Hot or Not

Last updated
Hot or Not
OwnerHot Or Not Limited
URL https://www.hotornot.com
LaunchedOctober 2000;23 years ago (2000-10)

Hot or Not is a rating site that allowed users to rate the attractiveness of photos submitted voluntarily by others. The site offered a matchmaking engine called 'Meet Me' and an extended profile feature called "Hotlists". The domain hotornot.com is currently owned by Hot Or Not Limited, [1] and was previously owned by Avid Life Media. 'Hot or Not' was a significant influence on the people who went on to create the social media sites Facebook and YouTube. [2]

Contents

Description

Users would submit photographs of themselves to the site for the purpose of other users to rate said person's attractiveness on a scale of 1 - 10, with the cumulative average acting as the overall score for a given photograph.

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. It was inspired by some other developers' ideas.

The site was a technical solution to a disagreement the founders had 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". 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. [3]

Hot or Not was sold for a rumored $20 million on February 8, 2008, to Avid Life Media, owners of Ashley Madison. [4] 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. [5] On July 31, 2008, Hot or Not launched Hot or Not Gossip and a Baresi rate box (a "hot meter") – a subdivision to expand their market, run by former radio DJ turned celebrity blogger Zack Taylor.

In 2012, Hot or Not was purchased by Badoo, which is owned by Bumble Inc. [6] The app is currently rebranded as Chat & Date which uses a similar user interface to Badoo and shares user accounts between both sites.

Predecessors and spin-offs

Hot or Not was preceded by other rating sites, like RateMyFace, which was registered a year earlier in the summer of 1999, and AmIHot.com, which was registered in January 2000 by MIT freshman Daniel Roy. Regardless, despite any head starts of its predecessors, Hot or Not quickly became the most popular. Since AmIHotOrNot.com's launch, the concept has spawned many imitators. The concept always remained the same, but the subject matter varied greatly. The concept has also been integrated with a wide variety of dating and matchmaking systems. In 2007 BecauseImHot.com launched and deleted anyone with a rating below 7 after a voting audit or the first 50 votes (whichever is first).

As a sophomore at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash, a website where users compared the attractiveness of fellow students. [7]

The binary concept has been used in a variety of dating apps where users can select to swipe right or swipe left on a user, to decide where to match or discard them. This represents a similar concept of deciding whether a user is "hot" or "not".

Research

In 2005, as an example of using image morphing methods to study the effects of averageness, imaging researcher Pierre Tourigny created a composite of about 30 faces to find out the current standard of good looks on the Internet. On the Hot or Not web site, people rate others' attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. An average score based on hundreds or even thousands of individual ratings takes only a few days to emerge. To make this hot-or-not palette of morphed images, photos from the site were sorted by rank and used SquirlzMorph to create multi-morph composites from them. Unlike projects like Face of Tomorrow, [8] where the subjects are posed for the purpose, the portraits are blurry because the source images are of low resolution with differences in variables such as posture, hair styles and glasses, so that in this instance images could use only 36 control points for the morphs. [9] A similar study was done with Miss Universe contestants, as shown in the averageness article, as well as one for age, as shown in youthfulness article.

A 2006 "hot" or "not" style study, involving 264 women and 18 men, at the Washington University School of Medicine, as published online in the journal Brain Research, indicates that a person's brain determines whether an image is erotically appealing long before the viewer is even aware they are seeing the picture. Moreover, according to these researchers, one of the basic functions of the brain is to classify images into a hot-or-not type categorization. The study's researchers also discovered that sexy shots induce a uniquely powerful reaction in the brain, equal in effect for both men and women, and that erotic images produced a strong reaction in the hypothalamus. [10] [11]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Hot or Not Privacy Policy". Hot Or Not. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
  2. ↑ "Rich, Thriving, Busy: Where Hot Or Not's Co-Founders Are Today". US: ABC News. 2014-06-03. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  3. ↑ Facemash.com, Home of Zuckerberg's Facebook Predecessor, For Sale TechCrunch, October 5, 2010. Retrieved January 9, 2012.
  4. ↑ HotOrNot Apparently Very Hot: Acquired For $20 Million TechCrunch
  5. ↑ "HotOrNot: From Nothing to $20M in 7 years!". YouTube. 2007-06-15. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11. Retrieved 2011-07-27.
  6. ↑ "Hot or Not gets creepier: It's now a dating app".
  7. ↑ Horton, Alex (2021-12-05). "Channeling 'The Social Network,' lawmaker grills Zuckerberg on his notorious beginnings". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  8. ↑ "faceoftomorrow.com". Archived from the original on 1 August 2015.
  9. ↑ Manitou (2006). Hot or Not – Attractiveness Face Scale (composite images), Flicker, May 4.
  10. ↑ Wittlin, Maggie, "Hot or Not – Women’s brains respond to erotic images as quickly and strongly as men’s". Seed Magazine – Brain & Behavior, July, 13.
  11. ↑ Anokhin, A.P.; et al. (2006). "Rapid discrimination of visual scene content in the human brain". Brain Research. 1093 (1): 167–177. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.03.108. PMC   2174912 . PMID   16712815.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online dating</span> Internet service providing potential relationship contacts

