Gawker
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geek love
HotOrNot founder James Hong engaged
James Hong, who recently sold rating-and-dating site HotOrNot, has announced his engagement to girlfriend Julia Zhang. I wondered if he'd dropped down on one knee at Max Levchin's wedding over the weekend, where he served as best man, but Hong tells me he popped the question a few weeks ago. Hong also celebrated his 35th birthday earlier this week. I guess this settles the question, James: Definitely hot. -
max levchin
Please don't post photos of my wedding to Slide
Slide founder Max Levchin made longtime lover Nellie Minkova an honest woman on Saturday. The ceremony was held at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel, and featured HotOrNot cofounder James Hong as best man, with fellow PayPal mafioso Peter Thiel another groomsman. Gracious enough for the couple to refuse gifts besides books and wine, considering how many zeros Levchin can count toward his (and now their) wealth. However, rather ironic that the bride and groom asked guests not to upload any pictures from the ceremonies online for "privacy" reasons. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Shadowlayer: Wealth? wasnt he broke before slide? Does VC meant for Slide, not the founder, counts as personal wealth now? ¬_¬ 3 Responses | Other threads
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once you're lucky, twice you're good
L is for Levchin, who never goes slow
Max Levchin, the cofounder of PayPal and the CEO of Slide, measures nearly everything, down to the optimum price to pay for an engagement ring. If he needs a metric for self-importance, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, provides one. He occupies 78 out of 294 pages, more than anyone else. Here are the index pages for "F" through "M": More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by plushmessiah: It's amazing that this shit is actually called "book". more » | Other threads
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spam
HotorNot kindles true love
Founders James Hong and Jim Young sold HotorNot earlier this week, but so far, it's business as usual for the operation. Meaning, the site remains a very effective means of getting a date. Check out Daniya here. She's completely smitten with our secret correspondent and man of mystery, Tips. Sadly for Daniya, Tips prefers a different kind of "dating" site.
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Comment by matto: Give her a break. Amid the confusion of her impending layoff from Yahoo, she mistyped 'jobs@valleywag.com'. more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
HotorNot sold for $20 million, founders now rated 10/10 with the ladies
HotorNot.com, the online "dating service" that lets you rate pictures of the opposite sex based on hotness and then connect with the ones you like, has been bought for around $20 million according to TechCrunch. Valleywag alumna Megan McCarthy pours water on that figure, citing cofounder James Hong: there were "very few people on the deal and there's no reason for us to tell anyone" about the price. Founders James Hong and Jim Young will no longer be involved with the company after the sale. Hong said, "It's time to break up with this girlfriend."
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Comment by Owen Thomas: @MrMedia: Diller? Tits? you learn something new every day. more » | Other threads
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online advertising
Starbucks has few fans on Facebook
The premise behind Facebook's Social Ads is the notion that users of the social network will declare their brand loyalty on the site, and thereby opt into targeted ads from some of their favorite corporations. Starbucks, despite a recent dip in store visits after a price hike, serves 44 million customers a week. So you'd think a few of those customers might have admitted to being fans of Facebook, right? Wrong. Facebook's Starbucks product page has all of 59 fans. I think there were that many people in my local Starbucks the last time I bought a latte. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Alex_S: Hmmm - odd - when i looked through FB recently - i couldn't find Starbucks official presence? If it's there -... more » | Other threads
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bubblewatch
Sean Kingston gets violent with BitTorrent
Writes HotorNot founder James Hong on BitTorrent's party this week at Fluid, where rapper Sean Kingston took the stage:Last night, almost as if to out-LA LA, SF company BitTorrent had a small party at fluid to celebrate the launch of their CDN network (brilliant business move!). They apparently arranged in conjuction with a local radio station for Ashanti and Sean Kingston to perform to the tiny crowd. I took a picture of BitTorrent's founders Bram and Ashwin to memorialize the moment, sensing that it denoted SOMETHING.. whether it's a sign that the bubble is getting bigger, or the more likely conclusion that techie work is now getting more main stream and therefore a lot cooler remains to be seen! :)
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By Owen ThomasComment by sample032: I'm not convinced Ashanti and Sean Kingston are particularly notable. It's not like they're the Beastie Boys. more » | Other threads
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party report
Much love to Web 2.0
The week of Web 2.0 Summit, with the industry converging on San Francisco, seems like as good time as any to throw a shindig. Everyone's in town for the schmoozefest, so you might get to meet quality people who normally avoid the party scene. While my boss hit the Reddit party, I hopped around town to some of the other events. Three, in fact. VC firm True Ventures held a gathering at their offices on Pier 38, a tech industry jam session — for charity, naturally — occurred across town at the Rickshaw Stop, and VCs Eric Chin and Mike Jung held a private party at Fluid for attendees of their intimate Alpha dinners in Woodside. Who needs sleep this week? More » -
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hotornot
Dating site not so hot with advertisers?
