Hot or Not Review: What Happened to HotorNot?

What Happened to HotorNot?

HotorNot went out in the least dramatic way a famous site can go: it got bought, absorbed, renamed, and the old address was quietly pointed somewhere else. No shutdown notice, no farewell post. One week the domain was HotorNot, the next week it was somebody else’s app.

The short version of a long ownership chain. It launched in October 2000 out of Berkeley, invented the rate-a-stranger-out-of-ten format, and became one of the most copied ideas on the early web. In 2008 it was sold to Avid Life Media, the company behind AshleyMadison, which is the sale our original review below mentions. In 2012 it changed hands again to Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo, who relaunched it as a mobile app and made a public push to revive the brand in the United States. That relaunch is the version we tested and wrote up in 2017.

The ending is easy to date, because the Internet Archive caught it. The last time hotornot.com served its own site was 26 November 2020, still carrying the title “Meet New People on Hot or Not”. By 6 December 2020 every archived request to the domain comes back as a permanent redirect, and chatdate.app shows up in the archive for the first time on 4 December 2020. So the switch happened in the first week of December 2020. Various write-ups put it vaguely at “around 2022”, but the archive is specific and it is a year and a half earlier than that.

Worth noting what that last live page was already called. “Meet New People on Hot or Not, Make Friends, Chat, Flirt” is the same title template Chat & Date uses today. Badoo had already rebuilt the site on its own platform before it took the name off the door. The rename was the last step, not the first.

One footnote on who owns it now: Badoo became part of Bumble Inc., so the app sitting on the other end of that redirect belongs to a US-listed public company. We have filed it with the other hookup sites that have closed down, because as somewhere you can go and join, HotorNot is gone. The reason is worth separating out though. Most of the names on that list were abandoned, walked away from, or quietly folded. This one was an ordinary corporate absorption, which is a much softer ending.

Where hotornot.com Sends You Now

I typed the old address to see exactly what happens. It resolves, returns a 200, and drops you on chatdate.app, branded Chat & Date. The page assets load from Badoo’s own CDN, so there is no ambiguity about whose product it is.

Two things stood out. First, it served me in Greek by default, which tells you where the traffic is. Chat & Date is a European-weighted product, not a US-first one, and if you are reading this from the States you should not expect the local density you would get from an app that actually competes here. Second, it is a general chat and meet-people app running on the Badoo member pool. It is not a hookup platform and it does not pretend to be one.

We do not review Chat & Date and we do not rate it here. It is a different product with a different name and a different purpose, and it would not be honest to let a nine year old HotorNot review stand in as coverage of it.

Should You Bother Going There?

If you came here on nostalgia, and plenty of people do, the honest answer is that the thing you remember is gone. Rating strangers out of ten is not the product anymore. That mechanic is the one part of HotorNot that genuinely changed the industry, and it survives everywhere except at the company that invented it. Every swipe app you use is running a politer version of it.

If what you actually want is the fast, looks-first, swipe-and-see format, that is what the mainstream apps do now and they do it with far more people in your city. Our hookup apps section covers the ones with real numbers behind them, and the shortlist of hookup sites is the place to start if meeting up is the point rather than passing time.

Our original review from 2017 is preserved below exactly as it ran. It describes an app that no longer exists, so read it as a snapshot of the last relaunch rather than as advice.

Our Original Review (2017)

Thinking of using Hot or Not to find a date or a casual hookup? This review should clear up any questions you may have.

— Pros and Cons of Hot or Not —

Pros

• Available on iPhone, Android, Windows phones and desktop
• Nostalgic and entertaining
• Search radius automatically adjusts to provide you with the most “matches”

Cons

• The concept of rating the attractiveness of strangers might be troublesome to some
• More geared for entertainment than serious matchmaking

— In-Depth Hot or Not Review —

A long, long time ago — back when most millennials were still in their larval stage, there used to be a website known as HotorNot.com. This was a time before YouTube, before Facebook — before smartphones. Fire itself had only been discovered a few years earlier. Yes, it was an age of darkness and many technologies were wasted.

You see, back in 2000, HotorNot was the first website to become immensely popular offering a profile pic rating system. People would post their pics and strangers would rate them from one to ten for attractiveness. Like we said, those were ancient times — after hunting down wooly mammoths for dinner, people would huddle around HotorNot and rate strangers for no other purpose than it was possible to do so.

