Featured Bloggers: Matthew Genitempo and Jonathan Standefer of Lamebook
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Have you ever been cruising through your Facebook News Feed and wondered to yourself, “Is it just me, or is this post completely ridiculous?” It’s not just you. The founders of Lamebook, Matthew Genitempo and Jonathan Standefer, and their strong following are definitely with you. Matthew and Jonathan appreciate the hilarious photos, status updates and conversations that take place on Facebook so much, they decided to document them on Lamebook starting in April 2009. Since then, these two Texan graphic designers have updated fans with daily posts of the funny–often unintentional– posts that make it onto Facebook. In addition to checking out Lamebook, fans can enjoy join over 19,000 others by “liking” their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter, where they have more than 21,000 current followers.
- Lamebook Founders Mathew Genitempo and Jonathan Standefer
Q: When and why did you start blogging?
A: The idea for Lamebook was born from a few beers and a little bit of
frustration in October of 2008. Matthew and I were just hanging out one
night, talking and joking about all of the dumb content we would see on
our Facebook feeds and decided to start cataloging them just for fun. So
we finally launched the site in April of 2009 and were really happy with
the response.
Q: How do you think your blog stands out amongst blogs of the same genre?
A: We are the original blog to feature all of the funny and bizarre posts
from Facebook and we think the quality of our content and the design of
the website is much better than other copycat sites.
Q: What do your family and friends think of your blogging?
A: Both of our moms refuse to read the blog due to some of its content, but our dads are all about it. And our grandmothers don’t know how to use a computer, thank God. Our friends have always been extremely supportive and are always great to throw in any ideas they have to make the site better.
Q: Which blogger most inspires you to keep blogging?
A: We really like DontEvenReply.com. He basically responds to people’s craigslist postings and messes with them. That guy who runs the site continues to put out hilarious and original content. He is using the same medium, but his content is always fresh. If you are not reading his website, you are seriously missing out.
Q: What criteria do you use when choosing what submissions to post on Lamebook?
A: There isn’t a specific formula for finding a good post. We pretty much put up whatever makes us laugh.
Q: How many times have you redesigned your blog since it started?
A: After the website’s traffic started taking off, we launched one big redesign to improve the user experience. We make small updates here and there and are planning to launch another large redesign soon!
Q: How much do you correspond one-on-one with readers?
A: We rarely correspond with the people that are commenting on the posts, but we do our best to respond to every person that sends us questions and feedback via email.
Q: What joys did you not expect when you started blogging? What pains?
A: We definitely didn’t expect to get such a positive response when we started the site but it was a pleasant surprise. We also got to speak at an internet conference in Boston called ROFLcon which was a blast, and we got to meet a lot of other cool bloggers. Other joys include landing a book deal and a daily desktop calendar deal.
As far as pains go, there’s not a ‘how to’ book for running a blogging business, so learning the entire process and working out the kinks was a bit difficult at times… But definitely worth it.
Q: What’s something your readers don’t know about you?
A: Matt uses an obscenely lengthy amount of dental floss for fear that he will floss food back into his teeth. Jonathan has seen Avril Lavigne in concert… more than once.
Q: What’s your personal favorite blog post?
A: We both really like this post called “Not So Shore.” Hopefully the kid will actually submit his essay to us one day.
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