eToro

Build a 'meme factory' of branded GIFs on Giphy for distribution

Dan Held copied eToro's tactic: make watermarked, on-brand GIFs of popular memes and upload them to Giphy, which feeds into Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and search—turning memes into a self-propagating distribution channel.

“So I took like the most popular Bitcoin memes and then wrapped it in my own black and white design to where you could search like Dan Held and you'd see a bunch of black and white GIFs and have my logo watermarked on there. So like, you can kind of create meme factories is what I learned from that.”

Steal thisUpload branded, watermarked GIFs to Giphy so your content propagates through every platform that pulls Giphy results.

The Turkish Stud: the inspiration for Hot or Not (and maybe Borat)

A Turkish man's innocent ping-pong photos were turned by an anonymous prankster into a fake 'come for sexy time' page that went viral via StumbleUpon-like site eToro. Hong believes Borat was based on him, and the accidental virality inspired Hong and his co-founder to build Hot or Not.

“He was— he called himself the Turkish stud, and he's like, who wants to come to my country? I can invite you, come have sex. You know, like, it was Borat basically, like, oh, come for sexy time, right? And, uh, and, and it blew up. There was this company called eToro that kind of like, um, jumped on it”