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Hotornot's
James Hong and
Jim Young: Photo Finish


Two onetime Berkeley engineering honors students find high ratings and profits as founders of the internet's leading photo-rating site.

by Genessee Kim

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Hotornot
James Hong (left) and Jim Young, founders of hotornot.com



Hotornot's James Hong and Jim Young:
Photo Finish

ll those who have ever wondered how hot they really are, then posted a photo online to find out: thank James Hong and Jim Young. They're the founders of Hotornot.com, the web's pioneering hottie-rating site. With 4.2 million claimed users, their site leads a genre now enjoying explosive growth. Hotornot.com draws mostly teens and twentysomethings in dire need of validation of their sex appeal. From there it's a small step to wanting to meet that special stranger who rated them a 9 or even a perfect 10. From a business standpoint, it's a great way to get first crack at the young people who are most likely to join the estimated 2 million Americans shelling out $20 to $30 a month to dating sites like Match or uDate or Yahoo Personals.

     You'd be hard-pressed to find a more unlikely duo to found Hotornot. Hong and Young were self-described "dorks" in school. At the age of 26 Hong was living on savings from his last job as a Hewlett-Packard product manager. He was sharing a Mountain View house owned by Jim Young's parents. Young wasn't exactly on the fast track either. He was considering an eighth year of grad school at Berkeley. In other words, for a couple of former Berkeley engineering honor students, they were in a sorry state.

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     One Tuesday afternoon in October of 2000, while other guys their age with Berkeley degrees were hard at work, Hong and Young were working at an activity that was becoming something of a depressing routine: sitting around drinking beer. Jim Young idly mentioned that he had met a perfect 10 the night before. James ong and his brother expressed frank skepticism. Was she really a 10 or just an 8? After heated discussion, Hong and Young decided that what the world badly needed was a quick and easy way to settle such differences. Thus was born the idea for Hotornot.com.

     The site was cobbled together after a few days of intense coding. Its launch was strictly on the strength of word-of-mouth. Hotornot's novelty value was enough to ensure interest not only from kids with time on their hands but from the media. The site has been featured in everything from Playboy to Business Week to The New York Times.

     "We turned something we were doing for fun into our full time jobs," exults Hong.

     Upon loading Hotornot.com's homepage a visitor is presented with a random member's pic. It must be given a 1-10 rating before the visitor is allowed to access the rest of the site. For women the judging seems particularly brutal. On the other hand, the site seems to feature an inordinate number of men with ratings of 6 or higher. Many are shirtless, showing off rippling abs and bulging pecs. Members can list interests and descriptive adjectives, then are given access to search for others who list the same keywords. What about cheaters who try to inflate their ratings through multiple votes?

     "People try, but our system ignores their votes," says Hong.

     The site's sole revenue source is from visitors who take the next logical step and express an interest in meeting sympathetic strangers. Click to meet someone who catches your eye. The next time they log on, your picture will have priority over others, but there is a match only if they click on your photo. If you have a match wih a paid member, sending messages is free, but if neither of you are paid members, someone needs to pony up the $5 monthly fee. Hotornot.com continues to enjoy some advantages over competitive photo-rating sites. The layout and navigation is clean and efficient. The photos are closely moderated to prevent the kind of tastelessness that give some sites a sleaze factor. Hotornot is responsible for more than one marriage a day, claim its founders.



     Jim Young and James Hong met in high school through parents who belonged to a local Taiwanese association. The didn't really become buddies until both went to Berkeley and found themselves in the Berkeley's Electrical Engineering Honor Society.

     Both got good grades and made their parents proud. Hong attributes his focus to his girlfriend.

     "I had a long-term girlfriend throughout college," he says. "That probably helped with my studies. Jim and I were pretty much like model Asian kids. My parents didn't expect me to be doing what I'm doing today, but they're cool with it." PAGE 2

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“We turned something we were doing for fun into our full time jobs.”


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