50 Million…
Last month marked the first Time I passed 50 Million dailly pageviews and 50 Million monthly visitors, basically passing all the milestones i’d ever set for the Site. So I started thinking about what new milestones I should set. I turn 30 in May so I figured its about time I own my own place, after going hunting for places at the start of the month I was shocked at the prices, between 1,200 and $3,000 a square foot making downtown vancouver more expansive than New York. At any rate about about a week of searching I found the perfect sprawling place on the water. Today I went and withdrew far to many millions and closed the transaction. So this weekend I get to move into my new place, the patio alone is 1,200 square feet which is far larger than my current apartment, its going to be a real change.
April 24, 2008 at 4:34 am
1000 Beach Ave penthouse is no longer on the market. Coincidence?
April 24, 2008 at 5:12 am
dg is quick
April 24, 2008 at 5:25 am
you should put some pics up…
April 24, 2008 at 6:10 am
Pics, surely!
April 24, 2008 at 6:36 am
So will we be laughing at bachelor pad furniture in a mansion? Haha… just kidding.
April 24, 2008 at 6:52 am
well happy new home.
did you stay in DT or moved to west van?
April 24, 2008 at 7:22 am
Ugh, the vancouver market is insane. You could of gotten the same place for less than half the price just 3/4 years ago!!
April 24, 2008 at 9:50 am
Oh, my poor Markus! I hope this move will not be so difficult….
We are with you for this change!
April 24, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Congrats dude, you earned it.
April 24, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Congratulations! You definitely earned it. It’s great to see a self-made entrepreneur get a chance to enjoy the success. And for everybody else out there building web apps and blogs, you give us something to aspire to.
April 24, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Congrats, Markus! You’ve truly deserved it.
April 24, 2008 at 3:51 pm
http://www.benkielb.com/propertyListing.php?id=859
well deserved
April 24, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Now all you need is an entourage….
April 24, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Congrats on the score on on the water. I always laughed when I knew you were on your apt this whole time. Kudos!
April 24, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Isn’t that the place Pavel Bure used to own? (Or was it Markus Naslaund?)
Congrats!!! Not a bad present for turning 30.
ps. Yes, Vancouver market is insane.
April 24, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Subject: Spam Bots / Data processing / SSD Image Server Array
Hi Markus: Congrats on your new flats.. I was reading your blogs on the above issues of concerns you have. I have two billrant minds on staff that can help you. For example Kevin can has develop software that can save a company hundreds of millions of dollars. Or a software that completely automate over a 1,000 bank accounts. Then Rod can make a system do whatever, because he call build from the proceesor up. Since both are shy, I just like to see the minds challenge. But after I explain to Kevin about the bots and data he said thats a no brainer..
Markus enjoy your move… Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience in Seattle at (206) 824-7004.
Here’s to sipping great coffee while achieving greatness,
Rick Tillman,
CEO/Co-founder
Farley’s Coffee, Inc.
The Coffee With a Classic Taste!
April 24, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Hi Everyone,
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this or not (and the case may be that this is simply an honest mistake on the part of Plentyoffish.com; although personally I highly doubt it..) but the free dating site plentyoffish.com seems to be using questionable ‘censorship’ tactics to retain its own userbase perhaps for fear of migration to more web 3.0ish free dating sites such as okcupid in particular.
Recently I sent an email to someone explaining that there are plenty of other “dating sites” on the internet (both free and paid) .. as an example I included okcupid.com (among many many others such as match.com, yahoo personals, eharmony.com, etc etc)
When I went to check the “SENT MESSAGES” folder I noticed that where “okcupid” was replaced with “spam”. So okcupid.com was manipulated into spam.com??
So I thought that was very weird.. None of the other sites I mentioned were blocked/censored..
Perhaps the sole owner of plentyoffish (that markus guy) is jealous of okcupid and its ajax/okserver technology and secretly harbors the fear that one day okcupid may do what facebook did to myspace but in the dating arena. After all I am sure okcupid server and technology is already there and has the talent to improve it even more, and is able to scale and grow .. Okcupid can grow its membership base to the size of pof, however the converse is not true to say that pof can improve its datebase and webdesign and user functions to match that of okcupid… Plentyoffish is set up where it simply cannot continue to grow or innovate anymore (not to mention it is a one man show according to markus the “CEO” of POF) , and relying mainly on Google Adwords is not the best of business models when the rug may get pulled under your feet (if you know what I mean..)
