Before speaking at Ann Arbor's downtown library on Friday evening, Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh answered a few questions for AnnArbor.com.

The Network — consisting of nearly 40 user-generated humor sites, including FAILblog, Lovely Listing and There I Fixed It — is based in Seattle, and it began when Huh acquired ICanHasCheezburger (featuring cat photos with funny captions) in the fall of 2007.

Q: What did you do after acquiring ICanHasCheezburger in order to grow the site? A: Not much. The biggest change we made was to move to a regular schedule. So instead of randomly showing up with posts at a random time, we decided to do it on a regular basis. Every couple of hours … things would show up. And that was pretty much it.

Q: Part of the humor is the misspellings in the captions (LOLspeak). Why do you think this became a crucial part of the package? A: I think it completes the illusion that it’s a separate universe — a universe inhabited by talking cats, or what have you.

Q: Do you have a cat yourself? A: I don’t. I’m actually allergic to cats. … I’ve got a dog that’s about 13 pounds, and he doesn’t know whether he’s a cat or dog.

Q: What is it about funny cat pictures, do you think, that brought so many people to the site and keeps them coming back? A: The entire network is devoted to the idea that you can basically waste time for 5 minutes a day. Some people say, ‘you really shouldn’t say wasting time, that seems derogatory.’ But I’m like, let’s call it what it is. It’s people’s escape, people taking a break.

Q: There are always copycat sites. What differentiated Cheezburger from the pack? A: I think it’s very much consistency, and focusing on quality. When you get there, it’s pretty consistent you’ll find something that you’ll enjoy. So it creates a habit, so people basically show up day after day.

Q: Cheezburger is 100 percent user-generated? A: One hundred percent. We receive about 14,000 submissions each day.

Q: And how many of those make it onto the home page? A: Less than 1 percent.

Q: What do you consider while combing through all these submissions? A: Some of it’s just been done before. So a lot of it is duplication. That’s what we weed out the most. A handful of stuff is just inappropriate. … There are usually voting pages that get quite a bit more exposure, so we put up a lot more content there. The point is, we don’t want to make a judgment about what is and what isn’t funny. If we don’t know anything about that content, we’ll let the users decide.

Q: What’s a typical day at work entail for you? A: I mostly spend my time training moderators and editors for the Web sites.

Q: What’s the challenging part of your job? The part you don’t like? A: It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s definitely part of my role. What’s really fascinating about my role is that it’s changed so much since I started in my pajamas on my couch, working all by myself. But it’s about, how do you keep the company profitable? How do you keep your profits growing so investors are happy, so that you can create a stable foundation for your employees — those are some of the most underrated parts about being a CEO.

In this video, Huh introduces himself and briefly describes his move from the corporate world to ICanHasCheezburger:

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.