History
The site was founded in October 2000 by James Hong and Jim Young, two friends and Silicon Valley-based engineers. Both graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in electrical engineering, with Young pursuing a Ph.D at the time.
The site was a technical solution to a disagreement they made one day over a passing woman's attractiveness. The site was originally called "Am I Hot or Not". Within a week of launching, it had reached almost two million page views per day. Within a few months, the site was immediately behind CNET and NBCi on NetNielsen Rating's Top 25 advertising domains. To keep up with rising costs Hong and Young added a matchmaking component to their website called "Meet Me at Hot or Not", i.e. a system of range voting. The matchmaking service has been especially successful and the site continues to generate most of its revenue through subscriptions. In the December 2006 issue of Time magazine, the founders of YouTube stated that they originally set out to make a version of Hot or Not with Video before developing their more inclusive site. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook similarly got his start by creating a Hot or Not type site called FaceMash, where he posted photos from Harvard's Facebook for the university's community to rate.
Hot or Not was sold for a rumored $20 million on February 8, 2008 to Avid Life Media, owners of Ashley Madison. Annual revenue reached $7.5 million, with net profits of $5.5 million. They initially started off $60,000 in debt due to tuition fees James paid for his MBA. On July 31, 2008, Hot or Not launched Hot or Not Gossip and a celebrity rate box (a "hot meter") – a sub division to expand their market which is run by former radio DJ, turned celebrity blogger, Zack Taylor.
As of April 01 2012, it appears that Hot or Not has been taken-over by Badoo Trading Limited, the company that owns Badoo.com. Registered users received an email on or about April 01 2012 entitled "The new Hot or Not has arrived!". The new service appears to be an exact replica of the default Badoo service while retaining the Hot or Not-branding. All Hot or Not accounts also have access to all other Badoo profiles, suggesting that all Hot or Not user data has simply been fed into the Badoo network. As of April 01 2012, Hot or Not has been removed from the "Brands" page of Avid Life Media's website. Controversy surrounds the apparent reactivation of many profiles deleted at earlier dates under the previous owner. Many users who deleted accounts years ago, have found their information fully reactivated under the new owner, verifying that Hot or Not kept all profile and photo information for users requesting a formal removal from the site.
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