From: “John S.”
Date: September 5, 2008 11:43:36 AM PDT
To: tips@techcrunch.com
Subject: Celebrity Dating NetworkHow is it that Techcrunch will do countless stories on every idiotic widget created by countless 19 year olds who manage to get their uncles at some VC to fund it because they can back door money to each other yet you guys won’t cover something really interesting? Have you checked out CelebrityDatingNetwork.com? Its the first dating service in the world that allows you to meet and date real celebrities as well as find people who bear a facial resemblance to the love of your life.
Start acting like journalists in search of a wider audience…lol. Crossing over into mainstream media will take more than a re-design of your website. You need to stop doing 50 stories a day about Google Chrome and step into the cool tech zone. We gave you a five day head start on CelebrityDatingNetwork.com Prove to us it wasn’t a mistake and write a story about it that gets picked up by the mainstream media.
John
Posting this purely for entertainment value, and to give TechCrunch readers a taste of what our inboxes look like every morning. I’m not a fan of the service, but as soon as I want to date “actual movie stars” or “ordinary people who resemble my ex” I’ll give it a whirl.
And a note to mainstream media and non-nepotistic venture funds who want to “step into the cool tech zone”: CelebrityDatingNetwork has arrived.
“Sometimes the best way to mend a broken heart is to find someone who looks just like your ex.”
See all
Post
LOL. Thanks for the post!
thanks john! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/WUrM3YOrew_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”thanks john! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/hRgFD9wdL0″}}}
you are one sexy beast of a video commenter.
thank you
maybe this is the new 2.0 strategy to get blog coverage, write the most ridiculously stupid email and hope that they post it to make fun of you
I’m game
I’ll jump on this boat. Probably not actually… but I like to think that it is a good idea.
oh and percival, you can’t thank people in video comments for saying you’re good looking, that’s more freaky than the IP address showingup
@nazar
haha true and true!
Wow. I feel for you all. Add to this the jealous-hatred comments and the broken-english-shitty-blogspam-oneline comments, and I am glad to be a media industry observer.
Here’s more than one line (Edited from comments on page 2)…
OK. Here’s a real news scoop. If I was a journalist, this is what I would have found:
John S. is John Surowy. He and Michael Stevens are partners in something called Danger Productions. This domain is owned by Danger Productions. Let’s look at their other accomplishments.
In 2003 it was Hollywood’s Calling.com. Listen to this “all that’s required is your credit-card number or electronic check in the amount of $19.95, and within seven days you can expect to hear from one bona fide, if slightly faded, celebrity wishing you Happy Halloween, get well soon, or congratulations on your retirement. The 15-second phone call works out to a little more than a dollar a second, which is, if you think about it, a small price to pay for the privilege of knowing that, for example, hunky Lorenzo Lamas is incredibly excited that you’re turning 40. … Hollywood Is Calling has the look of a Web site designed in 1996, with lots of text, poor punctuation and few graphics. Scrolling down the list of 23 celebrities is like viewing a lineup for VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” Many of the photographs are decades old. A few look more like Polaroids than professional head shots. Beneath each picture are the words PLACE YOUR ORDER.” SOUND FAMILIAR???
He also ran talktoamillionaire.com in 2000 $250 for a 15 min conversation with a celebrity.
GangsterCourt (dot) com. In 2002, they were pitching a TV show where ex-criminals are the judges.
In 2001, they attempted to pitch a show called Danger Island” in which ex-offenders on a desert island would have had to complete tasks while evading “hunters” drawn from the ranks of police forces, intelligence agencies and the military.
Oh and let’s not forget about is “best-selling book,” “Gangsternomics.” Are you kidding me? And DVD, “Job Wars” Now interestingly, they were both given 5 stars on Amazon by “David Stevens.” I am sure he is no relation to Michael Stevens.
These two guys are persistant, I’ll give you that!!
By the way, this schmuck listed himself on the popup list of celebrities that you are supposed to choose from as who you closely resemble!!! HAHAHA
LOLOL
LOL John S. you bitter old fart.
Let’s crash their servers.
Haha, this is the worste websites I’ve ever seen in my life.
Note to VC’s who want to invest in the “cool tech zone”: It is now officially cool to plaster your startup’s homepage with Google Adsense
Their site sucks
hahahha
Uh, what the hell’s a “Hyper Visual Dating Service”?
wtf
I just love TechCrunch
Hook, line and sinker.
Double true — site is fake for sure.
I AM IN YUR EMAILS, INSULTING UR JOURNALISTIC APTITUDES!
