LOL!!! It's like his face photochoped onto a giant fur ball!!

The day we had a maintenance guy come to do some routine checks in our building...
The poor guy walked into our office to see a dozen people...all with varying degrees of porn on our monitors.

We were all just working...but I can only imagine what he was thinking. :1orglaugh

the leaders of the adult internet industry: lars circa 1983
http://images16.fotki.com/v280/photo...983lars-vi.jpg

wow, that was my first job too. My mom has a huge garden, and she always sent my brother and I around with the cart to sell them off to the neighbors. I think some of them just bought stuff to make us add things up. :) I went to college with $800 in my bank account thanks to those veggies!

hahahaha nice hat! I'm glad none of you have pictures of me. :P

Oh shit! I wonder if he had the checkered shoes to match!? hahahaa

Great pic! Makes me think of the movie Breakin'.

*Que George Kranz: Din Daa Daa*

Is that fred flinestone's son?

he still has checkered shows today :1orglaugh

this has been the best ambush interview I have read! I'm really enojying the extra questions being added on, definately some great ones ..

I have a few myself.

I keep hearing your up all night programming ..

With AFF's and the rest of the FF networks infrastructure you must have incredible hardware and software setup. I'm sure you are pioneering many great software technologies and running off very expensive servers.

How involved in the programming exactly are you? How much do you code? How much do you manage other programmmers? Have you ever considered different platforms / webservers / db servers than you are currently running?
Are you able to say how many servers you are running?

What are AFF's most difficult technological challenges today and for the future? What has been the biggest tech problem or challenges you have had in the past, and how difficult was it to resolve?

I understand some of these may be confidential, but I'm excited to read your replies to whatever you feel you can reply to. :)

Thanks very much for the great interview. You are definately the guy in the biz I look up to most :thumbsup :thumbsup

Yah... IMS was the name of the company I talked about earlier. I hired this
one guy in 1994 to try to sell web development services. Picture a 250 sq
ft office with a dozen college people in jeans and one sales guy wearing
a bright purple suit. That guy was Lars! I knew he was going to be legendary.
After a few months, he realized that it wasn't rocket science and took off to
start doing his own companies - we've been friends ever since.

Like most people, I was very shocked when I first met Andrew to discover that he was so down to earth. He's a true class act, a role model of role models.
His personality is apparant through all of his sites and it's a HUGE plus.

Love the interview, it's a pleasure being an affiliate, and thanks for all the paychecks, which is a bit of an understatement:

Thank you Andrew for paying for my house, my cars, my vacations, my retirement fund.... damn I could go on forever. NOTHIN CONVERTS LIKE AFF!

http://www.discretesex.com/friends/mansion/80.JPG

Don't worry about the low post count... You're not alone there. :thumbsup

Thanks a lot TheProfessor! Your answers were a great read.

Oh fuck yeah I did and also had a brand new Duane Peters Santa cruz skate board with rail guards and curb hoppper and skid plate with indie trucks !

I picked her up at a pound a few years ago - aside from being a
sweetheart, she gets me away from the computer at least a few
times a day - A dog doesn't care about your work when they want
to go out to pee.
http://photos.conru.com/conru/albums/73/473.jpg
http://photos.conru.com/conru/albums/83/483.jpg
http://photos.conru.com/conru/albums/54/454.jpg

let me guess..vans?

awwww, great pic. :) You should bring her by more often... ahe adds a little extra excitement to the affiliate department!

Q: With AFF's and the rest of the FF networks infrastructure you must have incredible hardware and software setup. I'm sure you are pioneering many great software technologies and running off very expensive servers.

A: Yah, we've come a long way from having everything on one linux box.
We're now on over 1000 servers with dozens added every month. Hardware
and software requirements grow exponentially with size (e.g., more people
each day doing searches on a growing amount of members). We've worked
hard to increase capacity and redundancy - with more on the way.

When we started in 1996, we thought that we'd be "mostly done" with
software development after a few months because, hey, how tough is
to create a little dating site? 10 years later we have a project list that
is approaching 800 things to do.

Q: How involved in the programming exactly are you? How much do you code? How much do you manage other programmmers?

We have over 70 people in development currently who crank out about
40 new projects/features per week. Over the past few years, we have
increasingly become more process oriented (e.g., spec=> design=>
build=> test=> release=> review). Most developers appreciate the
extra structure. One of the advantages of being a developer (and CEO),
is that I can work on skunk projects - ones that are faster to have one
person do most of the process. I guess programming is a vice for me.
I used to code about 40 hours/week in spare time (e.g., after hours) but
have recently set a tighter personal limit... which I often break. With
the growing team of developers, I'm increasingly empowering senior
staff to run with projects - with perhaps a few suggestions.

