Key to FMyLife's Success?

[bgnm2000]

FMyLife.com was registered on 2009-01-18. Thats a little over two months ago.

According to the Alexa ranking system, its already at 2,508.

As far as I'm concerned, I've never seen any web site gain such immense popularity so quickly.

My question to you, is what about the site made it so popular so fast? is it repeatable? And lastly where is the business model?

[sho]

Simply navigating to the oldest posts shows that the site itself existed prior to the stated registration date.

The earliest post I can see, #6, has the date of 10/13/2008. That's still pretty recent, but earlier than the time in the comment. It's possible it was at a different domain, of course, or that the domain was re-registered.

http://www.fmylife.com/love/6

[antipax]

It's popular because it's hilarious. Probably not repeatable, if only because few things are as funny as other people's happy sorrows. Business model is based on advertising, I suppose.

[ErrantX → antipax]

they are also publishing a book of the most popular FU's. I guess that is probably worth more.

[coglethorpe → ErrantX]

That's kind of like Post Secret's model and likely other site's models. Get users to create your book for you.

[noodle]

its popular because it did a lot of things right. it appeals to the right crowd, its entertaining and fun, its simple to use, it created and used its own meme, and it promoted itself very effectively.

[arien]

Are you sure that's the correct registration date? I recall visiting that site last year... Or maybe it was in January after all.. Not sure now :/

[bgnm2000 → arien]

I copied the date directly from godaddy's whois database, so I believe it is correct, unless I overlooked something.

[sho → bgnm2000]

See my comment above - the site existed in some form circa Oct 2008.

[arien → sho]

That was exactly my point.

Besides that, to make sure I wasn't crazy, I checked some chat logs I had. I did send some FML links to a friend on Jan 14th, so the domain was registered at least 4 days before the date mentioned. In that case, maybe it could have been simply re-registered, as sho mentioned.