Who Has a Crush on MySpace?

Who had more sponsored link impressions than eBay and IAC in September and August? If you guessed Google, nice try but guess again. This company had more than Google itself and, what's more, came from zilch in July, growing by 209,950%.

Hang out on MySpace a lot? You're getting closer. Ever tried clicking on one of these?

Maybe you couldn't resist… Don't worry you're not alone. In September alone, 12,801,186 unique visitors did it too.

WhoHasaCrushonYou? Inc. may be the most brilliant business model ever created. The company operates at least a dozen and probably more websites with names like PeferctLover.us, CrushCalculator.com, AladdinWishGranted.com and SwamiPredicts.com.

Their sole purpose is to get visitors to sign up for horoscopes, fortunes, ringtones and secret crush revelations via mobile phone text messaging. The hook? Those texts cost between $5.99 per week and $19.99 per month, depending on the carrier.

It works like this. You see a banner ad like the one above on MySpace, and more lately Facebook, and curiosity calls. You arrive at a landing page like this and fill out a few questions on your gender, name, age, Astrology sign and mobile phone number. WhoHasaCrushonYou? Inc. sends a text message to your phone with a PIN number, which you then enter on the website…. And Viola! Your secret admirer is revealed!

I actually test-drove the service and, eerily, found it to be not too far off… but that is another post entirely!

Compete found that 8 WhoHasaCrushonYou? mirror sites had 12.8M unique visitors in September and next to nothing before March. We did a break-out on the eponymous site Whohasacrushonyou.com and found it had a 7% conversion rate in July, down to 4.5% in August and September. We'll let you do the math, but it can't be denied — the company is an ad-driven juggernaut.

Here's a sampling of how WhoHasaCrushonYou? shot up through the top ranks of the web, acquiring millions of visitors in record time.

Perfectlovercalculator.com actually broke into the Top 100 websites in September.

One last note, with a nod to legal - WhoHasaCrushonYou? is by all appearances a legal (if expensive) entertainment service. So far my cell phone bill does not even reflect my subscription, which I cancelled right away.

Source: Blog compete