Q: Have you ever considered different platforms / webservers / db servers than you are currently running?

A: We often rework our delivery system and tweak performance.

Q: What are AFF's most difficult technological challenges today and for the future? What has been the biggest tech problem or challenges you have had in the past, and how difficult was it to resolve?

A: We have about 10 core development goals ranging from customer
satisfaction to system stability. After 13 years of building websites,
we have seen almost every type of technological challenge - from
hardware failures to complex software algorithms. What I'm most
proud of is our team's ability to adapt and grow.

Whoa dood! Rad!!!

301 professors - excellent interview

my guess is airwalks

I would love to see the Computer Room. Any Pics anywhere with all your servers?

of course !

I have 4 pairs of vans still and am Wearing some right now :)

http://www.visualgenomics.ca/stromej...sc/hamster.jpg

we gotta feed that little hamster all the time!

fuck yes!

i had the black and white checkered slip ons!

my favorite board was my lance mountain (not the family, i can't remember the name) powell peralta with tracker/g&s trucks (mix matched don't remember why) and a set of schmitt stix wheels.

i had a powell peralta and a mike mcgill, have not heard those names in a while :)

I honestly have my head buried in the keyboard too much to look
for role models - either in the adult biz or not. We've worked
with hundreds of top adult companies and thousands of affiliates.
I'm always amazed at the creativity of the adult world and the
drive that motivates people. People on GFY do a great job at
policing the industry - giving props and sounding alarms.

First few "real" jobs were working at a mink ranch (yes, taking care of
the little furry guys before they were shipped off for "processing"),
k-mart shoe department (I can still recite the "Attention K-mart shopper"
announcements), and lumber yard project planner. Happiness is a job
that doesn't require an alarm clock.

almost done andrew. it's been a great read!

one more and you're done. :thumbsup

somehow the internet had less traffic this last weekend - i wonder if it was because andrew was wrapped up in this interveiw......

wow what a great interview!!

With all the revenue that is being generated from AFF, it being mostly liquid assets have you considered going public and turning it into an income trust? :)

Someone will kick me if I just say, "promote Cams.com or ALT.com", right?
Any of our affiliate team can help people make money with dating, cams,
social networking, etc - their direct email is affiliate at friendfinderinc.com.

If I was starting out and wanted to make money, I would look at the issue
of site promotion as an arbitrage issue - the old adage of buy low, sell
high. That's the key to EVERY business - and is the fundamental way to
look at an online business. In this case, we are buying and selling
people's attention. Finding people to sell attention is easy - just find
the person who will pay you the most and send your visitors to them. The
tougher part is finding efficient (e.g., cheap) ways to get people's
attention.

You have two options: buy it (search engines, ad buys) or create it.
Buying it is increasingly difficult, as being a "simple" process, there is
a natural tendency for people and businesses to overspend. So we are
then forced to come up with ways to create it - the cheapest way is to
give something that satisfies a unique need and can be promoted to a very
targeted group of visible people (people who will then spread the word)
for example:

- create a resource for people (e.g., web-based bookmark manager site, sms
personal reminder service, rss feed member-based review site)

- create a service plugin for a larger site (e.g., image hosting for ebay,
game plugins for free homepage sites)

- create a service personally (e.g., your reviews of something, your advice
about something, your "how-to" on something)

I would start out small and test a couple ideas (especially how to promote
them) before putting too much effort in execution. Maybe do 3-4 different
things simultaneously until something gets traction. Then figure out what
you're doing right and repeat. The adult biz is a crucible of innovation -
the key is to find the niche where you can help others the most.

I hope that helps! Thanks everyone for the kind feedback. Feel free
to email me (andrew at friendfinderinc.com) or the team if you have other
questions or have ideas

mike mcgill was a pro on powell peralta skateboards in the 80s.
he now owns/runs a skate shop.

Stacy peralta from powell peralta is now an accomplished film maker who did Dogtown and the Z boys, and more recently Lords Of Dogtown :thumbsup

very nice interview sleazy :)

Great interview Andrew, and congrats on hitting post 100

Yup andrew and I are going to retire and have a salmon farm and a Coffee shop we sling double shots and shoot the shit to Customers. Oh and we are switching to Macs and goin fishing :)

great way to finish the interview, it was well worth the read

great answers andrew.


I've gotten more positive comments on this interview than any other.
Good job

Thanks to TheProfessor and Sleazy for an outstanding ambush. :thumbsup

Very interesting interview, we've never had a chance to meet.

I hope one day we can meet and chat for a bit, would be something I look forward to.