woj :)

Hey Andrew, you want to do a link trade ;-)

Sriously, this is a great interview and I am soo looking forward for upcomign questions. I think this will be the Smartest Ambush Sleazy's done.

Cheers!!!

Interesting interview..good questions and answers

oh man catching up on this thread almost broke my brain! All that math talk? Damn i'm glad it's only saturday. :)

Great interview and company....

Cool interview. Andrew, I hope you don't mind a couple of hardball questions...

1. Have you seen any effect of Myspace & other free services on A. Your Business & B. the overall sector.

2. What is the average retention sitewide on AFF and FF.

3. Which FFI sites retains the longest?

4. What's the ratio of free members to paid?

We always hear stuff about Adult Friend Finder FF but we rarely hear about the other "900" sites in the protfolio we are able to promote. Tell us about them.

Yah, most shacks in the bay area cost more than mansions anywhere else.
Here's a lovely example http://www.mlslistings.com/common/properties/propertyDetail.asp?open=0&page=1&mls_number=607576 &type=property&name= or go large with
http://www.mlslistings.com/common/properties/propertyDetail.asp?open=0&page=1&mls_number=604406 &type=property&name=http://www.mlslistings.com/common/pr...property&name=
I do have my eyes open for a ranch or farm though - somewhere I can
motor around in a tractor and dig up stuff. :)

Damn, thats almost as bad as Hawaii. :Oh crap

Just wanted some solid business related questions...

Those examples remind me why my husband and I stopped looking... It was way too depressing. Even if you can afford a home, it just seems wrong to pay those prices for such un-impressive houses. When I was younger, that is definetly not what I thought a "million dollar home" would look like!

Ha, these always make me laugh. My parents live in WNY and live on 23 acres for $92k they purchased and would sell for $129k. Only because of the custom work my dad has put into the house ... but he has his Kabota and everything. : )

Now I will have to program somethign in perl to test this....

Well the only problem i see is i went through the 3 window version about 30 times and never got the car on the first guess. Why would that be? Because that would affect the odds.. or did i just not ever guess right on the first try.

i may be an idiot but i think there is a fourth option:

The player picks empty door number 1. The game host picks the other empty door. Switching will win the car.
The player picks empty door number 2. The game host picks the other empty door. Switching will win the car.
The player picks the car. The game host picks one of the two empty doors. Switching will lose.
The player picks the car. The game host picks one of the two empty doors. Switching will lose.

that would make it 50/50

its like the are counting the empty door collectively.

I would have to agree here :thumbsup

You HAVE to consider all the possibilities, even if two of them seem the same (Player picks the car).

Either way, personally I'd always stick with my first guess even if it presents no advantage :2 cents:

I like how the second link's ad says "Classic in Professorville"
Andrew, I have an ant farm I'll give you a good deal on :tongue:

yeah housing in bay atrea is toally fucked up, but prices are now fallinghte bubble is bursting.


read this

http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html#links

Q. Have you seen any effect of Myspace & other free services on A. Your Business & B. the overall sector.

A: Myspace runs a 100% open model where people of all ages can
post most anything. While they have had amazing growth, they have
to rely almost entirely on mainstream advertisers for revenue. Its
similar to TGPs vs paysites - people still pay for paysites because
they don't want to weed through clutter and that service/content/etc
is better. We continue to grow at an incredible rate.

Q: What is the average retention sitewide on AFF and FF.

A: Very high - we have a whole team who's responsible for customer
happiness and retention.

Q: Which FFI sites retains the longest?

A: It really depends on your traffic source. ALT.com has a very long
retention rate because it's a tight niche with many motivated members.
OutPersonals.com is similar for gay men looking to hookup. Retention
is also all about satisfying people - as our sites are so active, members
know that they are getting their money's worth.

We're really excited about the new launch of http://cams.com as it is turning
out to have some of the highest repeat purchase rate measured.
It's definitely a site that gets it revenue out of "life of member"
than all up front.

