The site was created in 1999 by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, two high school friends from Baltimore, Maryland as a means to stay in touch when they attended college. It has since grown considerably and is operated by Connected Ventures, a New York company comprising Abramson, Van Veen, Jakob Lodwick, and Zach Klein as partners, that also owns Defunker, BustedTees, and Vimeo. Site traffic averages eight million monthly unique visitors; most visitors are men between the ages of 18 and 24.