Sometimes I am looking at other websites to get an inspiration for the next major relaunch.

But one thing I will definitely never introduce are automated chat bots:



or fake the number of people that are online:



(thats the alexa traffic rank)

....or set the number of members equal to the number of fake registrations
(i personally registered there every time with a pseudo email address as it is quicker to recover the password...they even except no@email.given and you are already logged in an can talk to the bot lol

...the only problem is that an irc server is an open gate for a hacker and they are hard to control.

it looks like the bots are only active when there are not many people online to keep the people entertained.

the company who runs this website has a mobile services background....and there bots are a "standard" for fake sms chats...so that's maybe why they use them......

what i never understand is that they received lots of money from VCs although i cant imagine they will ever make any real money with such a site - nobody is going to pay for it to browse it on a mobile phone - which was the original idea.

you would need to 10,000 subscribers at least to just cover your costs and to pay back the borrowed money....this means having 1-2 million members at least - which in return means wasting 100 million (?) on direct or indirect advertising

and once you employ lots of people you also need to make lots of money to pay them...including the rent for the offices etc....to me that's a waste-o-money machine...probably they have spend a million on advertising already. cant imagine the vc's are really happy with them...

let's wait and see