x.com/ajt”>Alex TaubaA long-time founder with multiple exits under his belt, he believes it's time to revolutionize the meme industry.
“I have a big thesis that memetech is going to be the next big category,” Taub told TechCrunch. “For example, there's healthtech, proptech, adtech, fintech… I think memetech is about to have a big moment.”
It may seem like Taub has spent too much time in the trenches of the content mines. But he has a point. If you want to send your friend the perfect SpongeBob SquarePants meme, what are you supposed to do? Google “mr crab confused meme”? Memes are a key component of our online communications, from boomers posting minions alpha gene posting about bathrooms – and yet few companies have tried to do something new.
To be clear, technological innovation is not always good or necessary. No one needs to have a smart refrigerator or, for that matter, a Humane ai pin. But there's been almost no innovation in the way we organize and share memes for over a decade: On Tumblr in 2009, it was common practice to have a folder of reaction gifs on your computer desktop; Now the more organized among us have meme folders on our phones. It's basically the same. Similarly, while your iPhone can quickly catalog all your images of a cat named Plover, iPhones don't know who Mr. Krabs is, which leaves a little to be desired in terms of meme efficiency.
“If you think about what memetech really is right now, it's essentially Giphy, but it was acquired by facebook and then sort of closed to Shutterstock. There are some OG companies like Know Your Meme and cheeseburger, but those companies are actually media companies,” Taub said. “I ended up realizing that there is an opportunity here for meme management.”
On Wednesday, Taub released Meme Repositorywhich aims to turn into a complete archive of any meme imaginable.
“You have collections, which are like subreddits visually,” he explains. If you are looking for a Kim Kardashian meme, for example, there will be a Kim Kardashian collection that you can navigate to. “And visually, they're very easy to review, like Pinterest.”
That's all well and good, but companies need to make money. This is where Taub could lose people: the business model revolves around cryptocurrencies.
“I've been in crypto in one form or another for the last 12 years, and I think it's very misunderstood in terms of speculation and bad actors, but it's also just a new way of reimagining the Internet,” he said.
Inspired by Friend.tech, meme depot has a feature called meme party, which turns specific meme categories into communities. Using cryptocurrency, users can purchase deposit passes to join the meme party, which is basically an ephemeral cursor-based chat. But for people who want nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, there is no need to pay money or open a crypto wallet to interact with Meme Depot in any way. It allows early pass holders of a meme collection to earn a little money as more people join it.
Taub is well aware that this tactic could spark debate.
“There is a lot of controversy about who can monetize memes. Is it the creator of the meme, is it the person who appears in the meme? he said. “If this takes off like I think, we might add a new twist to it, which is a good thing. “You want people to talk about it.”
These same questions arose during the nft boom of 2021, when topics of viral memes like nft-sells-for-over-57000″>Steve the bastard, nft“>Disaster Girl and nft-sells-for-411000″>Overly attached girlfriend sold his iconic images as nfts. This was often the first time these people made money from being the subject of viral memes: Disaster Girl, now in her twenties, made the equivalent of $500,000 worth of eth at the time, although that could have depreciated significantly depending on what she did. with cryptocurrency.
Then there are memes like pepe the frog, which evolved from an innocent cartoon to an alt-right symbol, and back to a Twitch emote and crypto meme. When an image is so divorced from its origin, it can belong more to the public than to its original creator.
“People can monetize the community around the meme without monetizing the meme itself,” Taub said.
Taub is funding Meme Depot with money he made selling previous companies like SocialRank, a social media analytics company. For some business-minded people, the question may linger: why memes?
Taub's answer is simple: “Memes are culture and culture is entertainment.”
