James Hong | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1973 (age 52–53) |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Occupations | Entrepreneur, angel investor |
| Known for | Co-founding the website Hot or Not |
James Hong is an American entrepreneur and angel investor, best known as the co-founder of Hot or Not, a photo-rating and dating website that launched in October 2000. [1] [2] The site allowed users to upload photographs to be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 and became one of the most visited websites of the early 2000s. [1] YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim has cited Hot or Not as a key inspiration for YouTube's early development. [3]
Hong grew up in Danville, California; his parents emigrated from Taiwan. [4] He studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he met future co-founder Jim Young. [2] [5] After graduating, he worked at Hewlett-Packard in sales engineering and product marketing before leaving in 1997 to pursue an MBA at Berkeley. [5] [4]
Hong co-founded Hot or Not with Jim Young, his former Berkeley roommate, in October 2000. [1] [2] [6] The concept originated from a disagreement about whether a woman Young had seen at a party was a "perfect ten." [5] [7] The site achieved rapid viral growth, reaching nearly two million page views per day within its first week. [1] It also entered NetNielsen's top 25 advertising domains within two months. [1] By mid-2002, more than three million photos had been posted and over two billion votes tabulated. [2] By July 2004, there were 12.3 million photos. [8] By July 2006, Hot or Not had tabulated approximately 13 billion votes. [9]
The site generated revenue through advertising and a subscription-based matchmaking feature called "Meet Me," which charged users $6 per month. [1] [4] [7] By early 2006, Hot or Not had nearly seven million registered users. [4] The company was bootstrapped without outside investment; Hong still had $50,000 in business school debt when the site launched. [4]
In February 2008, Hong and Young sold Hot or Not to Avid Life Media for a reported $20 million. [1] [7] [10]
Hot or Not is recognized as an influential precursor to later social media platforms. [11] Time reported that YouTube's founders initially conceived their site as "a video version of HOTorNOT.com." [3] Co-founder Jawed Karim described Hot or Not as pioneering the concept of user-uploaded content viewable by anyone. [3]
In 2014, he launched Cakey, a child-safe YouTube viewing application he built for his own children after teaching himself iPhone development. [13] [14]
Co-author:
In October 2005, Hong created 10 Over 100, a website encouraging people to pledge 10 percent of their income above $100,000 to charity. [4] [6] He developed the project with Josh Blumenstock, a web engineer at Hot or Not, citing a lack of clear norms for charitable giving among newly wealthy technology workers. [4] By January 2006, more than 648 people from 36 countries had signed up. [4]