CIT Project Report

9GAG.com and its Indian Adaption

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................3
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................4
SOME STATS...........................................................................................4
COMPETITORS........................................................................................4
BUSINESS MODEL...................................................................................5
TRAFFIC WORKING.................................................................................6
Audience Demographics...................................................................................... 6
Audience Geography............................................................................................ 6
Upstream Sites Google.com facebook.com youtube.com ...............................7
Sites link to 9GAG.com........................................................................................ 7
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION AND RETENTION STRATEGY...............................7
MOBILE STRATEGY..................................................................................7
PAYMENT STRATEGY...............................................................................7
TECHNOLOGY APPROACH........................................................................8
KEY PARTNERS /VENDOR.........................................................................8
SWOT ANALYSIS.....................................................................................9
FUTURE.................................................................................................9
COMPETITION-......................................................................................11
Direct Competitor-............................................................................................. 11
WORKING COST, REVENUE AND WORKING TRAFFIC-................................12
Strategy............................................................................................................. 12
Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy...................................................12
PORTER MODEL....................................................................................14
REFERENCES-.......................................................................................15

Executive Summary
9GAG, Inc. operates an online platform, and a social media website whereby users
upload and share "user-generated" images, videos, and GIFs. 9GAG, Inc. is based in
Mountain View,California. Since the website was launched on April 23rd, 2008, it has
grown in popularity, reaching more than 20 million Facebook likes and over 3
million Twitter followers in mid-September 2014.
The revenue model of 9GAG earns revenue through various ads placed on the
website.It also depend on the quality and size of the picture.
The report further proposed on the Indian adaption of 9GAG highlighting revenue
estimates, cost estimates as well as traffic estimates. The feasibility scenario in
Indian context is estimated further and future prospects is analyzed.
Due to the little such a service provider in India, and its popularity in the US, we felt
9GAG entry in India would also be widely accepted and a profitable venture.

Introduction
9GAG is an image-based social media website which is based around user-uploaded,
comical images dubbed "Fun" and "le memes" . 9GAG, Inc. is based in Mountain View, California.
Since the website was launched on April 23rd, 2008, it has grown in popularity, reaching more than 20 million Facebook
likes[2] and over 3 million Twitter followers in mid-September 2014 .

The website was cofounded in 2008 by University of Hong Kong student Chris Chan, with the
intention of creating an alternative online platform to email on which users could easily share
humorous photos or videos.

Content Categories
Content is separated into the following general categories of
-hot
-trending
-fresh
-TV
-comic
-geeky
-WTF and a few others such as cute, food, Gifs

Some Stats
As of October 2014, 73 Million monthly unique visitors
Less than 50 employees
Alexa Global Rank 220
Average time spent by a user on 9gag.com is approximately 8 mins.

Need Addressed
Creating one of the funniest yet simplest platform for to publish or collect pictures
of Fun.
9GAG allows users to subscribe and follow each other.

Competitors
The direct competitors for 9GAG.com are
> damnlol.com
> acidcow.com
Both the websites focus on visual humour and include only images.

The indirect competitors for 9GAG.com are

Reddit.com
Reddit- stylized as reddit, is an entertainment, social networking service and news website where
registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links

Business Model
Advertisements- 9GAG earns revenue though various ads placed on the website.
It charges $100 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 66,666 views.
It charges $250 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 1,85,185 views.
It charges $500 for a 300x250 pixel ad for 3,92,156 views

In July 2012, 9GAG raised an additional US$2.8 million in funding

from Silicon Valley-based venture capital behemoths, including
True Ventures and Greycroft Partners. The company later released
an iOS iPhone application.
In August 2012, 9GAG received another US$2.8 million in funding
from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including True Ventures and
Greycroft Partners, as well as individual investors like Christopher
Sacca, Kevin Rose, and Naval Ravikant. This funding was able to
support 9GAG's engineering team growth both in Hong Kong and
in Silicon Valley.

Revenues-9GAG

Revenues-Damnlol

$ 227,998 / day

$ 865 / day

Revenues-Acidcow
$ 6,102 / day

$ 6,839,940 / month

$ 25,950 / month

$ 183,060 / month

$ 82,079,280 / year

$ 311,400 / year

$ 2,196,720 / year

Website Traffic Estimate

9GAG
Acidcow
15,080,000 visitors / day
406,867 visitors / day

Damnlol
57,751 visitors / day

452,400,000 visitors / month

12,206,010 visitors / month

1,732,530 visitors / month

5,428,800,000 visitors / year

146,472,120 visitors / year

20,790,360 visitors / year

Traffic Working

Audience Demographics

Audience Geography

Search Traffic
Keywords
9GAG 69.60%
GAG 1.43%
9 GAG -0.92%
GIF
-0.85%
NSFW-0.73%
Upstream Sites
Facebook.com
Google.com
Youtube.com
9GAG.tv
Wikipedia.org

Sites link to 9GAG.com

Youtube.com
Amazon.com
Reddit.com
Imgur.com
Wikipedia.org

Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy

The target audience for the website are the people who want to catch a break
"Humor is one of life's greatest pleasures," Most of the first time users come
through social media. At 9GAG, we want to make it as easy as possible for
people to have fun by sharing the things that make them laugh for the universal
enjoyment of anyone on the web.