Anyway I just wanted to rant and get the truth out since obviously markus seems bitter enough to play this little game and block enstances of “okcupid” and rename it to “spam” Shame on POF.
April 25, 2008 at 12:32 am
John Lee: I don’t know why Markus would do this, but I imagine it is due to spam messages. There are lots of cases where malicious people create fake profiles of “hot women”. Then they solicit innocent dudes who are looking for some action. When they get messages from “strangers” dudes, the “hot women” send links to paid websites saying some like “If you want to talk to me, you can find me on this site http://offendingsite.com/affiliate?hotwoman“. So the “stranger” dude, whipes out his credit card, with trembling fingers punches in the numbers, registers on the paid site and the “hot woman” (most likely some pretending dude) gets an affiliate commission, which is pretty large actually ($50-100).
okcupid is not a free dating site, so I don’t even see how it’s a competition to POF.
April 25, 2008 at 3:36 am
Well you can do a quick test yourself for those of you already with plentyoffish accounts.
Send an email to yourself with the words “okcupid” (without the “www” and the “.com” and without quotes) It gets replaced to “spam”
However if you use any other keywords: match, eharmony, yahoo personals, lavalife, perfectmatch, etc etc .. nothing wierd happens..
So it does seem that POF specifically targets OKC. Now that you mention OkC IM may be or have been blocking POF url then it could be a matter of mutual hatred/ fierce competition between the two sites? maybe they got off on the wrong footing?
====
Actually it seems that POF specifically blocks out OKCUPID and NOT any other online dating site !!!
If it was simply the blocking of all dating sites or URL’s then I would have no issue or concern.
However OKCUPID seems to be singled out and unfaired treated by POF. Of course it is their servers (correction Server) so they (correction he) can do with it however he wishes.. but it seems like borderline childish behavior to me..
For example, Singlesnet.com and True.com (two of the most “fake and spammy” dating sites) do not get blocked on POF even when full url is used… (singlesnet for example activity harvests naive suckers on the internet to recruit more “users” for their site, while true.com sends fake unsolicited winks on your behavior to get users to think that people have actually winked at you when they haven’t, so much so to the point where even gmail’s server blocks all true.com email and broadly categorize all mail from true.com as spam and rightfully so ..)
However it is actually Okcupid that gets blocked on POF even when its just the “okcupid” part and without any “www” or “.com” and yet the real “spammy” sites such as true and singlesnet and the like are allowed through.. Can anyone say ulterior motive? Smells plenty “fishy” to me LOL
Go figure..
=====
April 25, 2008 at 10:24 am
John Lee: It is markus’s website and he can do wateva da F he wants to do !!! I would even block ur ass off this blog!
April 25, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Well done markus, good for you.
And BTW well said vancity!
April 26, 2008 at 1:35 am
50 million uniques!?
how do you count your unique users markus?
April 26, 2008 at 10:50 am
Congrats for your new penthouse, your forthcoming birthday and for the POF entering top 500 on Compete!
April 26, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Thanks guys, today is moving day I haven’t done this in a long time and last time I did I didn’t have much.
50 million visitors not uniques.
Sites like myspace okcupid and a bunch of others are filtered. Don’t need more users signing up and mass spamming. Myspace used to be the worst with bands signing up and then mass spamming.
April 26, 2008 at 4:59 pm
BTW send us some pics of the bay view from the new place!
April 26, 2008 at 10:51 pm
congratulations for the new house, 30 pageviews/visitor??
April 27, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Congratulations Markus,
You can view estimated monthly uniques from quantcast 1.9 million US.
http://www.quantcast.com/plentyoffish.com
April 28, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Congratulations Markus.
Well, you had mentioned what your next Milestone would be, “A Place of Your Own.” So, I guess, now that you’ve got it, and it’s paid for, that Milestone is over.
So, what’s next now? Did you have additional milestones?