Q: What's the ratio of free members to paid?

A: It all depends on traffic - some affiliates do 10-20 times better
conversions than others.

Q: We always hear stuff about Adult Friend Finder FF but we rarely hear about the other "900" sites in the protfolio we are able to promote. Tell us about them.

A: Ya, we have about 25 sites for a very wide range of traffic - each
is setup to help affiliates make the most of their traffic source. For example,
many webmasters have lots of chinese, indian, korean, etc traffic that
doesn't convert well. Many of our programs pay for free members to
monetize non-english traffic.

Here's a complete list of sites: https://secure.adultfriendfinder.com...=summary_sites

great interview!

didn't jerry yang graduate from stanford as well?
interesting.

ALMOST... but at least you know when you buy a house on the "mainland," you also get the land it sits on. Not always the case in HI.:disgust

Easy, it became hip to be a geek... or at least there is more
of a blur now between them.

you repeated several of mine. maybe read what I asked first :2 cents:

That is by design, you would not know if you picked it right until you were offered a 2nd choice

With all respect for everything you have reached to so far but that does not make any mathematical sense. When there are 3 doors there is a 1/3 chance and with 2 doors there is a 1/2 chance.
Playing this game on that website does not give more insight. The programmer might be biased and use the wrong variables.

Great umm, answers(?) to my questions.

You can easily be a Bush administration press agent. LOL


Oh well, I should have expected that after I saw your post about what's behibd the doors. :1orglaugh

Just keep doing what you are doing because you guys are doing it fantastically!:thumbsup

The Friend Finder sites fulfill many important human needs. While we have
grown considerably over the past 10 years, there is much more to do. I have
grown as well - from being key to the company to being a part of an amazing
team. As we contine to bring in additional talent, I expect that my role
will evolve again.

Okay... here it comes... will Andrew answer #11????? Stay tuned. Same Bat time, same Bat channel.

great interview! I liked the yahoo story! hehe... isn't that the MOST visited website on the net?

I read them all and counted only one repeat question, #33

great interview to do. nice guy.

:thumbsup

One other question: what type of hours do you work? Still 40+ hour weeks, more or less, same hours every day? I know of "newbies" and many successful people in the biz alike that still work tremendous hours (for example, I think Lars works hard, at least it seems so, even though he's already a complete success). In your position, you have the ability to have lots of time off, do you still work 5-7 day weeks?

Andrew works and has worked more than anyone I have ever met, he even works harder than I do and thats hard to do. For many years he would not even go home he slept in the office so he could keep beating on the code to tweak and make it right. Adult friend Finders success is due in large part to the fanatical ammount of time he has devoted to making the company kick ass. He still works 60-80 hours a week !

There is a 1/3 chance that you are right on the first guess.

If you choose door number 1 and could switch to door number 2 and 3 would you take it?

Industry norm... here's a plot...
http://www.milohedge.com/im/sinxy.gif

Different game now? No more doors being taken out of the game?
Two doors give a 2/3 chance of winning the car so I would switch from one to two doors any day.
If one door is eliminated though this brings chances back to 1/2.
No need to switch then. I could switch or I could not switch depending on the tone and reputation of the person asking me...example" Are you suuuuuuuure you dont want to switch even though I think you are wrong and wont get anything" yeah..then I would probably switch. :upsidedow
This would not be based on mathematics but on psychology though.

I'm actually more of a matematician than a linguist... passion for linguistics comes from too much math ;)

As for me paying attention in the math class, go see for yourself. I'm too lazy to type it all out:
http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~sengels/c...ability1up.pdf

Great ambush so far :thumbsup

It's actually not a different game. You are getting both doors by switching only one is opened now.

FACT: If you didn't pick the right door then when you switch it will always be behind the door you switch to.

What are the odds that you picked the right door?

Was nice meeting you Andrew in LA. Wish we had more time to chat maybe next show!

