Pottz dot net - Web Ramblings

It was a “slapped-together” weekend project that has helped millions view websites without having to register their details.

Now the Melbourne man behind Bugmenot.com, one of the first websites to harness the power of user-generated content, is revealing himself to the world.

Guy King, 29, had previously talked about his site, Bugmenot, which he started in August 2003, but remained anonymous because he feared companies might take legal action against him.

He has come out of the web closet to talk about the site to smh.com.au and about his latest venture, the one-year-old website Retailmenot.com, which allows users to post and retrieve web coupons.

Retailmenot is another weekend project. It is doing so well that he has quit his day job.

Bugmenot allows users to post and view user names and passwords registered to fake identities for websites that have compulsory registration.

Mr King describes it as “liberating” websites and Bugmenot now has a database featuring more than than 605,000 accounts for 178,000 websites.

The most popular fake accounts are for The New York Times, The Washington Post and YouTube.

About 60,000 visitors a day now use the site.

The site only allows for the posting of accounts for websites that are free but require compulsory registration.

He removes account details for websites that are pay-per-view (predominantly adult-content sites such as Hustler or Deluxe Pass) or have a fraud risk (eBay and bank account details).

He also blocks accounts that allow users to add or change content to community sites such as discussion forums.

Compulsory registration was popular three years ago, particularly with online newspapers, but most have now abandoned the model.

One reason for forcing users to register was it allowed companies to build up profiles of their readers and sell targeted groups to advertisers.

But problems emerged. Users would often avoid clicking on Google News results that required registration or would use fake accounts from Bugmenot.

Even if they registered an account, a certain percentage would use fake information.

Quick access to information

Online readers want to get to information quickly.

Mr King said he would like to think that his site played a small part in forcing many sites to abandon forced registration.

“It’s solidified people’s opinion about how absurd the whole forced registration model is,” he said.

“Basically most of that registration information is collected to sell advertising products, but if you did a straw poll of 10 people I’d say half of those people would ‘fess up to entering fake information.”

Mr King’s has parlayed the goodwill of Bugmenot into Retailmenot.After only one year, there are about 50,000 visitors a day to the new site and it has a database of 40,000 coupons for 8000 merchants.

More than 270 new coupons are being added each day by users.

Edmund Tadros