funpeeps Inc.
Full-Stack Web Development, SEO, PPC, Social, CRO, Consulting
“Providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among users in the field of general interest.” USPTO
funpeeps (aka fun people) was one of the largest social networks of it’s time peaking at 1.5 million users when Facebook was in merely 2 colleges. The followership was extremely loyal and the site had a phalanx of 100s of dedicated moderators.
Most notably the moderators took care of a young Hailie Jade (Eminem’s daughter) while one of our moderators took care of her personally during recording sessions of Eminem he was privy to.
I personally had the pleasure of then having a chat with Eminem himself, to make sure this was not some “scam site” himself. It was a good conversation with a concerned dad, and ultimately ended in him green-lighting his daughters use of funpeeps. At the time he was known as somewhat of a “gangster rapper” and my opinion of him radically improved to that of being a well concerned dad.
“funpeeps was the most awesome ... and I loved it because ... and lick and suck and thank you Steve. No other social website was as great, ever!”
funpeeps, technically, was built with what is now called ASP.NET (early versions of 1.2 or 1.3) with Windows Server and SQL Server as database. It’s date of creation was January 10th 2005, my 35th birthday (as a present to myself), after many months of searching for the right brand/domain. It was a pretty girl in Lahaina, Maui who kept referring to her “peeps” (which was the first I had heard the term) who inspired the actual name. Mercy (Lindsay) was one of the first to ever hear about it because we were in close contact about prior projects.
Her approval of the name and prototype chat (first uses of AJAX) helped make it my favourite, and helped the name actually launch.
Within 2 years the site gained (after several redesigns) 1.5 million members/users and produced $10k a month in advertising profit.
The demise of funpeeps is an extremely long and personal story, but I saviour the days when it was “king of the world” in social media.
I learnt so much from funpeeps and it does define me in how I work today.