I looked it up at wikipedia and I think I get it now on the hand of this example:

Card game experiment
Consider the problem as a card game where the goal is to end up with the ace of spades. Doing this may make the answer easier to understand and provides a way anyone can run a simple experiment. Take three cards including the ace of spades. Shuffle them and deal one to the "player" while you (the "host") keep two. Looking at the two, discard one so long as it is not the ace of spades. Should the player switch? To amplify the effect, do this again using the entire deck. Deal one card to the player while you keep 51 and (looking at the 51) discard 50 so long as none of them is the ace of spades. By switching, the player will nearly always win (51 out of 52 times).

For a more thorough walkthrough of this experiment, consider two players. Player A and Player B take the 13 diamond cards out of a standard deck of cards. The cards are shuffled, and then Player A receives one card face-down and is not permitted to see the card's face. Player B receives the other 12 cards, and he may look at them. Both players are trying to wind up with the ace of diamonds in their hand.

Question: Player A received one card. Player B received twelve cards. What are the chances that the ace is currently in Player B's hand? Answer: Twelve out of thirteen.
Player B has twelve cards and can examine the card faces. At least eleven of them are not the ace. Player B takes out eleven non-ace cards from his hand and lays them down face-up.

Question: Player B did not discard the ace (which he may not even have). No cards have moved from one hand to the other. Therefore, if the ace was in Player B's hand at the beginning, it is still there now. What are the chances that the ace is currently in Player B's hand? Answer: Since the chances depend only on whether or not he originally received the ace, the chances are still twelve out of thirteen.
Player A now has an option: he can stay with the one card he was originally dealt (which he hasn't looked at), or he can switch his hand with Player B's hand, which was originally dealt twelve of the thirteen cards.

Question: If the ace is currently in Player B's hand, Player A will win by switching hands. What are the chances that Player A will win by switching hands? Answer: Since the chances depend only on whether or not Player B originally got the ace, the chances are twelve out of thirteen.

:thumbsup

They are counting the empty doors collectively when you pick the door with the car, because the host will only open one door.
The problem with your logic here is that you're counting the player picking the car twice....which is an error because he will only pick the car on the first try one time out of three, not two times out of four.

Basically it's like this....switching only wins if you picked incorrectly the first time. You will pick incorrectly 2/3 of the time, so switching means you will win 2/3 of the time.

If you read my earlier posts you'll see that I wasn't sold on this either, statistics or not, until I came across a logical explanation for why it's true.

Couple times a day but she doesn't talk back. Cleo is my dog who
loves to hang out in the affiliate department.
http://photos.conru.com/conru/albums/35/735.27960.jpg

I miss Cleo almost as much you, Andrew.

Jack? Naw, I prefer gin and tonic.

Turns out that a woman a few miles from our office taught a gorilla
how to communcation using sign language. Koko has do over 1000 signs,
understands 2000 spoken words and has an IQ of around 80. I just think
it's cool (http://koko.org).

If we could just teach gorillas to use credit cards, I'm sure we'd create a site
for them.... monkeymoney... bananabucks...
http://koko.org/images/kokopix/06020...k_pencil_T.jpg

You are definetly one of the guys I have looked up too. Great Interview, and great read.

amazing read so far!

Oh, that's a rumor... well ok, there's a little truth to it.
I'm addicted to this little restaurant a block from the office that
makes amazing breakfast food all day -- but they had the cheapest
high school cafeteria silverware. So one night, we anonymously
dropped off a crate of silverware for the whole place. Maybe I'm
too much of a micromanager but it's much better eating breakfast
with nice silverware.

You asked good questions. Don't get your panties in a wad. Are you that insecure even after pulling off a fantastic ambush?

"Your questions are great as usual" IS a compliment. You were complementing the questions.

TheProfessor's anwsers to all the questions have been excellent.

:thumbsup to you all.

i'm sure glad you didn't conduct these white-board-microsoft type interviews with me then.. i would've failed miserably..

it was nice meeting you in vegas at the moviepost dinner andrew..