Fark - History

History

Fark was created in 1999 by Drew Curtis of Lexington, Kentucky. Curtis states that the word "fark" originated either from a chat room euphemism for a popular four-letter obscenity, or from a drunken misspelling; although he tells people it is the former because it is a "better story that way". He registered Fark.com in September 1997, when a friend mentioned that all of the four letter domain names were disappearing. Originally, Fark contained no content except for an image of a squirrel with large testicles. This photograph is that of a Cape Ground Squirrel in Etosha National Park, Namibia, taken by photographer Kevin Shafer, who at the time worked for the Corbis Corporation, ca. 1993. The squirrel image is no longer used in the production area of the site, but it can still be found as the server's 404 error for pages that do not exist.

Since 1993, Curtis had frequently read morning news stories and exchanged them with friends. Although this would later become the inspiration for Fark, Curtis toyed with the idea of starting an online curry recipe database. In 1999, eighteen months after registering the domain name, he launched Fark as a way to share interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails. The first story posted was an article about a fighter pilot who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot.

During Fark's first year, the site received 50,000 page views and one million the year after. Features such as link submission and forums were added as popularity and participation grew. By January 2008, according to Curtis, the site was averaging an estimated 52 million page views per month from 4 million unique visitors. Fark was officially incorporated in the state of Delaware as, "Fark, Inc.", on January 31, 2008.

While most of the story links on the main page are submitted by users and selected for placement based on merit, there was an incident in August 2004 in which Fark was accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page. The accusation stemmed from an exchange between Mahalo.com CEO Jason Calacanis and third party sales employee Gogi Gupta, where Gupta claimed Calacanis could buy an editorial on Fark for $300 to $400. Curtis dismissed the incident as the result of an overenthusiastic salesperson, and subsequently fired Gupta. Gupta worked for a company called Gupta Media and did not have the authority to speak for Fark, according to Curtis.

Curtis launched Foobies.com in 2006 as a NSFW (not safe for work) offshoot of Fark, primarily because advertisers complained about links to female breasts on the main site. Customers could purchase NSFW links through Foobies at the price of $400 per link.

Fark launched Fark TV on January 17, 2007. The first video was a spoof ad for a mock product called "Meth Coffee." In May 2008, Turner Broadcasting announced that it would be folding SuperDeluxe, Fark TV's host site, into the Adult Swim brand, and laying off most of the staff, effectively canceling Fark TV.

A new design for the website was launched on April 25, 2007, with the comment, "Fark site redesign is now live. Hope nothing breaks, we're all out drinking." The new design was initially received with some controversy by many users, mostly due to the change in layout and a seemingly indifferent attitude by site moderators to user impact or feedback. In response, Drew Curtis noted the following reasons for the redesign: "Websites have to evolve over time. Otherwise you end up with a layout anachronism like the Drudge Report. The old design was put into place years ago, over time changes were nailed on to the design like loose shingles on a leaky roof. It was time to reformat and remove a bunch of the clutter while trying to keep the core design intact." The site layout was refined over the next few weeks in accordance with many suggestions.

Curtis published the book, It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007. The book critically explores the mass media industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report. It sold 25,000 copies in its first 12 weeks on the market. Despite its initial strong reception, the book only received mild attention from reviewers. Salon.com gave it a favorable review, although the only major newspaper to review it was the Tucson Citizen, which only gave it a mini-review.

On November 24, 2009, Fark launched a new partnership with USA Today, as they became the exclusive host and sponsor of Fark's Geek Page, a collection of technology-related links. This represents the site's first content partnership with a major media brand. Previously, Curtis had signed a sales only deal with Maxim Online. The page shows aggregated technology news headlines from other news sources with USA Today's Tech section branding. Its right column displays technology content from USA Today with video clips and a headline widget of USAToday.com's Tech Live and Game Hunters stories.

In January 2011, Fark was sued in Los Angeles Federal Court by Gooseberry Natural Resources, LLC, for allegedly violating US Patent No. 6,370,535, titled, "System and method for structured news release generation and distribution." This patent, awarded in 2002, involves typing text into an administration system, storing it on a server, and publishing it on the Internet. Other defendants sued in the case include Reddit, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Digg, Geeknet (owner of Slashdot), TechCrunch, Newsvine, and Yahoo. Drew Curtis argued that Fark does not produce "news releases" or "press releases", as the lawsuit stated, and instead provides a forum for humorous links to stories on other websites. The case was settled in August 2011, for the sum of $0. Curtis later described the entire ordeal as, "a nightmare", saying, "Imagine someone breaking into your home, then being forced to sit on the couch while their lawyers file motions over how much stuff they can take." At the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, California, he referred to patent trolls as "terrorists", comparing them to the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines, which kidnapped people for ransom, collected small sums of money, expanded with more personnel and equipment, and then kidnapped more people for higher ransoms.

Fark tweaked its site design a little more on June 1, 2011, with the comment, "Fark's redesign will go live at 5PM EST. Heads-up for those of you who missed the other warning threads and need a place to completely lose your mind." Having learned from the controversy caused by the 2007 redesign, Curtis introduced the new site as a preview one week (two weeks for TotalFark users) prior to June 1, to allow users to comment on the changes and provide feedback on where things were broken. The primary reason for the redesigned site is to make it easier to use and more intuitive. The site's tagline was changed from "It's not news, it's FARK" to "We don't make news. We mock it." The music tab was also dropped, due to low usage – content was rolled into the Showbiz or Video tab, where most of the content was already cross-posted anyway. An overhaul to the Fark Mobile Web site was not done at this time, but Curtis did say that small changes would be implemented over time to make the mobile site more consistent with the overall design of the new site.

An official iPhone app, "HEY! on Fark", was released on June 11, 2012, for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The app enables users to receive notifications on various stories appearing on Fark by topic or keyword, as well as allows users to comment on stories. It also lets users set a "snooze" option, or a period of time when notifications will not be sent (e.g. for sleeping or work). An app for Android phones is also planned. Other iOS apps are also available allowing users to browse the site, including, "Mobile Reader for FARK®" and, "Fark® Not News", although these are not official apps.