Alex Taub<\/a>, a longtime founder with multiple exits under his belt, believes it\u2019s time to disrupt the meme industry.<\/p>\n \u201cI have this big thesis that memetech is going to be the next big category,\u201d Taub told TechCrunch. \u201cLike, there\u2019s healthtech, there\u2019s proptech, there\u2019s adtech, there\u2019s fintech\u2026 I think memetech is about to have a big moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Taub might sound like he\u2019s spent a bit too much time in the trenches of the content mines. But he has a point. If you want to send your friend the perfect Spongebob meme, what are you supposed to do? Google \u201cmr krabs confused meme\u201d? Memes are a key component of our online communications \u2013 from boomers posting minions<\/a> to gen alpha posting about toilets<\/a> \u2013 and yet few companies<\/a> have tried to do anything new.<\/p>\n To be clear, tech innovation isn\u2019t always good or necessary. No one needs to own a smart refrigerator<\/a>, or for that matter, a Humane AI pin<\/a>. But there\u2019s been almost no innovation in how we organize and share memes for more than a decade: On Tumblr in 2009, it was common practice to have a reaction gif folder on your computer desktop; now, the most organized among us have meme folders on our phones. It\u2019s basically the same thing. Similarly, even though your iPhone can quickly catalog all of your pictures of a cat named Plover, iPhones don\u2019t know who Mr. Krabs is, leaving a bit to be desired in terms of meme efficiency.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think of what memetech really is right now, it\u2019s essentially Giphy<\/a>, but it got acquired by Facebook, and then got sort of shuttered off to Shutterstock. There\u2019s some OG companies like Know Your Meme and Cheezburger,<\/a> but those companies are actually media companies,\u201d Taub said. \u201cI ended up realizing there\u2019s an opportunity here for meme management.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Taub launched Meme Depot<\/a>, which he aspires to build into a comprehensive archive of any meme imaginable.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have collections, which are like Subreddits, visually,\u201d he explains. If you\u2019re looking for a Kim Kardashian meme, for example, there would be a Kim Kardashian collection that you can navigate to. \u201cAnd visually, they\u2019re very easy to look through, like Pinterest.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s all well and good, but companies need to make money. Here\u2019s where Taub might lose people: the business model revolves around crypto.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been in crypto in one way or another in the last 12 years, and I think it\u2019s very misunderstood in terms of the speculation and the bad actors, but it\u2019s also just a new way to reimagine the internet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Inspired by Friend.tech<\/a>, meme depot has a feature called meme party, which turns specific meme categories into communities. Using cryptocurrency, users can buy depot passes to join the meme party, which is basically just an ephemeral, cursor-based chat. But for people who don\u2019t want anything to do with crypto, it\u2019s not necessary to pay money or open a crypto wallet to engage with Meme Depot in any way. It allows early pass holders of a meme collection to earn a bit of money as more people join it.<\/p>\n Taub is well aware that this tactic could spark debate.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of controversy about like, who is allowed to monetize memes? Is it the creator of the meme, is it the person in the meme?\u201d he said. \u201cIf this takes off the way I think it will, we might add a new wrinkle to this, which is a good thing. You want people to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n These same questions were raised during the NFT boom of 2021, when the subjects of viral memes like Scumbag Steve<\/a>, Disaster Girl<\/a> and Overly Attached Girlfriend<\/a> sold their iconic images as NFTs. This was often the first time that these people earned any money for being the subject of viral memes \u2013 Disaster Girl, now in her twenties, earned the equivalent of $500,000 in ETH at the time, though that could have depreciated significantly depending on what she did with the cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/memedepot3.jpg?w=680\")
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