PaulMarcus

I remember it well -- it was my website.

I truly loved doing it, but the problem (presumably one all the sites of that nature had) was it was incredibly difficult to monetize. Pretty much the only customers willing to advertise over a video of someone being pooped on were porn sites, so our choice was to go all-in on porn, or have a very, very expensive hobby (monthly bandwidth bill was in the $30k-40k range). We eventually sold it to one of said porn companies, and they "solved" the monetization problem by putting an age verification system (AVS in porn-speak) on the landing page, which was ultimately just a way to bang people's credit cards.

As for resurrection, my old partner recently spoke to the current owner of the domain about re-launching it, but he wasn't interested. I hear he's a big VC muckity-muck now though, so, "S", if you're reading this, let's do a deal. The people demand to be horrified.

I use RocketBolt for email opens now as well. The profile building is interesting... basically a social stalking tool for sales leads.

The difference, for me anyhow, is I understand a private corp's motivation for tracking my every data point: money. Simple.

What a government's intentions might be for it seems hazier. Why, exactly, do they want it? Sure, they can trot out the national security routine to get started, but policies and power structures change every few years, and there's no telling how the next group will use (or abuse) that information once the precedent is set.

Somehow, the thought of, "Oh, they just want to make money," is more easily digested. Plus, I can immediately vote my opinion of their methods by not using their service(s). You can't opt out of the NSA's "service".

I dig FlagTap. I'd been looking for a decent way to incentivize the users of my dating site into reaching out to other users, and ended up building a rewards module myself. It's been a big hit on the site, but I'd much rather have something easier to implement in the future. Would you be able to do a custom implementation of FlagTap (custom gifts, matching palette, etc)?

I hear you, but I do think there's room for some humor. It would have to walk a fine line, for sure, but it's doable.