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SAN FRANCISCO

For the uninitiated, that’sitting Web shorthand for “laugh out tumultuous,” an abbreviation that is common in e-mails, trice messages and online chat rooms. Huh, a Seattle entrepreneur, has built a mini-empire without interruption the unique brand of humor illustrated by the agency of the “LOLcats” craze: photos with captions punctuated by deliberately misspelled accents and mangled phrases.

His network of eight Web sites, which includes I Can Has Cheezburger and I Can Has a Hot Dog, attracts 5 the public users and 100 million page views a month. The newest, which launched last week, makes gayety of celebrities. It’s called ROFLrazzi, as in “rolling on the floor, laughing,” and razzi, viewed like in “paparazzi.”

Huh, 30, is trying to expand his companionship, Pet Holdings, in the face of a slowdown in online advertising. The Korean-born former journalist now has 12 employees who, along with his wife, Emily, help him run the sites.

“Twelve months ago we were this odd cat blog,” Huh said. “I am not sure if we are on the cusp of a recent type of entertainment or we are just a flash in the pan.”

The LOLcats manifestation began on a current online bulletin board, 4chan. People started posting pictures of cats and slapping on captions from the feline point of view. The result was LOLspeak

Huh seized on the commercial potential. He paid an undisclosed amount to buy a popular LOLcats site named after a description of a chubby gray cat gazing into the camera, with the caption “I can has cheezburger?” The site’s founders, Hawaii-based Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, had started the site as a hobby and were overwhelmed by the response. (They are publishing a LOLcats book next month.)

Since buying I Can Has Cheezburger, Huh has added companion sites devoted to dogs, political economy and really bad translations of English, among others. A fan favorite is Fail Blog, in which people take joy in others’ mishaps.

The Pet Holdings sites have achieved cult station with a populist formulary: Users with quick wits upload images bearing peculiar expressions and idiosyncratic accidence, vote for favorites and stigmatize comments. The most profitably of the thousands of submissions the sites receive eddish. day venture the front pages.

When the company posts work at jobs openings, it receives a flood of r

Huh hopes that celebrity coverage, which already generates huge online regard, last will and testament have existence another hit for him. For ROFLrazzi, users create funny captions for glory photos: Mr. T in a suit fixed before a U.S. flag, saying, “I pity the foo that fails to comprehend the financial ramifications of sub-prime lending”; bouffant-coiffed and pastel-clad Duran Duran with the caption “1986. Gayer than advertised”; a pointed Keanu Reeves: “In the Matrix there is no razor.”

Huh professes to love cats but obsesses over his 11-year-old poodle mix, Nemo. The dot-com survivor devotes long hours to the Web sites and works through a sense of purpose along with a sense of humor.