SXSW keynoter reflects on his Web hit 4chan

If you're the parent of teenagers and have always wondered what they really get up to online when you're not watching, Christopher Poole might simultaneously represent both the best- and worst-case scenarios.

In 2003, at the age of 15, he created a message board for people to post images and to discuss Japanese "manga" comics and animation. Going by the name "moot," Poole gave Internet users a place to discuss pretty much whatever they wanted by using online tools to translate the labels and navigation language of a Japanese message board forum called "2chan" into English. He tried to call it "3chan," he has said, but that name was already taken. 4chan.org, then, was born. And that's when things got a little crazy.

The story doesn't turn into a success story about a geek prodigy who's suddenly worth billions of dollars, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, Poole, who is a keynote speaker today at South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival, has watched with a mixture of fascination and chagrin as 4chan and one of the online groups that originated there, "Anonymous," have for years made headlines.

Members of Anonymous, a decentralized group of Internet users, have engaged in coordinated attacks on banking websites, declared war on the Church of Scientology, and in one memorable incident in 2008, hacked into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail.

But 4chan hasn't just been a meeting ground for hackers and anarchists. It's contributed immeasurably to the Internet's culture of collaboration and the speedy spread of "memes" (Internet jokes or concepts that course through the Web). It's also provoked discussion about the limits of the First Amendment as it applies to the virtual world.

4chan hasn't turned the boyish, whipsmart Poole, now 23, into a rich young man.

In fact, he says that 4chan, which has about 12 million users every month who post about 1 million messages a day and is one of the most influential online communities, pays for itself with advertising but barely turns a profit. It has no paid staff, just volunteers.

"Nobody takes a paycheck from 4chan," Poole said in a phone interview with the American-Statesman. "It's a site that breaks even or makes a little bit more. All of that profit gets saved and reinvested into the site."

While the Wild West of 4chan has been championed by some for being one of the online world's true epicenters for no-holds-barred freedom of virtual expression, it's also reviled for anything-goes postings of pornography and for being a meeting ground for groups like Anonymous.

Poole, whose identity was kept secret until a Wall Street Journal article in 2008 revealed it, grew up and still lives in New York City. He works with his volunteers to keep the site running, delete illegal material (images that could be child pornography, for instance) and cooperate with police when necessary. Some incidents he's had to help police with have involved bomb threats and the Palin e-mail hacking.

Just over a month ago, a new project he's working on — paid for with venture capital investments — made its debut online in stealthy, invite-only form.

Canvas, which has a team of four employees including Poole, has given him his first real day job and a chance to take what he's learned from 4chan and apply it to a company that wants to reinvent the way people play and collaborate online.

At one time, Poole has said in interviews, he kept his online 4chan identity a secret from his parents because of the adult material that was being posted, but after he was 18, it was because of 4chan's increasingly notorious reputation.

His parents didn't find out who "moot" was until around the time the rest of the world did. The next year, 2009, Poole received 16,794,368 votes to become named the World's Most Influential Person in a Time 100 Poll.

"To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective," Time sniffed in a write-up revealing the results, "it's worth noting that everyone moot beat out actually has a job."

Users of 4chan and perhaps its shadowy offshoot, Anonymous, may have stuffed the ballot box, but they had a point.