Biography
The site was created in 1999 by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, two high school friends from Baltimore, Maryland as a means to stay in touch when they attended college. It has since grown considerably and is operated by Connected Ventures, a New York company comprising Abramson, Van Veen, Jakob Lodwick, and Zach Klein as partners, that also owns Defunker, BustedTees, and Vimeo. Site traffic averages eight million monthly unique visitors; most visitors are men between the ages of 18 and 24. CollegeHumor is divided into sections including Videos, Pictures, Articles, Girls, and CHTV.
The pictures section is one of CollegeHumor's largest attractions and consists of over 25,000 user submitted pictures with well over a dozen added daily. The Pictures section is divided into the following content-based categories: Animals, Cars, Celebrities, College!, Food, Nature, Ouch, Sexy, Sports, and Words. Additionally, registered users that are over the age of 18 may access the R-Rated section, which was added to house media with nudity. Pictures depict the general obscurities of daily college life, and contests such as the "That Guy", "Girls on the Toilet", and an effort to document "boobies" from every university in America are frequent topics of submission. Additionally, the men behind the scenes aim to incorporate "boobies" into many song lyrics, used as captions for topless pictures in the R-Rated section.
The site is credited with launching the career of comedian Steve Hofstetter, the site's original columnist. Several other comedians have since written for the site, including Christian Finnegan, Ben Gleib, and Dan Levy.
CollegeHumor has signed a deal with Paramount Pictures to develop films dealing with college humor.
CollegeHumor originally gained notoriety by selling a novelty foam hand making a sexually-suggestive hand gesture known as the shocker (parodying the popular "We're # 1" foam hands sold at sporting events). This item has become one of CollegeHumor's best selling products. Some people have incorrectly credited CollegeHumor as coming up with the shocker, when in reality it had been an inside joke among college students for some time before the site started selling the foam hands.
CollegeHumor, along with its parent company Connected Ventures, was acquired by Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in August 2006.
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