Canvas members received a celebratory email in their inbox this morning. The image-driven social website celebrated its first birthday this week, as well as its one millionth post. As a sign the startup is all growns up, Canvas also announced that you no longer have to use Facebook to sign up. Email notifications “when someone replies or remixes one of your posts” are also now enabled, which should encourage users to visit the site.
When Christopher Poole, the fair-haired boy prince of meme land, first founded Canvas, it sounded like purposeful departure from his first startup, 4chan. Instead of the malwebolence of the /b/ boards, users were asked to “Keep it safe for work | Don’t be mean | Stay on topic.” That may have helped the startup pick up $3.63 million in funding, but it yielded mixed results, at first. (Nazi necrophilia, anyone?)
But that appears to have changed.
A quick look at the most popular posts on Canvas over the past month and past year (admittedly, neither have which represents a big block of time) seem almost PG. The overall flavor is your standard teenage humor and angst, with a bit of a nerdy twist. Oh yeah, and a healthy appreciation of the comedy stylings of one Bill Murray. Whether Canvas’s more sanitized offerings will go as viral, however, still remains to be seen.