Online dating, also known as internet dating, virtual dating, or mobile app dating, is a method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An online dating service is a company that promotes and provides specific mechanisms for the practice of online dating, generally in the form of dedicated websites or software applications accessible on personal computers or mobile devices connected to the internet. A wide variety of unmoderated matchmaking services, most of which are profile-based with various communication functionalities, is offered by such companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OkCupid</span> American online dating service

OkCupid is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice questions to match members. Registration is free. OkCupid is owned by Match Group, which also owns Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and many other popular dating apps and sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Zuckerberg</span> American businessman and philanthropist (born 1984)

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded the social media service Facebook, along with his Harvard roommates in 2004, and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder.

A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facebook</span> Social-networking service owned by Meta Platforms

Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.

Badoo is a dating-focused social network founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev in 2006. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus and London, United Kingdom, with offices in Malta, Russia and the United States. It operates in 190 countries and is available in 47 languages, making it the world's most widely used dating network. The app is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Badoo operates on a freemium model, whereby the core services can be used without payment.

Andrey Andreev is a multinational tech entrepreneur. He is known for founding the dating and social networking apps Bumble and Badoo, amongst others. In 2019, Andreev sold the apps' holding company, MagicLab, to Blackstone at a $3 billion valuation. In 2020, he founded social audio app Stereo. His previous ventures include SpyLog, Begun, and Mamba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facebook F8</span> Mostly-annual conference held by Facebook, intended for developers and entrepreneurs

Facebook F8 is a mostly-annual conference held by Meta Platforms since 2007, intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the website. The event has generally started with a keynote speech by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, followed by various breakout sessions concentrating on specific topics. Facebook has often introduced new features and made new announcements at the conference.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Facebook</span> History of the social networking service

Facebook is a social networking service originally launched as TheFacebook on February 4, 2004, before changing its name to simply Facebook in August 2005. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, in particular Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instagram</span> Social media platform owned by Meta Platforms

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.

Glassdoor is an American website where current and former employees anonymously review companies, operated by the company of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Green (entrepreneur)</span> US social entrepreneur & investor (b.1983)

Joe Green is a serial social entrepreneur and investor based in San Francisco, CA. He is the co-founder and President of the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit donor network that supports research on psychedelic medicine. Green is also the co-founder of Treehouse, a company that develops community living apartment complexes in Los Angeles, CA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lulu (app)</span>

Lulu is a mobile app formerly available for iOS and Android that allowed female users to make positive and negative evaluations of male users on the basis of their romantic, personal, and sexual appeal. The app allowed only female users to access the evaluation system, and evaluations made through the app are attached publicly and anonymously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tinder (app)</span> American online dating app

Tinder is an online dating and geosocial networking application launched in 2012. On Tinder, users "swipe right" to like or "swipe left" to dislike other users' profiles, which include their photos, a short bio, and some of their interests. Tinder uses a "double opt-in" system, also called "matching", where two users must like each other before they can exchange messages.

Bumble is an online dating and networking application launched in 2014. Profiles of potential matches are displayed to users, who can "swipe left" to reject a candidate or "swipe right" to indicate interest. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in homosexual matches either person can send a message first. The app is a product of Bumble Inc.

This timeline of online dating also includes broader events related to technology-assisted dating. Where there are similar services, only major ones or the first of its kind are listed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandra Chong</span> Jamaican entrepreneur

Alexandra Chong is a Jamaican entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Jacana, a global cannabis company. Jacana cultivates, develops and distributes medical cannabis internationally and in a historic move, it was the first company to export Jamaican medical cannabis flower internationally.

Facebook Stories are short user-generated photo or video collections that can be uploaded to the user's Facebook. Facebook Stories were created on March 28, 2017. They are considered a second news feed for the social media website. It is focused around Facebook's in-app camera which allows users to add fun filters and Snapchat-like lenses to their content as well as add visual geolocation tags to their photos and videos. The content is able to be posted publicly on the Facebook app for only 24 hours or can be sent as a direct message to a Facebook friend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hily</span> Online dating application

Hily is an online dating application that employs machine learning to match prospective partners. Named as an acronym for "Hey, I Like You", the app is designed to recommend potential matches by analyzing users' backgrounds, interests, and app activity. The app's registration options for gender include male, female, and non-binary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DOWN (app)</span> Social networking and online dating app

DOWN is a location-based social networking and online dating application for users looking for casual relationships and hookups. Users can swipe up for more serious dating, swipe down for casual hookups, or left to pass, and continue to the next profile. DOWN bills itself as a open-minded, sex-positive alternative to other dating apps.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.