Main focus is to provide Rich customer experience, keeping the loading time minimum and
making sharing of images and videos as user friendly as possible.
Most of the website's traffic occurs at home, followed by school or workplace. 9GAG has also
expanded to 9gag.tv which is a platform to share and view the humorous videos.

Mobile Strategy
9GAG is also taking advantage of the increasing mobile penetration among the
people. It has its apps for major platforms like iOS and android phones.
The app seamlessly integrates with your visuals 9GAG website and lets you resume
them on your mobile device. In a way the app works as a companion to the website
which enhance the usability of 9GAG.

Payment Strategy
Payment option via credit card is available.
They accept transactions through Paypal, Visa, MasterCard etc.

Technology Approach
9GAG is written in a combination of HTML/CSS and JavaScript. The JavaScript code handles the
client-side and is used to support GIFs and other images uploaded onto the website.9GAG is hosted
on GoDaddy, operating as an SSL certificate authority, and runs on Nginx.The site is supported on
the Amazon Route 53 nameserver
To further company exposure, 9GAG founders recently launched 9GAG.tv, a platform including
videos only. Within a year of the original mobile app launch, 9GAG launched another app for iOS
entitled, "9GAG Fast." Unlike the original 9GAG mobile app, 9GAG Fast was created with the idea of
being really easy to use. The description of the 9GAG Fast in the Apple App Store simple says,
"Super intuitive and dead easy to use, SWIPE, TAP, AND ZOOM. BAM WHAM... For the android
operating system, 9GAG First was created with ideally the same idea as 9GAG Fast. 9GAG user are
able to log in with their account and write to stranger by sending them a message. They improved
9CHAT by allowing to create groups. It's now possible to write with more people at the same time.

Key Partners /Vendor

The company partnered with Silicon Valley-based venture capital behemoths, including True
Ventures and Greycroft Partners

SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
Global reach
Revenue
Free of charge for viewers
Financial support by venture capitalists
2 second load time
Weaknesses:
Image quality
Start up costs
Controversials GIFs

Opportunity:
Creative use of technology

First mover advantage

Growing audience
Threat:
Direct & Indirect competition
High Capital Costs
Dependency on social media

Adaptation in Indian Context

Introduction9GAG.in will be one of its own kind of website, focusing on visual humor.
The website will comprise of videos, memes and GIFs, it will be adopting the
business model of its principle company i.e. focusing on advertisements.

Need addressedLaughter is the Best Medicine, our main focus is to make our audience happy by
providing them a platform to view and share hilarious videos, also providing them a
platform to write down their opinions about their media.

CompetitionThe_Unreal_Times.com & News_that_matters_not.com

Both of them are Indian satire, spoof, parody and humour portal featuring satirical articles on politics,
entertainment, cricket, media, international affairs and society.

RevenueTheunrealtimes
$ 1,209 / day
$ 36,270 / month
$ 435,240 / year

Website Name
9GAG.in. The name has been chosen as per Alexa results wherein the
keywords such as 9GAG, GAG,GIF were used to direct the traffic to 9GAG
website.

Working Cost, Revenue and Working Traffic-

Strategy
Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy

9GAG would be launched in few major languages that is Gujarati, Punjabi,

Tamil, Marathi apart from English and Hindi so as to capture the regional
market too.It will help them to utilize their idle time, they should opt for this
site whenever they need a break !
In order to retain the audience, we will also send them daily/weekly mailers
with the top rated content. Providing them with a platform to comment and
get maximum number of likes. By creating trolls of latest news and the
trends which are being followed on social media will try to retain the
audience.
By Keeping the load time upto 2-3 seconds, we should be able to acquire a
larger market share and it should help to retain the audience.
High usage of social media so that the content is shared as much as
possible,increasing the visibility of our site.
Making our website SEO friendly i.e. relating words such as humour, jokes,
fun videos which have a high frequency with our website
Creating categories which enables audience to view content of their
preference.
More Content, less advertising.
Mobile Strategy

Gauging the prevalent sales of smartphones and internet usage in India,

mobile apps would be made on major platforms like iOS, android and
windows phone. The app would be in sync with the 9GAG website so that one
could continue browsing from where they had left.
Payment Strategy

Payments (depending on the advertisement package) will be accepted via

credit cards and cashcards such as paytm etc.

Technology approach

9GAG will deploy cloud computing services of Amazon Web Services

particularly of Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 for auto scaling of the traffic and
Database management respectively.
Key partners/Vendors

The content development part would be given by the individual

contributions by users and the admins. The web storage, server
infrastructure and the search engine would be handled by the Amazon Web
Services.

Porter Model

Industry Rivalry is high, since 9GAG is a part of the entertainment & advertising
Industry along with stiff competition from television and online sites.
Threat from new entrants will be high, as already there are various competitors like
damnlol.com & acidcow.com .
Threat of Substitutes is high, since there are various others options for advertising
and entertainment sites.

Supplier power is medium, as they want to spread their content, as seen from the
international model, their power is not very high.
Buyer Power is high, cause of the availability of other service providers which
provide unlimited streaming of content on the internet at a minimal price.

Referenceshttps://www.9GAG.com/
http://www.worthofweb.com/
http://www.alexa.com/
http://similarweb.com
http://www.quora.net/
http://www.wikipedia.org/