Post more like this. That’s awesome.
Love the note at the bottom: “Due To The Celebrities Involved With Our Service Your IP Address ( xx.xxx.xxx.xxx) Is Being Logged For Security Purposes”
From the about page. I can’t quite figure out which celebrity he looks like…
John Surowy - Founding CEO of the Celebrity Dating Network
He created this new dating service because he felt there was a need to help people find a romantic partner based upon the visual archetype that most individual’s brains are encoded with. The basic concept was to create a dating service that allowed you to find your “type”. Then he took the concept to the next level by creating a business model that would make it possible for people to date actual celebrities as well as folks that resembled celebrities. That was followed by the creation of technology that allowed you to find someone who resembled your ex. Since there are so many people walking the Earth yearning for a long lost love Mr. Surowy felt this technology would make it possible for a lot of users to find a visual surrogate or substitute for their former sweetheart. Sometimes the best way to mend a broken heart is to find someone who looks just like your ex. Combine all these incredibly innovative features and you have CelebrityDatingNetwork.com, a service that many people believe will revolutionize social networking.
Maybe Peter Fonda
“Visual Surrogate”? Wow. It’s like stalking someone vicariously.
John Batelle and and Kevin Spacey couldnt be here tonight but they had sex and this is their offspring.
Bit of Greg Norman maybe?
It is clear that John bears a striking resemblance to Bond video game hax0r and uber villian Maximilian Largo (Klaus Brandauer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuRxpc910MY
But does his mistress look like Kim Basinger?
Wow I can now date all of my favorite “F” list celebs. That site looks like a 19 year old designed it with the help of iStockphoto.
Haha, this is the funniest thing I have read all morning!
Btw, is it just me, or does CelebrityDatingNetwork.com remind you of one of those spam pages that you get in the search results when you do a sketchy search? Like, you Google “angelina jolie nude pics” or whatever and you inevitably get that page in the results that’s like “www.angelina-jolie-nude-pics-asian-xxx-sluts-britneyspears.com”.
Not that I did that.
Mike,
you entries always stand out
Well, this guy is lame in his email to you. It’s your site. Do what you want.
But he does have a point. I tried to get your attention a while back with my site at biggestonearth.com, but to no avail. It seems that if you don’t have a lot of high profile funding or you’re not in the “in” crowd, you won’t get much attention for THE technology blog called techcrunch.
But that’s life… right?
Cheerios!
Dan
You made it sound like there was technology on your website. Where is it?
Maybe if your little website made any sense at all…
Worst site I’ve ever seen. That’s why they didn’t write about it.
My buddy wrote iZillow and the framework behind it called Safire. It has no VC and yet TC has mentioned it several times. Because it’s USEFUL…. so yes they do mention stuff without funding.
Just because you think it’s useful doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.
There is no point to your site and this celebrity dating service looks like a total scam. THAT is why Michael doesn’t write about it.
LMAO @ your site. it made me smile.
I got a date with Heather Harde on celebrity dating network!
I got a date with Sarah Palin!
I got a date with YOUR MOM!
I got a date with Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter!
I wanted a date with Sarah Palin’s daughter but I was told if I inpregnant her, i’d be forced to marry her!
It’s not a bad idea for site, but the site itself looks terrible. No offense to the designer but seriously, if you want to be covered on TC your site needs to be “hip”. The dark blue to white gradient screams web 1.0. Maybe even web 0.1 alpha.
This does not meet the cool tech zone standards in my book.
love how there is a Google AdSense ad for LavaLife at the bottom of the page… great post
HAHAHA. Love it.
Whoah ! Till now,i used to think that they don’t even give a damn to all such shit mails they receive but they do….
And for this shit service…..Get me a date with Angelina Jolie…But no lookalikes allowed…lolz
Quote from the FAQ:
What if I don’t think I resemble a celebrity. Can I still join?
Yes. You’ll just have to figure out which celebrity you bear a faint resemblance to so that our system can categorize you properly for others to find. Our system will help you pick from thousands of celebrity choices so your bound to find a star that you sort of resemble.
In that case, my left eyebrow sort of looks like Mario Lopez.
Cool, I look like a thin, handsomer version of Michael Arrington!
Cool, I look like a Jewisher version of Sarah Palin!
@kevan *!*!*! falls out of chair laughing HARD!!
The last fucking thing on earth after my divorce i wanted to do was date some one that looked like my ex.
John S. probably got his 19 year old nephew to design the site
And Michael Arrington is posting this interesting newsbit to generate more hits, thus increasing his salary. The sad part (well, not for him) is that it works too well.
