Since its creation in 2003, 4chan has grown to become one of the world's largest forums, serving approximately 680,000,000 page impressions to over 22,000,000 unique visitors per month (~11 MM in the US). The website is mainly popular amongst young adults, and its imageboard format is based fully on user-generated content. Users post in a variety of interest-themed imageboards, including Video Games, Anime, Lifestyle and Technology.
4chan.org is one of the highest-trafficked US sites according to Alexa and Quantcast, and is ranked by Big-Boards as being the 2nd largest BBS in the world. 4chan is credited with spawning a number of wildly popular internet memes, including LOLcats, the rapid rise to popularity of Tay "Chocolate Rain" Zonday, and "Rickrolling"—among many others.
Press/media inquiries: press@4chan.org.
moot at SXSW Interactive 2011
SXSW Interactive
In March 4chan's founder, Christopher "moot" Poole, gave a keynote speech at the 2011 SXSW Interactive Festival: "The Wild Wild Web: Refrigerator magnets, PictoChat, Calvinball, and anonymous culture."
Feature profile in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair ran a feature profile written by cover writer Vanessa Grigoriadis titled 4chan's Chaos Theory.
Feature profile in Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review (published by MIT) ran a feature profile written by Julian Dibbell titled Radical Opacity.
Story in The Washington Post and The New York Times Magazine
The Washington Post — The New York Times Magazine
4chan was featured on the front page of The Washington Post, and prominently in a New York Times Magazine piece on ROFLCon and the viral web.
Interview on NYTimes.com
The New York Times
In March, Nick Bilton of The New York Times "Bits Blog" posted a one-on-one interview with Christopher "moot" Poole.
Featured on CNN.com
CNNTech — CNNOpinion — YouTube
CNN featured "moot" in its TED2010 article titled "Ten fascinating people you've never heard of," and published a video interview conducted after the his TED talk.
moot at TED2010
TED — CNN — Ars Technica — GigaOM — Hacker News
In February 4chan's founder, Christopher "moot" Poole, spoke at the 2010 TED Conference, during the "Provocation" session.
2009 TIME 100 Honoree
TIME - The 2009 TIME 100 - moot — TIME - The World's Most Influential Person Is...
4chan's "moot" was selected by TIME's editors as one of the TIME 100, an annual list of "The World's Most Influential People," in the Builders & Titans category. In addition, readers voted moot as "The World's Most Influential Person" in an online poll held on TIME.com.
Story on FOXNews.com
FOXNews.com
FOXNews takes a look at 4chan, its memes, and its influence on the Web.
Featured in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post gave its readers an in-depth look at "moot," aka Christopher Poole, detailing 4chan's past, present, and future.
Profiled in TIME & The Wall Street Journal
TIME —
The Wall Street Journal —
The Observer
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The New York Times Magazine
TIME and The Wall Street Journal ran articles on 4chan and its founder, "moot," in July 2008. Both appeared online and in print on July 11th.
Subsequent appearances have been made in The Observer, Maxim, and The New York Times Magazine.
Shown on JEOPARDY!
4chan was featured in the "Internet Favorites" category as a $1,600 question.
"Today's featured article" on Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia's English 4chan article was nominated and promoted to "featured article" status, and displayed on the main page on January 14th, 2009.
April 1st 2008 – April Fool's Day
YouTube — GameFAQs — LiveJournal — deviantART — isoHunt — The Tech
YouTube, GameFAQs, LiveJournal, deviantART, isoHunt, and MIT's The Tech all ran April Fool's Day pranks based on 4chan memes.
The memes used include the now infamous "Rick Roll", LOLcats / "Caturday", and the Pokémon we all loev so much, Mudkips.
[YouTube] [GameFAQs] [LiveJournal] [deviantART] [isoHunt]
LOLcats / "Caturday"
TIME — Toronto Star — The Phoenix — The Daily Pennsylvanian
"The term lolcat gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by Time, which wrote that non-commercialized phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have 'a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them].'"
—Wikipedia [Link]
Rickrolling
TIME — The Guardian — L.A. Times — Metro — BBC — MSN — CNET — FOXNews — The Globe and Mail
"In a rickroll a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Rick Astley video. ... By May 2007 the practice had become widespread, and it eventually began to receive some coverage in the mainstream media. ... In a March 2008 interview, Astley said that he found the rickrolling of Scientology to be 'hilarious'..."
—Wikipedia [Link]
Vanity Fair, April 2011
Fast Company, November 2010
Technology Review, September/October 2010
The Washington Post, August 10th 2010
The New York Times Magazine, July 18th 2010
TIME, May 2009
The Washington Post, February 17th 2009
The New York Times Magazine, August 3rd 2008
TIME, July 2008
The Wall Street Journal, July 11th 2008
"As with so many stupid internet fads, the rick-roll trend had its start at 4chan, a message-board whose lunatic, juvenile community is at once brilliant, ridiculous and alarming."
—The Guardian [Link]
"Among the most notorious of forums is one called 4chan, an anarchic, entirely anonymous bulletin board where people are encouraged to post pictures. It is variously credited with fostering not just Rick Rolling, but the LOLCATS craze of cats speaking like hacker kids, and the 'Anonymous' anti-Scientology movement..."
—The Globe and Mail [Link]
"...has come the blossoming Web 2.0 era of collaborative content. YouTube, Wikipedia, 4chan, abeerintheevening, Facebook – they all function on the principle that everyone has at least one thing that would be of interest and value to a wider audience. The wisdom of the crowd really is starting to look wise, all things told."
—The Times [Link]