How was Brotips started? And why were they successful?

[Mooza]

I have an awesome idea similar to Brotips. Absolutely no competition right now as it's a fresh idea. Could someone give me some background to Brotips? Didn't they originate on Tumblr?

 

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[The-J]

Before looking it up: Brotips was started by a bunch of high school/college students in Toronto on a Tumblr account with no intention to make money. All they wanted to do was share something funny. The site spread through word of mouth and then they purchased the domain name 'www.brotips.com'. They started to realize that running a site like that cost money, so they added an affiliate program to try and raise funds to keep the site going instead of running purely on donations. Thanks to Facebook and other social networking sites, Brotips spread past Toronto and hit, well, the world. The brand became so powerful (possibly due to its association with How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson) that Cuban decided to buy it, possibly for a few million dollars (but probably not more than that). Those kids will now be able to pay for their college tuition.

After looking it up: Now I'm starting to think that Brotips was built by a couple of kids who made money through web design. I can't seem to find much, but all I know is that the information I got 'before looking it up' was from that article that said that Mark Cuban bought the brand. Also, I'm pretty sure that the kids who made it aren't part of the board of directors anymore; they were probably ousted a while back.

Seriously, Bro: Mark Cuban Invests Big In Brotips | Fast Company

"Brotips started, like so many bro adventures, because of a girl. Some guy at Emory University had failed to score in the way he'd hoped, and he took to Facebook to vent his frustrations. It got real, man. Ugly. People were talking. That's when freshman Dominique Barfield left a little message--that "99%" line--on the offending dude's wall.

Within 12 hours, 140,000 people had repeated the line on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Barfield and some friends were like, whoa! They wanted to seize the bromentum, so they launched a Tumblr called Brotips, and started writing more tips--wisdom to build a better bro. They were brolific. Traffic grew. The team launched a Twitter and Facebook page, capitalizing on the brotential of what they were doing: They'd become a media company that produced little tips for big bros, content designed to be easily shared."

so yeah, that. sorry about the long and disorganized post

 

[CarrieW]

well I have no idea where it came from or how or when it started but the only place I ever seen or heard of bro tips is at the end of the tv sitcom how I met your mother!

 

[domainflipguy]

Brotips is a fad, AskMen, etc. etc. that's how things scale and die off. End of story. Sorry.

 

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