Instead of telling him to act like a journalist, I’d simply ask he stops posting trash. But then again, I AM replying to his post, aren’t I? Who cares if it’s content or not.
What no crunchbase page?
good point, we’re on it
Jeez Michael! How could you have dropped the ball on such an amazing and useful site?
Even if it was done for entertainment, you shouldn’t have given him any coverage at all. Now people *might* visit the site.
Perez Hilton covers this sort of crap; perhaps you could just forward his e-mailing along as a courtesy (said snarkily)
this guy is a complete moron
I went in, I completed the process. And now I have a date with a REAL CELEBRITY!!!!
I’m dating John Edwards…
Awesome pic in the post.
You’re commenting on TechCrunch? Don’t you tell people not to read TechCrunch?
Well there’s his post.
This dude is going to make $2,000 just from Techcrunch readers clicking on his adsense! Then he’s going to go to a VC and show him how his traffic numbers / revenues have spiked because 300,000 of us went to go laugh at his site. Then he’ll get some funding, then the site will enter the deadpool and be on techcrunch again
I would expect most if not all TechCrunch readers to be intelligent enough to not click AdSense ads especially on a crappy dating site
Yea, usually people that use adsense end up not clicking other people’s adsense. Thats my habbit at least
Pretty funny though.
“I would expect most if not all TechCrunch readers to be intelligent enough to not click AdSense ads especially on a crappy dating site”
I had to…they had an ad for “used celebrities for sale on ebay”. How could I not click?
I would say that Techcrunch took a step away from serious journalism when Michael Arrington seemed to be more interested in complaining about Twitter outages or airing his beef with Wired; providing less of the penetrating industry analysis that we learned to expect and more op-ed filler.
In any case, that dating site looks lame.
I love the ad for Lavalife at the bottom of the page.. nothing says a legit business like advertising for your competitors.
Translation of this dude’s Bio - “He was drunk, stoned and drugged when he said “Dude, I want to go out with Ophra! That would be soooo cool!” From there, he hired some PR specialist to put a bunch of never-heard-before words in a bio page, some coders out in China and a cheap Nikon camera for black and white pictures.
That started all the celebrities coming to him begging for a date (Ophra never came. She’s too in love with Obama).
So, date the naked cowboy from NYC, the Yoda that stands in front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood or the Bushman in SF…We have you covered!!!!
what an idiot
One thing left me puzzled after reading this post and looking at the site and that’s why would “real celebrities” want to use a site like this, or perhaps a better question why would anyone want to use a site like this?
TechCrunch or any other tech news site really wasn’t the right place to send a press release to, the readers would (and have) pick apart the crappy looking site.
Looks like he got his wish of getting his site mentioned on TC, just probably not in the light he had hoped for.
I think the facial recognition matching algo at http://www.celebclone.com is much better for a good laugh.
I get why he sounds a little bit angry but he should know better and why is he trying to convince TechCrunch, are his users on TechCrunch? No offense but is this the target audience he wants? We all like tech, and maybe some of us like dating celebs, I don’t know, but his site doesn’t really innovate on the technology side, so why even try?
One thing you shouldn’t try to do is waste people’s time. Even if he or she’s a blogger or journalist.
OH GOD CELEBRITYDATINGNETWORK IS SO INNOVATIVE IT MAKES ME WANT TO GOUGE MY EYEBALLS OUT!
What a tool.
Bonus stage:
@Commenter Nicolas: Yea, Michael Arrington IS posting this to generate more hits. That’s what professional bloggers do, so I don’t quite understand why that’s so “sad”. Welcome to the internet, my friend.
LOL! Oh, this is TOO DAMN AWESOME.
all your celebrity are belong to us.
Haha, that site is stupid. Though I gotta admit I agree with the sender that Techcrunch seems to do countless stories on flash-in-the-pan social networking sites funded by their VC friends. Just because a site has good designer and a ridiculous phonetic name for a URL doesn’t mean it provides a valuable or new service to the tech community, or has any hope of ever monetizing.
Oh and don’t forget the shameless self-promotion. How many TechCrunch50 posts have there been in the last few weeks?
Totally agreed. This dude still has a point even though his site is moronic. And Techcrunch is making fun of him instead of being open-minded and actually understanding what the guy was trying to say.
Thanks to TechCrunch, the site must be having their peak traffic day. I guess the mean email worked. No such thing as bad publicity yada yada yada. Expect them to put out a press release with traffic numbers showing the awesome response to their site (at least for 1 day)