I was reading a news aggregation website this morning, and it linked to an article in the BBC about a friend rental website (yes, you can rent “friends.” It looked like an interesting lead-in, so I checked out the article about RentAFriend.com, and I recognized the name of the founder.
A few years back, I had sold a number of domain names to Scott Rosenbaum. I don’t think we did a great deal of business, but it was enough that I recognized his name when I read it, and I confirmed that it’s his website by comparing the Whois on my previously owned domain names to his company name in the website’s T&C.
RentAFriend.com has received quite a bit of good publicity recently. In addition to today’s BBC article, other articles and news stories have been written on or appeared in MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, CNN, USA Today, CW, and other media outlets.
It’s an interesting concept that’s getting some great press. Congrats to Scott and his marketing/PR team.
FaceMash(.)com is getting tons of media attention as well. This domain was once owned by Mark Zuckerberg (FB).
I’m sure that site will soon win the award for worst website design straight out of 1996.
These guys will sell out for well over $10 million in a few years. Great concept and obviously the right PR team – nice job.
uh… If you look at some “friend” profiles and pictures, some are not so innocent lolol It looks like it’ll be gamed by adu*t s*rvices eventually…
@ John
I didn’t spend any time on the site, other than the corp. pages.
I rent many lady frends at the website of escorts.com
making of very nice frends.
Hi Elliott,
I have to smile a little. In PlentyofFish lingo, this would be called either friends or “friends with benefits”. I thought about doing a site like this but who needs the grief. Match.com and eHarmony pretty much own the legitimate space and everything else is in the gray area. Check out what happens on Craigslist.
Haha, small world! How are you doing Elliot? First off thanks for giving me a shout out! The site is doing fantastic, and I just love the 1996 design (thanks @blozzy) lol.
@john, this is strictly a platonic friendship website only. Listen, obviously I can’t prove to you otherwise but we have a zero strike policy for anything of the friendship league.
I have no problems with dating websites, and even escort websites. But the main point of this website is NOT a dating website and NOT an escort website. People will think what they want, but I’ve spent a ton of time and money trying to keep it anything other than a Friend website.
We all know that the big money is in escorts and dating sites, and there’s definitely no shortage of sites like that out there. But I’m working hard as hell to make sure it never goes that way. We have a great support, review, and flagging system and so far have done an excellent job at keeping it mainstream.
I appreciate the kind words of people who can see the real benefit of this site.
@Alan, I’ve done all of the PR on my own. There’s been a few interested people so far but not quite at the 8 figure mark. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
Thanks all!
Scott