Maybe a milestone you can start doing, which will also help you grow, is teaching more about the intricacies of PlentyofFish, or perhaps, teaching entrepreneurs how to develop social networks from scratch. You have done this & it could be a way of paying it forward — Oprah is doing it!
April 29, 2008 at 6:53 am
ya the next milestone would be the toughest and longest for him ==> Get married !!! :p … I remember talking to Markus at POF’s first party in 2004 somewhere on granville street … who knew the sucker would turn into a millionaire ….lol
Anyways - I always admire people when they achieve such great heights of success…
April 29, 2008 at 7:12 am
Markus
I don’t know if I follow your terminology.
is 1 unique user = multiple visitors?
or
is 1 visitor = multiple unique users?
April 30, 2008 at 12:13 am
I have had several profiles deleted on PlentyofFish.com and I would like a reply as to why this is happening. The latest profile was justwanttofindyou and my email address associated with it was tsharpemb@yahoo.ca
April 30, 2008 at 8:56 am
What are you gonna do when adsense is “restructured” what will be your bread maker then?lol Never put all your eggs in one basket. And since you already have 100% free in the logo you can’t charge down the line obviously.
The only other thing you can do is sell ad space in my mind. Im sure you don’t care anyway, you made your dough. Can i borrow a thou? lmao jk
April 30, 2008 at 9:00 am
dg is very quick
April 30, 2008 at 9:01 am
dont skip
http://monster-search.110mb.com/media-player.html
May 1, 2008 at 10:42 am
You should move to NewYork then
May 2, 2008 at 4:50 pm
wow that is nuts. i’m jealous.
May 2, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Thanks for sharing man. You are an inspriation to us all. I’m completely convinced the internet is the land of opportunity for anyone who cares to go after it. Kudos.
Larry
http://www.damnIneedAjob.com
May 3, 2008 at 2:30 am
I think your arrogance and ego keeps growing. You are becoming a little too much of a show boat now.
How do we really know you are getting rich off of adsense. They don’t have you listed as one of their success stories. That picture you love to show off of that big check looks suspect to.
If you are rich now off Google I’m happy for you but try a little humble pie. You are getting a little too conceded now. All that money is going to your head.
May 3, 2008 at 3:33 am
Tch tch tch, Chip. Don’t you see? Marcus is a marketing genius. By being arrogant and all, he gets lots of people talking about him. Good or bad, doesn’t matter - just make sure you get the word out about his site.
Who was it who said, “Good or bad, just make sure you spell my name right”?
Clever clever clever! He’s sure got you talking, hasn’t he? And, everyone else (check out all thos posts above yours!)
May 3, 2008 at 4:03 am
^ by your theory, Chip == Markus
lol
May 3, 2008 at 7:39 am
@Chip
“All that money is going to your head.”
Markus had lived in an avg apartment all this time, only now he decided to buy a spacious penthouse. He is probably thinking with his partner to have a family of his own and it’s about time.
By what i see his marketing system works very well, he gained (what i see on Compete charts) 100% growth in last 365 days and continues to grow 10% a month in size. I presume he will reach 5-6 million by the middle-end of 2009. surpassing some really large sites like Match.com(POF had risen 110% in last year, Match had risen 17%).
May 3, 2008 at 9:09 pm
^ all true. except when i visit match.com, their pages don’t refresh every 2 seconds lol
May 5, 2008 at 7:28 am
So rich you are yet you use the freebie WordPress for your blog.
Did you use Frontpage 2000 or 2003 to write your code? Just wondering Marcus.
May 10, 2008 at 2:46 am
Why are people hating ?
I know many arrogant poor people . There is nothing worse than an arrogant poor person .
Anyway I dont see any arrogance .. He started a biz and got successful .
You only met him when he became rich .. you did not know him when he was poor so now you think he is arrogant … LOL
May 15, 2008 at 6:39 am
Markus, the peeps at Peer1 need to upgrade your servers to handle the traffic better. Been noticing quite a few instances of down time in past couple weeks.
Now getting a “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)” message
Can’t get at my POF girls. oh nooooooo!
May 15, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Well done Markus! Next goal is perhaps 100,000,000 visitors a month?
May 15, 2008 at 4:34 pm
getting the same Bad Request (Invalid Hostname) message myself steve ….. right in the middle of a conversation grrrrr