Think of it this way: you don't have nearly as much to lose as you once thought. On the other hand, you'd better start living a good life now, because while you're alive is all you've got.
Better to live a day as a lion... you know the rest.
Maybe I'm not old enough, maybe it's because I don't have a family, but I'd rather do something few others have done than just lay around with my family until they send me off to the retirement home.
So, I disagree with your position 100%.
Anyone have a link to video of the guy who rides on top of the high speed train shortly before he dies of cancer?
It's bad because those people ONLY plan to work hard, but not work SMART.
It isn't just about building to flipping. They would never start a business at all. There is much more honor in pushing papers around and accomplishing nothing at some huge company than ever actually doing the most you can do.
Unless valleywag changed their post, I see nothing wrong with what they posted there. In fact, the above reply is more inflammatory.
That said, the reversal to a payed model seems fine to me. It even sets a good example for the rest of us who have sites where payed is the way to go for them.
Fake profiles are still a huge problem. Facebook handled it early on by severely limiting their audience but that solution simply would not work for hotornot.
You tell me how to effectively solve this without driving your users away... I found some decent solutions but it's not nearly as easy as stopping spam.
This is an interesting topic. I'm always trying to learn more about what other people do for publicity. I get really tired of all the bs stories with the founders who claim that they just told some friends and then woke up with ten million users the next day.
Which is exactly why more CPA ad systems are needed. That's the best way I see to allow everyone to get their interests in line.