Drew Curtis

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For the fictional Home and Away character, see Drew Curtis (Home and Away).

Drew Curtis (born February 7, 1973) is the founder and an administrator of Fark.com. He graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 1995. From 1996 to 2002, he owned and operated DCR.NET, an ISP based in Frankfort, Kentucky.[1] Curtis published his first book It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007.[2] It soon became a bestseller.[3][4]

Contents

[edit] Fark.com

Main article: Fark

Fark's began while Drew was a student in England sending links back to his friends.[5] Drew registered Fark.com in 1997 but did not begin posting links on the site until 1999.[3] The first story on Fark was a news article about a fighter pilot who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot.[6] Since then, the site has become one of the most popular link dump sites on the internet[3] with nearly 50 million pageviews a month.[5] The site gets over 2,000 link submissions every day.[7] It was the first indie blog to earn one million dollars a year in profit[5] and its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year.[8]

Although Fark is a multi-million dollar business, Drew takes a yearly salary of $60,000.[8] The rest of the money goes to the sites legal 'war chest' and to pay other expenses. [8] Under Curtis, Fark has purposely shied away from the Web 2.0 mantra of total user control, most famously embraced by sites like Digg and Reddit.[9] According to Drew, Web 3.0 will be "something called Good Editing."[10]

In 2008, the site appeared in a brief mention in Grand Theft Auto 4.[11]

[edit] Press and Accolades

Drew's book It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News, peaked at #12 on Amazon.com's non-fiction bestseller list.[12] Media critic Jack Shafer noted that despite the book's success, it surprisingly received "scant attention" from mainstream media outlets.[8] The book was later released in paperback.[13]

In 2006, Drew was featured on the cover of Business 2.0 magazine as the feature in a story about successful websites.[14][5] Lexington Weekly named him one of their businessmen under 40 to watch[3]

On November 28, 2007, Drew Curtis filed an application to trademark the phrase "Not Safe for Work".[15]

[edit] Talks and presentations

  • "Patterns in the Media and the Fark backend" at Notacon in 2005.
  • "Drew Curtis Talks About Whatever He Wants To" at Notacon in 2006.
  • Appears on the radio show/podcast Free Talk Live periodically
  • Appears on "Twitch and ZRock Morning Show" with hosts Twitch and Mary Jane on ZRock 103.3 FM every Thursday in Lexington, Kentucky

[edit] References

  1. ^ [http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/fark.php Right Wing News: An Interview With Fark's Drew Curtis
  2. ^ Amazon: It's Not News, It's Fark Publisher: Gotham; DIAF edition (May 31, 2007)
  3. ^ a b c d Silcoff, Mireille. "LYPA Rising Stars", Lexington Weekly. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ a b c d Sloan, Paul. "Blogging for Dollars", Business 2.0 / CNN Money, October 2nd, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 
  6. ^ Guy Kawasaki: Panel of Web Community Founders: Utter Defiance of the "Venture Capital" Model Video @ 8:35
  7. ^ Media Orchard interview w/ Drew Curtis
  8. ^ a b c d "Fark.com: Making Money Off of Goofy News", NPR, May 7th, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 
  9. ^ Media Orchard Interviews Drew Curtis of Fark.com "I don't care what anyone says, the masses are morons. You can't count on them to pick good stuff. Just check out Network TV to see what the masses want for entertainment. There's certainly a place for that kind of thing but it's not on Fark."
  10. ^ Media Orchard Interviews Drew Curtis of Fark.com "Just watch, Web 3.0 will be something called Good Editing."
  11. ^ Flickr: Grand Theft Auto 4 FARKed
  12. ^ Drew Curtis Speaker Bio "t peaked at #12 on Amazon�s nonfiction bestseller list, proving that user-driven content creates strong customer loyalty."
  13. ^ Amazon: It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News (Paperback) Publisher: Gotham; Reprint edition (May 29, 2008)
  14. ^ Blog post with scans of Business 2.0 cover
  15. ^ Trademork.com: trademark oddities, information and news by Mork » Not safe for work

[edit] External links