4Chan Hits 22 Million Monthly Unique Visitors & Releases New API

Sites include 4Chan.org . Published on September 17th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Someone once described 4Chan.org as the “cesspool of the internet”; but thanks to the loyalty of many of its users, the site has now grown into a bona fide web presence.

According to the sites founder, Christopher Poole (aka Moot), 4Chan is now getting 22 million unique visitors monthly. The majority of these people visit the site which is really an image board to look at and share some of the more outrageous and obscene elements of the net. 4Chan is also a community, a place where people get together and chat about stuff. Sometimes that ‘stuff’ takes on a life of its own and in many circles; the now popular internet meme had its genesis on the 4Chan image board.

All this growth has apparently caused Poole to explore more mainstream ways of distributing the content found on 4Chan, and this of course involves allowing the site users to interact in a broader way and across multiple platforms. Poole’s solution for this way of mainstreaming 4Chan has taken the form of an API release. Said Poole of the new API, “’4chan’ and ‘API’ are certainly two words I never thought I’d find in the same sentence, but alas, here we are.” Regarding what he expects people might build, moot told me over email that “I’m honestly not sure, which is what makes this exciting. There are already a number of third-party browser add-ons that enhance usability…so I’m curious to see if this spurs a new wave of tools that aren’t just limited to browser add-ons.”

New APIs might not be the only things that come out of the 4Chan crew; with just over 600 million monthly page views coming its way, it’s only a matter of time before Poole starts letting advertisers in.