July 18, 2006 at 14:48bLaugh: Internet comics
In June 2006, the bLaugh project opened on the Internet , which publishes daily updated comics and humorous stories about Internet technologies. The authors of the project - artist Brad Fitzpatrick (Brad Fitzpatrick) and journalist Chris Pirillo (Chris Pirillo); the first draws satirical comics, and the second writes texts. Chris Pirillo is also known as the organizer of the popular Gnomedex conference .
The objects of their ridicule are well-known bloggers and blogging sites. For example, recently authors laughed good at Diggwho literally fixated on himself. First, thousands of volunteer editors and readers brought the news about their site to the first page, and then they brought to the front page the news that Digg was publishing news about itself on the first page. The result was such a loop in the second degree - a great topic for a cartoon and an idea for the DiggDork.com domain (why domain ideas are needed - more on that later).
Other objects of ridicule are large corporations that are trying to take their place in the blogosphere. The topic of today's comic was Microsoft , which announced at a press conference on combining RSS and Atom into a single, new format (domain SyndicationWars.com). Incidentally, this is a plausible joke.
I must say that bLaugh is a unique site of its kind. Humorous reviews of events in the blogosphere, and even with comics - this has not happened before. Chris Pirillo kindly agreed to tell Habrahabr how such an idea occurred to him: “I opened the site a few months ago,” he says. - I immediately became convinced of the artistic talent of Brad as soon as I saw his caricature of Robert Scoble. After that, I offered him the idea of writing libel in the blogosphere. Initially, I imagined a simple marketing model, but over time we had to find a single sponsor. The company GoDaddy has agreed to become it without hesitation just less than a month ago. This company is always looking for new creative ways to increase the popularity of its brand. ”
The GoDaddy domain registrar bought all the banners, and also launched an affiliate program with the humorous website, under which every GoDaddy client can get a 10% discount if he mentions the name “bLaugh” when registering a new domain.
Apparently, does GoDaddy really like your comics?
I think yes, of course. For them it was a matter of faith, because they had never conducted such campaigns before. To measure effectiveness, they introduced an affiliate program. And I, in turn, contribute to this process, because every day I publish a link to new, yet unregistered domains.
How do you work with Brad? First he draws a picture, and then you write the text? How is this process organized?
The process here is pretty free. We have a list of jokes, mainly from my experience. Sometimes a fresh hot topic appears that you can suck on - and we work together on it. Brad takes the topic, draws a comic, sends it to me, and I write the text. This is a joint creation.
Do you know that Sergey Brin is Russian? Maybe you have some comic book ideas about Russians?
Oh yes, of course, Sergey is in our field of vision. We want to create something so funny that Google has no choice but to purchase us for $ 27 million. In fact, our technology for creating comics cannot be copied or repeated in any way.
The objects of their ridicule are well-known bloggers and blogging sites. For example, recently authors laughed good at Diggwho literally fixated on himself. First, thousands of volunteer editors and readers brought the news about their site to the first page, and then they brought to the front page the news that Digg was publishing news about itself on the first page. The result was such a loop in the second degree - a great topic for a cartoon and an idea for the DiggDork.com domain (why domain ideas are needed - more on that later).
Other objects of ridicule are large corporations that are trying to take their place in the blogosphere. The topic of today's comic was Microsoft , which announced at a press conference on combining RSS and Atom into a single, new format (domain SyndicationWars.com). Incidentally, this is a plausible joke.
I must say that bLaugh is a unique site of its kind. Humorous reviews of events in the blogosphere, and even with comics - this has not happened before. Chris Pirillo kindly agreed to tell Habrahabr how such an idea occurred to him: “I opened the site a few months ago,” he says. - I immediately became convinced of the artistic talent of Brad as soon as I saw his caricature of Robert Scoble. After that, I offered him the idea of writing libel in the blogosphere. Initially, I imagined a simple marketing model, but over time we had to find a single sponsor. The company GoDaddy has agreed to become it without hesitation just less than a month ago. This company is always looking for new creative ways to increase the popularity of its brand. ”
The GoDaddy domain registrar bought all the banners, and also launched an affiliate program with the humorous website, under which every GoDaddy client can get a 10% discount if he mentions the name “bLaugh” when registering a new domain.
Apparently, does GoDaddy really like your comics?
I think yes, of course. For them it was a matter of faith, because they had never conducted such campaigns before. To measure effectiveness, they introduced an affiliate program. And I, in turn, contribute to this process, because every day I publish a link to new, yet unregistered domains.
How do you work with Brad? First he draws a picture, and then you write the text? How is this process organized?
The process here is pretty free. We have a list of jokes, mainly from my experience. Sometimes a fresh hot topic appears that you can suck on - and we work together on it. Brad takes the topic, draws a comic, sends it to me, and I write the text. This is a joint creation.
Do you know that Sergey Brin is Russian? Maybe you have some comic book ideas about Russians?
Oh yes, of course, Sergey is in our field of vision. We want to create something so funny that Google has no choice but to purchase us for $ 27 million. In fact, our technology for creating comics cannot be copied or repeated in any way.