2. Facebook

Originator(s): Mark Zuckerberg

Year: 2004

Worth: $70-$100 billion

How it took off: Sure, there have been a lot of other social networks before Facebook, but none of them made it this big. So what made Facebook this hot? Well, it was personal (note the ‘was’) and you could personalize your settings to keep things personal and yet connect to people you knew. Also, it was targeted at the college audience. The site was kept minimal and gave people just about what they needed, and kept improving over time to include features. Facebook filed for an IPO a couple of months ago and is in its “quiet period”, but it estimated to be worth anything from $70-$100 billion.

3. ICanHasCheezburger?

Originator(s): Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami

Year: 2007

Worth: $ 9,984,120 (estimated, as per data from worthofweb.com)

How it took off: Eric Nakagawa, a blogger from Hawaii and his girlfriend Kari Unebasami, started the site with a picture of a cat that had a caption reading “I Can Has Cheezburger?” in a style that was popularized by 4Chan (an imageboard website). The pair went on to post more humorous pictures like it. According to the inspiringinterns.com blog, they later sold it for $2 million to the site’s current CEO, Ben Huh who blew the site up to six other sister websites, and brought home a book deal that made a New York Times Best Seller-- the company makes about half a million from book sales alone every year! The site is said to receive as many as 1,500,000 hits and as many as 8,000 uploads from its users every day. According to worthofweb.com, the site is worth almost $10,000,000.