good find.

Mar

November 1st, 2009 at 6:10 am

I think the marketing keypoints of these User Generated Content (UGC) sites, you’ve mention it all in your starting sentence — short, funny, and heavily user generated.

That’s how youtube became a runaway success right?

Tthereifixedit, I love it, highly entertaining, but it’s just one of the many entertaining UGC sites out there.

Yes, the wordpress platform do cater to such a site, and with the right designs and some plugins, it could work really well.

Anyway, these sites capitalise on one thing, and that’s entertainment. I doubt it holds much as being valuable in an academic sense, but if it’s entertaining and makes anyone laugh, then tie it with (free) viral marketing, it’ll probably generate some revenue.

Check out: http://icanhascheezburger.com

Damian

November 4th, 2009 at 12:04 am

Talking about fmylife and similar sites, I started with a friend to build a site maybe similar to those, but where people can tell their darkest secrets. It’s here: http://www.whatasecret.com
I hope you like it!
:)

Brian Armstrong

November 4th, 2009 at 12:12 am

Haha, cool I like it Damian! I think that could definitely go viral with a little luck.

Couple questions:
1. If it’s a secret why does it show the person’s first name?
2. Any reason why you went with the 2 column layout instead of one similar to fmylife?

Nice work!

Damian

November 16th, 2009 at 11:33 am

Sorry for the late answer :)
About your questions: 1) Well, it doesn’t have to be your real name… but maybe I will remove it anyway.
And 2) I think I will remove the second column for the moment. I like the idea of having the best posts of the last week in the front page too, but that will be useful if the site becomes popular. If you look now, the second column is empty because there are only 2 posts in the last week, so I’ll remove it soon.

Thanks Brian!

Mar

November 7th, 2009 at 2:44 am

Very entertaining! Like the way the posts are presented in mini boxes too. *presses down viral button*

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