BC Business Article on Vancouvers Tech Startup Scene.

Building communities and attracting eyeballs: is it 1999 all over again?

http://www.bcbusinessmagazine.com/stories.php?id=1   lots of companies couvered and a few errors in there,  such as google only has 4,000 advertisers.   I did the interview sometime between september and december of last year I think so some information is pretty dated.

When reading this article I found it very ironic that that i’ve got the lowest headcount of any company mentioned,  yet i’ve got more pageviews/day than all tech startups in BC combined.  Makes me wonder if i’m an anomaly or the future.  

Another thing I found off in the article was the suggestion that someone in vancouver could build a myspace.  Its pretty much impossible to build the next google or myspace in vancouver because the city/telco’s are so anti technology.    The main problem is myspace alone would need more datacenter space then there are data centers in vancouver.    The major hosting companies have no more power to power servers and space is maxed out,  the telco’s don’t want to lay more lines  and because of strict building codes leaving no more places to build datacenters that have a fibre connection.  Last time I checked peer1 and netnation were no longer taking customers for vancouver datacenters.   From dicussions with them it seems there won’t be a solution to this problem any time soon.

Bcbusiness is the first major business publication to mention plentyoffish.   I’m going to go out and buy a copy when it hits news stands and save it.  Then one day 20 years in the future I can take a look at it again.  

Plentyoffish And Eharmony Announce Merger.

True.com has been running away with the middle tier of the market with its  raunchy sex based advertising.   Eharmony is great at extracting money from women its its 29 dimensions of compatibility,  but unfortunately most men fall asleep and don’t compete the 400 personality questions, so eharmony is very short on men.    True.com on the other hand makes all its money from men by bombarding them with ads of half naked women.  This has reduced True.com’s  male membership to 2 dimensions,  Horny men who pay,  and everyone else who doesn’t.

In order to stop true from getting all the men,  we have decided to merge and Plentyoffish will relaunch with a “Personality test for men” that will discover what women you most desire.   Inspired by true.com’s advertising we are going to launch a test containing  26 questions.   Each question will be a choice between pictures of 2 hot women with tag lines like we see in true’s advertising.   As you progress in the test each set of women you have to pick between will be wearing less and less and the poses will get more provocative and the tag lines more sleazy.   The final question of course will contain a credit card entry form. 

We believe that true’s current strategy is flawed,   True relies on making horny men on myspace click on ads and then paying right away to see more hot women.     We believe by using raunchy advertising and then subjecting men to a sequence of near nude porn stars we can make more men pay.    If they weren’t horny when they hit the landing page they sure will be by the time they finish the test.  We believe this will result in big revenues and leave our new combined entity as the undisputed leader in online dating.