Caption Cat

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

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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!
Caption Cat gallery image
Caption Cat gallery image
Launch tags:News•Writing•Photography
Launch Team
AppSignal
AppSignal
Built for dev teams, not Fortune 500s.
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What do you think? …

Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
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.
Stefan Smiljkovic
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.
Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
Maker
@stefan_smiljkovic Thanks. Yeah that might be an interesting area to explore if there are enough talented users participating. Let's hope so :)
Damjanski
@marckohlbrugge luv dis so much!
Abadesi
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
Abadesi
Hustle Crew Academy
@marckohlbrugge That said, your gif thumbnail perfectly describes my reaction 😄
Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
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.
Abadesi
Hustle Crew Academy
@marckohlbrugge Ah I see. Makes sense
Cat Hastings
As a cat I appreciate this. Thanks ❤️
Vincent Denise

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.

Garg Ankit
On what basis are you selecting the pic as of now?
Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
Maker
@graciousgarg It's pretty random right now. The original idea was to pick photos from the news, but I don't want things to get too political/divisive and I want to be careful making fun of humanitarian problems, etc.
Ryan Hoover
Product Hunt
Love the product thumbnail, @marckohlbrugge. 😸
Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
Maker
@rrhoover Thanks. Didn't make it myself. Got it from an artist at Creative Market. I would credit the person here, but last time I did that I saw the same illustrations pop up everywhere the next day 😂
Benjamin Wheeler
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?
Marc Köhlbrugge
Vision Directory
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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