Caption Cat

We post the photo, you write the caption. Every day. 😹

8 followers

We post the photo, you write the caption. Every day. 😹

8 followers

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Caption Cat is a creative challenge. Every day we post a photo and you get to write the caption. Come up with a funny caption and upvote your favorites. Start your day with a smile right meow!

Launch tags:News•Writing•Photography

Launch Team

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Promoted

Loot

Maker

Hi all! I've had this idea for a few years and kept coming back. So a week ago, while sitting in bed, I challenged myself to build a prototype in 15 minutes. It worked! I got a very basic prototype working where people could sign up for an account (email/password) and post captions. I would manually add the photos in the database and hotlink them. No file uploads, no voting, no anti spam measures, no real design to speak of. Not even a dedicated domain name. I shared the prototype with some friends and the WIP community. Based on the feedback and user behavior I made some refinements and added some features. First of all people kept sending me their captions in the chat as they couldn't be bothered to create an account. So I added Twitter and Facebook sign in. I also added upvotes to have non-funny and spammy captions automatically move down the list + give more of a game element to it. Initially there were both upvotes and downvotes, but people kept downvoting each other so I removed those. I also added a "hall of fame" leaderboard to see where you rank amongst the community. How funny actually are you? Finally I improved the design. Added some character by adding a bunch of cat illustrations I licenses from Creative Market. I don't have concrete future plans for it yet. We'll see if people like it. If there's enough interest I'll build out the site and eventually look into monetizing it. Here's a silly idea I had: https://caption.cat/eyeballs Curious to hear what you think! Please give it a try.

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8yr ago

Wire Flow

@marckohlbrugge Nice idea Mark. This could be paid service for people whos caption get chosen. Marketers, entrepreneurs can pay for captions on their Instagram posts, etc.

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8yr ago

Loot

Maker

@stefan_smiljkovic Thanks. Yeah that might be an interesting area to explore if there are enough talented users participating. Let's hope so :)

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8yr ago

Humans Not Invited

@marckohlbrugge luv dis so much!

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7yr ago

Marc, this is a fun idea. My daughter LOVES captioning illustrations, she'd flip at the cats gif. What tools did you use for the original 15 minute version? What is your stack now?

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8yr ago

Loot

Maker

@benjamin_wheeler I don't know how old your daughter is, but viewer discretion is advised. You never know what kind of captions people will come up with. I used Ruby on Rails, Heroku (hosting), and the Devise Ruby gem (signup/signin). I later added OmniAuth Ruby gem (sign in with Facebook/Twitter), acts_as_votable Ruby gem (voting), and switched to Hatchbox on Linode for hosting.

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8yr ago

Hustle Crew Academy

Just took a look... people are coming up with some pretty random captions 👀 like... I think I'm laughing at them not with them @marckohlbrugge

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8yr ago

Hustle Crew Academy

@marckohlbrugge That said, your gif thumbnail perfectly describes my reaction 😄

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8yr ago

Loot

Maker

@abadesi Haha yeah not everybody shares the same taste in humor. Plus there are a bunch of inside jokes, because many of the beta testers came from the same group chat (WIP). My hope is that by publicly launching Caption Cat it will attract a more diverse set of users and with the voting system in place the funniest captions will automatically surface towards the top.

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8yr ago

Hustle Crew Academy

@marckohlbrugge Ah I see. Makes sense

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8yr ago

i love this product! In japan, https://bokete.jp/ this service is very popular. this must be world hit!

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8yr ago

Loot

Maker

@fuji_syan How similar is it? My Japanese is near non-existent haha. Arigato.

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8yr ago

@marckohlbrugge same system. https://bokete.jp/boke/63946513 someone post a image and others make captions. Do-itashimashite(your welcome)

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8yr ago

Loot

Maker

@fuji_syan Ah I see. Very similar indeed. I will have a closer look. Perhaps I could learn a thing or two.

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8yr ago

Pingman

I started making captions for this site since its birth, it requires reflection and creativity. It's not only funny but it's also relaxing. I like seeing something in the world and giving it an unexpected meaning.

Pros:

Funny captions and a great photo every day.

Cons:

None.

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8yr ago