Tuesday, June 5, 2007

A Nifty Grinchy Idea

So Gwen, the Cappie, was over to my place, and she was checking her MySpace on my computer. I noticed that even though she's a she, she still gets ads for dating services targeted towards men. I asked her about it.

"Yeah, I guess they just make them for guys, and they end up on our pages too. I don't really get it."

"You an' me both sistah."

My gears began turning. I called a buddy I knew who was an expert in website design. Then I went to a near by strip club that catered to women with my digital camera. Then I contacted MySpace to try and work out a deal for my new company. They said it may be somewhat complicated to separate the men and the women for ads, but they liked it, considering the money I was offering them.

Within a week my dating service, Fish in the Sea, was up and thriving. Now, instead of getting hot women advertising for male oriented dating services, Gwen and others like her (i.e. females) were getting buff, tanned, half-naked dudes on their MySpace.

I had one problem, though: I didn't actually get any guys for the dating service. So women were sighing up, looking for the guys in the ads, and they had no profiles to look at. I had Gwen go to the comic book shops and sci-fi stores she hangs out at to get me some guys, and she did. Needless to say, this didn't go over too well. An ad with a perfectly cut dude opening an expensive bottle of wine did not translate to a guy with a 47" waist, a splotchy beard, and a pony tail, who likes 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew and lists his crowning achievement as having waited in line for 6 weeks to get tickets to a Star Wars movie.

I was lucky to get my initial investment back, and MySpace went back to giving women ads targeted toward men.

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