Name: CAMERON ENGLAND 2009-03-31 8:09
Article taken from Adelaide newspaper "The Advertiser", dated 31 March 2009:
WHO is the world's most influential person? Barack Obama? Vladimir Putin? Stephen Colbert? Or an anonymous 20-year-old from New York who runs an unprofitable website?
Voting on Time magazine's 2009 Time 100 website shows it is the last, known only as Moot, who attracted more than 2.4 million votes last week - almost double his nearest challenger.
Moot launched is website 4chan.org in 2003.
the site reportedly gets 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month.
It describes itself as "a simple, image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images". "Users do not need to register a username before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board that interests you and jump right in - anyone can contribute!" it says.
The site was set up as a place where Moot and his friends could talk about manga and anime. It since has been credited with spawning such internet memes as Rickrolling and LOLcats.
LOLCATS: Pictures of cats captioned with amusing and badly spelled quips.
RICKROLLING: Setting up a false link which leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley.
The anti-scientology movement Anonymous also is thought to have been spawned from the community. There are 44 bulletin boards within 4chan, with topics ranging from comics and cartoons to random, where the seriously off-colour material can be found.
Whether Moot is even close to being the most influential person in the world is certainly debatable, but if the 4chan army has any sway, as far as the Time online poll is concerned, he's well on his way to world domination.
He was quoted by Time as willing to sell the site for $US580 million - the same amount which News Corporation paid to buy MySpace.com. I wouldn't be holding my breath.
WHO is the world's most influential person? Barack Obama? Vladimir Putin? Stephen Colbert? Or an anonymous 20-year-old from New York who runs an unprofitable website?
Voting on Time magazine's 2009 Time 100 website shows it is the last, known only as Moot, who attracted more than 2.4 million votes last week - almost double his nearest challenger.
Moot launched is website 4chan.org in 2003.
the site reportedly gets 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month.
It describes itself as "a simple, image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images". "Users do not need to register a username before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board that interests you and jump right in - anyone can contribute!" it says.
The site was set up as a place where Moot and his friends could talk about manga and anime. It since has been credited with spawning such internet memes as Rickrolling and LOLcats.
LOLCATS: Pictures of cats captioned with amusing and badly spelled quips.
RICKROLLING: Setting up a false link which leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley.
The anti-scientology movement Anonymous also is thought to have been spawned from the community. There are 44 bulletin boards within 4chan, with topics ranging from comics and cartoons to random, where the seriously off-colour material can be found.
Whether Moot is even close to being the most influential person in the world is certainly debatable, but if the 4chan army has any sway, as far as the Time online poll is concerned, he's well on his way to world domination.
He was quoted by Time as willing to sell the site for $US580 million - the same amount which News Corporation paid to buy MySpace.com. I wouldn't be holding my breath.