MappingTheWeb //

Who’s the king of the net? You can argue for any number of individuals from Tim Berners-Lee to Michael Arrington to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but let’s get down to the facts. Who runs the single most successful website (in terms of page views) on the Internet as a one-man operation? Markus Frind.

Say what? Who on earth is that? I mean let’s be honest - he’s not exactly a household name.

Markus Frind is a one-man wrecking machine. He has single-handedly disrupted the world of online dating with a super-easy-to-use, free dating site - PlentyOfFish. Don’t be deterred by the simple interface and lack of colourful graphics. This dating site packs a mean punch and more importantly, a huge user base. The main differentiating factor of the site over other competitors (i.e. Match.com, Date.com, LavaLife) is that the service is entirely free and revenue is driven through ads. This lowers the barriers to entry for anyone looking to sign up.

Now let’s talk about what everyone cares about: PlentyOfFish averages 20 million page views per day or 600 million per month. With Google Adsense running on the site, Frind averages approximately $10,000 a day in revenue from ads alone. Pretty incredible considering he averages a dismal .50 CPM. If he were to somehow increase the relevance of the ads to the page or topic AND/OR place one or more ads per page, the man would be a ridiculously filty rich man. As it stands, he already makes a pretty penny and traffic shows no signs of slowing.

Markus, who lives in Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver), is in his late 20s and enjoying life. He has no intention of maximizing his ad dollars as he is comfortable where he stands. He is a great man and I’ve had the opportunity to chat with him on a few occasions. He is very humble and thankful. To get a glimpse into the life of this online dating mogul, watch this Global News exclusive. Mark Evans also provides a great profile of Frind at Maple Leaf 2.0.

He is the true image of entrepreneurship as he handles everything from tech support, to marketing, to server issues, to graphics, and so on. However, it has been said that his girlfriend does give him a hand with some things and a few volunteers have helped out as forum moderators. Click here for more information about the company from Wikipedia.

The evolution of the site will be interested to watch. I wish this Canadian Internet guru all the best.

Nearly four months ago, an anonymous blogger launched Dead 2.0, a blog aimed at ‘anti-hyping’ web 2.0. He/she assumed the alias “Web 2.0 Skeptic” or simply “Skeptic”. The blog instantly developed a cult-like following with droves of web 2.0 nay-sayers flocking to the site to read up on quirky, yet insightful posts.

The blog’s niche is focused around removing the hype and fluff from the new web and concentrating on actual business models, revenues, and long-term sustainability. The edgy and sometimes controversial commentary is highly entertaining and well sought-out.

Controversy erupted in the blogosphere as Skeptic ripped companies apart and expressed numerous criticisms, albeit backed by research and due diligence. The corporate world is not usually amused by the negative views. Nonetheless, this is the reason I love the world of blogs, as opposed to news sites and organizations. Inidividuals can express opinions and thoughts, without fear of company repercussions or the possibility of losing their job.

And the story continues… up until a few weeks ago…

As I check my RSS feeds on a daily basis, I noticed, or failed to notice new posts coming from Dead 2.0. I figured Skeptic may have taken some time off or got busy. A week passed and still no posts. Now, a couple weeks later, the blog has still not been updated. In addition, the site itself was down for a couple of weeks.

What was the cause of this site failure/outage? Some say Skeptic exceeded the hosting bandwidth limits due to excessive traffic, while others argue his/her employer found out about the ordeal and threatened sanctions.

There is now a graphical landing page that greets visitor, which reads: “We’ll be back”. I guess for now, we will just have to wait and see. I, for one, am hoping Skeptic makes a return to the blogosphere as I really enjoyed his/her posts.

There were rumours circulating that Skeptic’s identity had been discovered and traced back to a certain executive in the Valley, but these were never confirmed. Someone was threatening to expose the unknown blogger to the world. This never did end up happening, but it did cause a great deal of commotion.

I’ve spoken with Skeptic on GoogleTalk a few times, but he/she is very unwilling to reveal any background information, even age. Although I’m curious as to discover the identity of the mysterious blogger, a part of me wants the enigma to live on as we are all interested in the unknown.

I’d like to give a quick shout-out to my good friend at SolutionWatch, Brian Benzinger. He’s a great guy and he’s been a big help in launching MappingTheWeb. I highly recommend everyone add his feed to your RSS reader. His posts are thoughtful, interesting, and stimulating - they never fail to disappoint.

He has thousands of loyal readers and is a member of the pretigious Web 2.0 Workgroup. His posts regularly make it to the front page of Digg, as they are useful and thought-provoking. Keep up the good work Brian and I thank you for all your help. Hail CSS!

Full disclosure: Brian Benzinger is a cool guy.

Aidan Henry is an Internet strategy consultant and designer. Prior to becoming a consultant, Aidan worked at MiXPO for two years as an Internet Marketing Specialist.

In 2005, Aidan graduated from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He chose Entrepreneurship as his area of concentration. Currently, he lives in beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada.

Aidan can be reached by e-mail at aidanhenry (at) hotmail.com or by phone at (250) 882-9691.

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