A Small Empire Built on Cuddly and Fuzzy Branches Out From the Web
CALENDARS and coffee table books filled with pictures of cute, cuddly kitties and sad-eyed puppies have been around for decades. So what explains the success of Cute Overload, a new page-a-day desk calendar that recently shot to the top of its category on Amazon.com and, more remarkably, to the upper ranks of the site’s overall best-sellers list?Stranger still, the birth of Cute Overload was almost purely accidental. Meg Frost, a 36-year-old design manager at Apple, started cuteoverload.com three years ago to test Web software. Within months, it became an online institution, drawing about 88,000 unique visitors a day — about the same as the political gossip blog Wonkette. BoingBoing linked to Cute Overload, saying that viewing the site “is like taking a happy pill.”
. . .
Ms. Frost will not talk about how much money she has made from the site, although it is enough money that she recently hired two part-time assistants.
See what I have to compete with????
I should try something like that.
Look at this perfectly adorable archaic point!
Some kitty pics wouldn’t kill you every now and then! They’re at least as interesting as shaving, car, and computer posts- and I can relate to kitties like I can’t to shaving, cars, or computers!
Pics of your own kitty would be a real plus though- not the ICANHASCHEESEBURGER variety.
Comment by kat newkirk — August 27, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
No! I refuse! This will not become a cat blog!
Besides, mine are too boring anyway. How often can you post a picture of a cat face down in a food dish?
Well, Jack the one-eyed cat is a little more interesting. Currently, he’s scared to death of my slippers ever since I stepped on his foot wearing them the other night. Darn near killed myself in the process as well.
Comment by Anthony — August 28, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
No, don’t become a ‘cat blog’ -there are plenty of those and I don’t read any of them!
But maybe, just maybe, the next time you post on cars, shaving, or computers, a little aside with the saga of how Jack became one-eyed would be interesting also?
Comment by kat newkirk — August 28, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
It was a lovely Archaic point… got any Ramah, eh?
Comment by LauraJ — August 30, 2008 @ 9:20 pm