Local startup capitalizing on pop culture quotes
SEATTLE -- David Aronchick just had to hear WOPR. He had to.
"My buddy and I were actually sitting around and talking about a movie that we loved -- 'WarGames,' he said.
"WarGames" is a cult classic movie from 1983 that tells the tale of a young hacker's encounter with a powerful war machine called the War Operation Plan Response, or WOPR.
WOPR had a pre-Siri computer voice and in nerd lore, the line "Would you like to play a game?" became a catch phrase for the love of 1980s computers.
Now that line fills Aronchick's paycheck.
He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hark.com, a Capitol Hill startup that takes movies, TV shows, sports, news and even video games and breaks them down into popular lines, quotes, sound effects and phrases.
The site allows listeners to find their favorite lines from anything from "Saturday Night Live" to "Citizen Kane" and push them through social media.
Even "WarGames."
Hark and the content owners split ad revenues, and so far it's working. Adronchick says Hark gets 66 million views a month, and studios are noticing.
"Content is so viral, this actually ends up becoming an advertisement for the content itself," he said.
"My buddy and I were actually sitting around and talking about a movie that we loved -- 'WarGames,' he said.
"WarGames" is a cult classic movie from 1983 that tells the tale of a young hacker's encounter with a powerful war machine called the War Operation Plan Response, or WOPR.
WOPR had a pre-Siri computer voice and in nerd lore, the line "Would you like to play a game?" became a catch phrase for the love of 1980s computers.
Now that line fills Aronchick's paycheck.
He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hark.com, a Capitol Hill startup that takes movies, TV shows, sports, news and even video games and breaks them down into popular lines, quotes, sound effects and phrases.
The site allows listeners to find their favorite lines from anything from "Saturday Night Live" to "Citizen Kane" and push them through social media.
Even "WarGames."
Hark and the content owners split ad revenues, and so far it's working. Adronchick says Hark gets 66 million views a month, and studios are noticing.
"Content is so viral, this actually ends up becoming an advertisement for the content itself," he said.
