Heavy.com has almost no text on it, with video programming (and ads -- can't forget the ads!) forming most of its content and video games determining its aesthetics. And as a result, it had a measly 5.5 million unique visitors in February, tripling its audience from a year earlier.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

"This will be over faster than your last relationship" and ".001% of your daily ad intake" are the sorts of wisecracks users see right above the video commercial that greets them when they visit Heavy.com.

And that pretty much sets the tone of knowing commercialism for a Web site that has become one of the most popular among a growing crop of sites attracting young people with racy, humorous video programming.

Heavy is honed especially for young men. It mixes animation, music, video games, grainy home movies of oddball characters, supermodels in bikinis and pop culture parodies. Often, all of these elements are squished into a single two-minute clip. Advertising is everywhere.

This potent stew drew 5.5 million users to Heavy.com in February, according to comScore Media Metrix, nearly triple the audience of a year earlier.

Heavy's founders and chief executives, Simon Assaad and David Carson, both 35, say they modeled the frenetic site — with quick-triggered interactive features and almost no text — more on a video game than any other media form.

About half of the videos are submitted by amateurs, but Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad put up only those that fit Heavy's rude and wry sensibility.

"Heavy has always been about our point of view," Mr. Carson said. "That's why we have attracted an audience." The site makes money through advertising, and all of the videos and game offerings are free.

Howard Handler, the chief marketing officer at Virgin Mobile, which advertises on Heavy, said that the site worked because Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad "really get the 18- to 34-year-old market."

More and more Internet services are being built around video programming rather than traditional Web pages, and much of it aims to attract viewers in their late teens and 20's.