• 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.

    5:00 AM on Thu Oct 2 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    479 views, Comment

  • 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 »

    11:00 PM on Sun Sep 28 2008
    By Jackson West
    4,056 views, 10 comments

    Most discussed Shadowlayer: Wealth? wasnt he broke before slide? Does VC meant for Slide, not the founder, counts as personal wealth now? ¬_¬ more »

  • 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 »

    3:20 PM on Mon May 12 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    1,449 views, 5 comments

    Latest by plushmessiah: It's amazing that this shit is actually called "book". more »

  • 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.

    9:40 AM on Wed Feb 13 2008
    By Nicholas Carlson
    977 views, 1 comment

    Latest by matto: Give her a break. Amid the confusion of her impending layoff from Yahoo, she mistyped 'jobs@valleywag.com'. more »

  • 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."

    6:32 PM on Mon Feb 11 2008
    By Jordan Golson
    4,071 views, 8 comments

    Latest by Owen Thomas: @MrMedia: Diller? Tits? you learn something new every day. more »

  • 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 »

    11:26 AM on Fri Nov 16 2007
    By Owen Thomas
    1,547 views, 8 comments

    Latest by Alex_S: Hmmm - odd - when i looked through FB recently - i couldn't find Starbucks official presence? If it's there - more »

  • 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! :)
    More »

    5:51 PM on Fri Oct 19 2007
    By Owen Thomas
    1,041 views, 1 comment

    Latest by sample032: I'm not convinced Ashanti and Sean Kingston are particularly notable. It's not like they're the Beastie Boys. more »

  • 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 »

    Feature

    3:45 PM on Wed Oct 17 2007
    By Megan McCarthy
    749 views, 1 comment

    Latest by rafer: It's Oren Michels, not Oren Michaels. more »

  • 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 »

    10:14 AM on Tue Sep 18 2007
    By Tim Faulkner
    3,865 views, 4 comments

    Latest by Magister: Hot or Not is a dating site? I thought it was just a pre-MySpace tool for attention whores. more »

  • 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.

    12:40 PM on Mon Jul 9 2007
    By Tim Faulkner
    501 views, 1 comment

    Latest by DaveMcClure500Hats: hmm. dunno, but maybe you guys should spend more time 2nd-guessing people who haven't already made a boatload of more »