Enterprise chat platform HipChat has entered the 101 Battle of the Billboards, putting up the above memetastic masterpiece on the 101 North after the Whipple exit this past Friday. For the uninitiated, the “Y U NO USE HIPCHAT?” billboard is a take off of the startup friendly Y U NO guy meme, which has already spawned at least one parody Twitter account run by YCombinator hopefuls.
Billboards on the 101 cost a whopping 30K, so companies haven’t always been so willing to use that expensive real estate to appeal to those of us used to trolling 4Chan. But the billboard creative in SF and SV has really upped the intellectual ante ever since younger startups started buying the roadside placards: “We made it because we were sick of billboards like this,” HipChat co-founder Peter Curley explains.
(Why is it always Microsoft?)
And the company’s appeal to the more internet savvy of drivers among us seems to be working, as search traffic for “HipChat” has gone up 300% since the billboard went up, according to Curley. Also, they got another TechCrunch post.
Unrelated: Here’s the HipChat “Arrington” emotion. Yes, this exists.
Image via: LaoFuSi/Reddit
