Ben Huh, CEO of the hugely successful Cheezburger Network of humor web sites (ICanHasCheezburger, FAILblog, Lovely Listing, etc.), addressed a standing room only crowd (including lots of young kids) on Friday night at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library.

ICanHasCheezburger, of course, features user-submitted cat photos with funny captions, and while it was the original foundation for the network’s 30-plus humor sites, Ben Huh explained that he didn’t come up with the idea first.

Showing a slide of a hopeful looking gray cat, Huh said, “Two people in Hawaii — they were dating at the time, and the girlfriend had found a photo and IM’d it over to her boyfriend and said, ‘Don’t you think this is funny?’ And he just laughed. He laughed for so long, he said, ‘I’m going to build a web site, and I’m going to call it, “ICanHasCheezburger.”’”

But as Huh quickly pointed out, corny inspirational “Hang in There” posters have used cat photos with captions long before this exchange. Plus, a fan of Cheezburger found a 1905 postcard of a cat in a highchair with the caption, “What’s delaying my dinner?” And while this is currently the earliest established “LOLcat,” Huh remarked that he was waiting to see if there were hieroglyphics in front of the Sphinx before making any further declarations on this illustrious history.

What has happened, though, between “Hang in there” and Cheezburger? Or, as Huh asked, “Why does a guy, standing in front of you today, have a job posting cat photos on the Internet?”

Huh argued, by way of a visual presentation, that the Internet has caused the same seismic shift in media that television did in the 1950s.

“You can actually create a small community of people who love something enough that they’re willing to invest a tiny bit of their time every day … to share these things,” said Huh.

Huh discussed how little money it took to launch a site, wherein users produce/share content for free, as opposed to building a brick and mortar business. (The original Cheezburger site, launched January 11, 2007, only paid $6.99 per month for a host.) For this reason, Seattle-based Cheezburger has always been unafraid to experiment, and branch out, with new humor sites.

The original site launched in early 2007, and word spread online. “I went there (in April), and I said, ‘I don’t understand. I don’t know why you sent me this, because I don’t think this is all that funny,’” said Huh.

He was urged to visit the site by a second friend, and then a third, when finally, he found a photo and caption he found really funny, and “a lightbulb went on. … They’re like people, but they’re cats!” said Huh.

Huh bought the site with money from a group of investors. “After we bought it, we decided, this isn’t a pet thing,” said Huh. “The important part about this community was it loved humor just as much as it loved pets and animals. It also loved the fact that 5 minutes a day, it could get away from whatever was troubling them and enjoy this virtual world.”

Huh also talked about FAILblog, which features photos and video of various comical depictions of defeat. Cheezburger acquired FAILblog from a man in London in 2008; and months later, when the American economic crisis hit and banks began to fail, the site strangely benefited from this turn of events.

And although people ask him how long the site might be able to last, Huh joked, “Have you seen humanity lately?”

The bottom line, Huh explained, was that Cheezburger was most interested in following its users’ lead. So although Graphjam.com didn’t become the hit that ICanHasCheezburger did, it nonetheless developed a following that was passionate enough to keep high-quality content streaming in. A political humor blog, after the election, became a news humor blog; and failbooking (funny posts on Facebook) is Cheezburger’s newest venture.

“The content produced by the media versus users, the users completely dwarf the amount of content produced by (mainstream media),” said Huh. “And if you think about it, the 3 largest companies in the world, … are Google, Facebook, and Twitter. … None of them produce their own content.”

Huh wrapped up his prepared talk by talking about the nature of microhumor — the inside jokes that drive sites like those in the Cheezburger Network. Comparing this humor to that of court jesters, Huh suggested that we’ve come full circle.

As an example, Huh brought up the trend of “Rick-rolling.” Initially, an online prank evolved that took people to an image of a wooden duck, and this was called “duck rolling.”

“But at some point in 2007, early on, some genius said, instead of duck rolling, I’m going to send you to this Rick Astley video (‘Never Gonna Give You Up’).”

This became such a popular prank that on April Fool’s Day in 2008, there was a huge spike in “Rick-rolling” numbers — partly thanks to YouTube, which changed every link on their homepage to the Astley video, according to Huh.

He compared this with how Cheezburger grew. “What happened was, a person started collecting it, and then it became a community, and they started to participate, build a language, evolve it … and that’s spawned an entire industry,” said Huh.

Several attendees asked Huh questions, and at one point, he confessed, “Not a single one of my captions has ever made it to the home page.”

He also offered this perspective: “If you don’t interact with a company, it is no longer valuable. It used to be that you didn’t have to interact with something to do that, but today, it’s not true. That ship has already sailed.”

Huh’s most personal admission came when asked what advice he would give to a young person. Huh said he was born and raised in Korea, then moved to Hong Kong before arriving in the United States as a sophomore in high school.

“The thing that struck me the most was that kids didn’t spend enough time in school, or reading, and didn’t even seem to care,” said Huh. “That really shocked me. And by the time I got to college, I’d lost all the advantages of coming from a system that was really highly focused on education. … I don’t know what the magical future holds, but really, (they should) find something that they’re passionate about and turn it into a real lifelong career.”

The library will offer both a full video of Huh's talk, as well as an interview, on its site. Until then, check out a few of Huh's responses to audience questions.

Huh on drawing traffic to a site:

Huh on his favorite Cheezburger site and cat photo:

Huh on lessons he learned from the corporate world:

For even more from Ben Huh, read the AnnArbor.com interview.

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.