HotorNot.com, the online dating and rating site run by Jim Young and James Hong, is abandoning its experiment in free, ad-supported user profiles and is reverting back to paid memberships. Is this a sign of failure? According to an email from Young and Hong to past and current members, no. Free profiles led to a flood of spammers that were overloading the website — an outcome that members had predicted at the time. Plausible. And yet plenty of other sites offer free profiles while keeping spammers at least somewhat in check. Could this actually be a tacit acknowledgement that all the assumptions that cofounder Hong made in a blog post announcing the move to make HotorNot free three months ago were, well, wrong? That online advertising is not, in fact, HotorNot's future? The full email after the jump. More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by Magister: Hot or Not is a dating site? I thought it was just a pre-MySpace tool for attention whores. more » | Other threads
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hot or not
James Hong sees the future a little late
James Hong, founder of the popular rating/dating service Hot or Not blogs about the future of his company's strategy and products. The short version: social bookmarking, Hot. Subscription dating: Not. It's difficult to question the success Hot or Not has brought James Hong (and his partner Jim) — reportedly "multi millions of profits per year" — but it's much easier to ask: did Jim and James exploit a fad at the right time, and now are playing catch up to the newest fad? The lengthy explanation of how the improved market data and directed advertising of a social network is a business (No way!) and that users like social applications (Get out!) suggest so. Transforming a successful business is Hot; mimicking every other business is Not.
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By Tim FaulknerComment by DaveMcClure500Hats: hmm. dunno, but maybe you guys should spend more time 2nd-guessing people who haven't already made a boatload of... more » | Other threads
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hot or not
Hot or Notters at loggerheads?
A tipster writers in with goss on potential rumblings within the cerebral confines of Hot or Not:inside scoop is that Hong and the other guy are having problems, can't agree on the direction of the company. Hong wants to take it much further, make it a friendster/myspace thing and throw everything in such as video, blogs, the whole 9. Engineers are leaving and new ones are hard to come by. They may just sell it if they can't work it out in the next 30 days.
Poor Jim Young, always "the other guy" to James Hong. Though normally we assume that everything we're told is true, we're going to cast doubt on this one. Rumor has Hot or Not making a pleasant pile of cash ($6 million a year). We've already mentioned Hong hiring engineers, and though he's certainly ambitious — and probably feels that pals like Paypaller Max Levchin have done better — bailing out now would seem a little premature.
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By Chris MohneyComment by Randolf: Fair enough James. I was overly harsh saying you were pulling numbers out of your ass. You were... more » | Other threads
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james hong
James Hong doesn't hate African AIDS babies
Thanks to a Valleywag post from earlier today, one of sixteen tech superstars has replied to a message from Curt Hopkins. More » -
charity
Internet Millionaires to African AIDS Babies: Drop dead!
Marketer and pro-blogger advocate Curt Hopkins is a good and reasonable man. Good because he's running the Blogswana project, in which students will help those affected by AIDS in Africa tell the world about their plight. Reasonable because when he asked the following Valley people — people known as good souls with a passion for world-changing technology — for financial support, he expected a few yeses and a few nos. More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by JasonCalacanis: Never got an email... send again. more » | Other threads
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adaptive path
Adaptive Path: "I think it might be a beverage."
Okay, Adaptive Path (yes, yes, the people in the tub of lust, everyone keeps bringing it up) is one of the few unmockable San Francisco Internet startups. It puts out an actual service, has actual offices (with REAL DESKS. Really), and it's been up and running for five years. Now it's selling bits of itself to Google and hooking up hook-up artists at anniversary parties. More » -
valleywag hotties
Valleywag hotties: Hot-or-not that there's anything wrong with that
Ladies: Lemme talk to the gentlemen for a minute. Some of them are dealing with tough feelin's right now. More » -
ratings
Valley sluts on the Slut-o-Meter
Big sister Lifehacker gives us the best "productivity" tool ever: the Slut-o-meter gives a safe-to-unsafe result ratio, or basically a promiscuity rating. Since computers are never wrong about sex, I ran some bold names through the meter for an official Valley Slut Register: More » -
remainders
Remainders: Today must be naked day
James Hong and Jim Young once posted a Hot or Not billboard showing them naked with laptops. The sign was taken down, but James just found it again on MSN Live Local. [James Hong] More » -
candids
Classic Valley candids
If D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, then Silicon Valley is D.C. for the even uglier. (A cheap joke, of course, which we'll contradict with our Valley Hotties contests.) Everyone has a bad photo now and then; the fun is when they get promoted up to the "don't share bad photos" ranks of one tech giant or another. Above is the lovely Sergey Brin in drag, looking as scary as the evil girl in "The Ring." After the jump, shots of Hot or Not founder James Hong and Google VP Marissa Mayer. More »
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