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Finding the mystery man behind FunnyJunk
- etfb 14y agoA good bit of detective work. This is how you "do" journalism. Compare and contrast with the article about the developers of Flash that basically looked on LinkedIn and Google and called it a wrap.
- praptak 14y agoIt sucks that a facade of a company lets anyone wreak havoc anonymously. Businesses should be tied to real people responsible for their actions.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIt seems like Carreon was doing most of the havoc-wreaking, and most definitely not anonymously.
- praptak 14y agoThis case is special. He took it personally and started acting on his own behalf, but in the initial demand for money he was just a proxy, as lawyers usually are.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoWhat's more likely? That Bryan sold a 1-man web operation to a lawyer, or that he's using a lawyer he's paying to try to hide himself behind?
- toyg 14y agoHe could have simply sold FJ to a better entity, somebody who can keep their shit together and use real lawyers. For better or worse, this whole thing brought a lot of attention to an otherwise-unremarkable content aggregator, and I bet plenty of people would be willing to take a shot at capitalising on such a frenzy.
- e40 14y agoExactly. The timing is just too convenient. When you are embroiled in a internet flap is not the best time to sell your business.
- keithpeter 14y agoHow much money would a site like FunnyJunk take annually? I mean is this thing a hobby or is it paying the kind of money you could live on in New York (which I assume to be expensive)?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoNew York isn't quite as expensive as people make it out to be. It's not cheap - but you can sacrifice things like square footage, or short commute times to save on rent, which is most of the expense.
- keithpeter 14y agoI take your point, but do we think this bloke is seeing $10k or $100k a year, or just enough to pay for the server/bandwidth?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoThe article seemed to mention him complaining about money, but that could just be an indirect way of asking for donations, or re-inforcing the need for funding drives. (I've done this before, when we were hosting a VBulletin forum when we didn't really have jobs or much spare income in college.)
- cluda01 14y agoDepending on who hosts your content, these sites are fairly cheap to make and maintain. I have a few friends who make these sorts of websites and use imgur and other free services to host content. They cost on the order of tens of dollars a month. As for profits just look at their visitor stats and compare it to adwords.
- vijayr 14y agoRent is the biggest expense in NYC. If you are in the suburbs, or live in NJ and commute to NYC, then NYC is not as expensive as it is made out to be.
- 14y ago
- TomGullen 14y ago> Add this to our list of questions—why a Dutch hosting company for a US company? Maybe they offer a better deal?
- nucleardog 14y agoMaybe because a couple of DMCA complaints stacking up in the states would result in the site being taken down with most economy-style hosting, and given the nature of the site they're bound to get a few... Maybe the Netherlands just offer saner intellectual property laws.