What’s more – a lot more, really – HotOrNot reportedly sold for $20 million.  Given the site’s somewhat crude design, this has caused a few eyeballs to bug out.  Bubbles, recessions, possible advertising pullbacks – they’re all as present a threat as ever.

Still, Michael Arrington states that HotOrNot’s "annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit."  Also, "According to Comscore, the site has around 5 million monthly unique visitors and 200 million page views."  And then there’s the whole cultural omnipresence thing.

Toronto-based Avid Life Media, like most companies, seems to enjoy experiencing popularity; it boasts about owning several "brands with highly engaged users."  HotOrNot could mesh well with at least one of them, too, as Avid Life Media’s AshleyMadison.com also focuses on issues of attraction and dating.

But we don’t expect to see any major changes occur at HotOrNot as a result of this acquisition; makeovers and alliances may be nice, yet it’s the sort of site that now relies more on an addicted user base than corporate partnerships or flashy layouts.

Popular "personal media network" Slide.com tripled its traffic, growing from 312,000 unique US visitors to 1.1 million since distributing apps on Facebook, an increase of 265 percent. Globally, daily unique visitors jumped from 753,000 to 2.3 million, an increase of 207 percent.

"Just six weeks into Facebook’s open platform initiative, we are seeing striking results," said Konrad Feldman, co-founder and CEO, Quantcast Corporation.

"The Facebook platform is driving substantial incremental traffic to application publishers’ Web sites, as consumers find new routes to exploring their wares."

Self-esteem regulation site HotOrNot.com doubled its daily unique visitors, increasing in the US from 182,000 to 350,000 (up 98%), and increasing from 289,000 globally to 722,000 (152%).

"Like many publishers, we have had a great response from the Facebook community," said James Hong, co-founder, HOTorNOT. "We are thrilled that in addition to distributing our application, Facebook’s open platform is helping us introduce our Web site to the next generation of Internet users."

RockYou, a distributer of "self-expression" widgets, spiked 228 percent in the US, and 339 percent globally, increasing, in total, from 286,000 visitors to 1.3 million.

"Facebook has been an instrumental platform to leverage our applications (widgets) and viral growth expertise," said Jia Shen, CTO and co-founder, RockYou. "We’ve been able to successfully create the deep social experiences we are committed to. Already, 30% of user profiles on Facebook showcase a RockYou application.

1. Akash Garg of hi5
2. Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls
3. Max Levchin of Slide
4. James Hong of HotorNot
5. Markus Frind of PlentyofFish
6. Drew Curtis of Fark

Now, some of that may be because I‘m about to moderate a panel myself on User Gen, and I want to emulate Guy’s success here, but it’s also because I loved finding out how these guys created such viral communities.

Funniest comment:

Drew said they were taking alot of flack from the Washington Post because one of their headlines had said Anna Nicole Smith’s condition was *upgraded* to dead.

Most interesting:

None of these guys planned to go where they are with these companies, they followed their users ideas and they went with the natural flow of what was necessary. In fact, Sean said, in effect, the planning has to be loose, and you can’t just follow the rules.

Most consoling:

Turns out fear is ok. When I think about this blog or anything I’ve created, I always wonder when it’s all going to end. I know I’m not alone as so many entries on the blogosphere (and off) have to do with ‘the bubble bursting’, but I was consoled that Max says he’s often terrified that it will all disappear too. Made me feel better to know there was someone else out there that was obsessive about it.

Most exciting:

James says passion is everything. Just like I say about blogging that you won’t succeed if you don’t like what you are doing (ie pick a topic you love), James says you have to love what you do as an entrepreneur. If you can’t be passionate and love your product, then find something you can love and go with it.

The ‘duh moment (that everyone needs to understand):

Listen to your users. Passionate users know your product, even better than you do. When they talk you need to listen. Slide would be an entirely different product without user suggestions.

Although, I’d insert the fact that Markus says some users should NOT be listened to. Use your brain, and think about where your bread and butter is. Don’t implement stuff just because it was asked for… Some features are not helpful and could actually destroy the community you have created (ie chat rooms full of married people on a dating site).

On Marketing:

Most of these guys said that marketing was of little value to them (gasp). They said the viral things that really made them successful was an accident. Sure you can come up with a great idea, but the real truth is that if your company is doing something cool, people will talk about it.

HotorNot said that by the end of day one they had 40K unique users, and within a week they were seeing millions of page views per day. They showed it to cube-locked geeks (Intel workers, ironically) and they passed it around immediately. Sean from Suicide Girls says they spent tons of energy on a CSI episode in which their girls were featured, with no result and got a ton of result from a column on their site and from a YouTube video one of their girls uploaded (she was lipsyncing to a Hall and Oats song).

Now, as a marketing consultant, I want to disagree, but I can’t… Communities are where it’s at, and marketing has to make their job showcasing the communities that have evolved naturally and making them more user-friendly (off-site buys+clear, directioned thinking involving on-site assets). Marketing isn’t dead, but it’s way different than it was just last year.

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The obvious question you could be wondering is how it can be "the ultimate" when there are so many other social networks that have been around longer, pull more traffic, have more users and generate more buzz?

The main reason is because after using the site, you realize that they have taken what seems like every trick from every other social network, and integrated it into their own site to add to a user’s experience.

For example, visiting an artist’s profile page with it’s aggregation of images and videos has a look that reminds you of a cross between a Technorati search and a MySpace profile page. In fact, you can select a skin for your own page or add one to the system – just like you can with MySpace. Users of Netflix will recognize the rating systems for DVDs, however Flixster extends this to films that have not yet come out and includes links to trailers.

The site has lots of images of actors and actresses – with a built-in scale for rating taken right from the pages of HotorNot. You can browse for specific actors, or use the Random feature to find a random page, the same powerful philosophy behind services like StumbleUpon and much of curiosity marketing. Each image and video trailer also has code included below it to cut and paste into your own blog post or other content (just like YouTube). Users can submit news stories about actors as links and other users can vote for them just like Digg and any other social news site. Oh, and you can comment on everything – photos, images and news stories.

The social network element of the site is equally engaging, with the ability to search for people who like the same types of films as you (based on the results of their Movie Compatibility Test) and get in contact. The Movie Night Planner also lets you and a group friends share movie choices you would like to see, evaluate times, and rate the films based on trailers.

I have railed in the past against the suckiness of some movie theater websites. Flixster is the exact opposite – a social network dedicated to movie fans with just about everything a movie fan could ever want all rolled into a single interface. About the only thing missing was the big movie advertising. That gap probably won’t exist for too much longer. Sony’s cool new Face of the Fan – SpiderMan Movie Network promotion could be a great first candidate …

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About the Author

Rohit Bhargava is the Vice President for Interactive Marketing with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com