While we are being very tongue-in-cheek, the fact is that HotorNot has been around since 2000 and its influence on the dating industry has been immense. Some credit the concept of the popular swipe apps, such as Tinder, to have been inspired by HotorNot. Even YouTube and Facebook were inspired originally by the popularity of HotorNot. Soon after its original launch, the site did add a matchmaking feature — it was even purchased by the owners of AshleyMadison in 2008. Yet, after that, the site was eclipsed by more robust traditional dating sites and newer dating apps.

Recently, however, HotorNot has started a sort of rebirth. Whether it’s due to a series of modifications to its functionality, a bit of nostalgia, or a combination of both — HotorNot is becoming hot again.

Is this new buzz warranted? That’s what we wanted to find out and that is why we conducted this full HotorNot review.

— HotorNot Today —

For those of you that remember HotorNot from yesteryear — and for those of you just eager to try the latest online dating spot — here’s a rundown of the new version of HotorNot.

First, it is available as both a mobile app and a browser-based version. That means that you can access it on your iPhone, Android phone, Windows phone, or your old desktop.

Second, that “special sauce” that first made HotorNot a sensation 17 years ago is still around. In other words, users still rate the profile images of other members. Yes, it can be a bit unnerving. If you are self-conscious it can create needless stress. You can, however, also take it as constructive criticism. You can use the input of the HotorNot community to help you put your best face forward. Sort of like having 17 million friends that you can ask, “how do I look?” before going out. Yes, this is the best face we can put on this feature. To be honest, you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it — there’s no middle ground. It is, however, what drives the entire HotorNot universe.

The third and most significant change is actually a composite of changes. It affects the front-end aesthetic of the site/app and the back-end technology that powers it. The design has been updated, so there is no danger of facing early 2000s chic. It has a clean and easy to navigate design. The mobile apps are lightning fast. The browser version was equally as brisk across all major browsers such as Firefox and Chrome.

— How Hot or Not Works —

The matchmaking engine behind HotorNot is powered by the same rating system that is used to rate profiles. The app takes your current location and then displays the most “attractive” people that are nearest to you. By using the geo-location feature of your smartphone, the app updates this list in real time. Any guesses on what this list is called? Get ready — it’s called the “Hot List.” Okay, HotorNot doesn’t win any awards for originality in naming its features.

How big of a radius the app uses to serve you the list of “attractive” members in your area depends on where you are located. During our test, we found that when we were in densely populated areas this radius was as small as one-quarter of a mile. When we traveled to rural locations, it was as large as 50 miles!

Also, the more people in your immediate area, the tighter the spread in the top twenty results that you receive in terms of their attractiveness. As an example, during our test, when we were in a major urban setting everybody in the top 20 was rated an 8 or higher. In other areas, even though the search radius had automatically widened, some low 7s and high 6s were able to break through.

When you come across a profile that you are interested in, you can send that user a message or start an online chat if they are connected.

HotorNot allows you to register for their service by linking your Facebook profile, or by signing up with a valid email. The registration process takes a scant two minutes at most.

— Is That It? —

Some of you might be asking, “is that it?” In a nutshell, yes. However, before you start storming the exit doors, take a moment and reflect on the simplicity of HotorNot. It doesn’t require you to become too immersed in the fine details of building a profile — it depends entirely on the most fundamental element of matchmaking — physical attraction.

By no means is HotorNot ever going to challenge the in-depth personality driven sites that take matchmaking to the pinnacle of science and art. Then again, it’s not meant to do that. HotorNot is intended to bring fun, levity, and entertainment to the casual dating market.

— Who Is Hot or Not For? —

Obviously, some of you will find HotorNot useless for your dating or hookup endeavors. If you want a dating app that provides you with precise results, that vets your potential matches, or that uses complex algos to generate compatibility, you will not find that with HotorNot.

If you are seeking a serious long-term relationship, this app is nor for you either. The user base of HotorNot is predominantly made up of younger people who are just using the app informally. During our testing, we engaged in many conversations, but none gave us the sense that they were interested in a real hookup. It’s basically an app to generate online engagement and to spend some idle time rating the looks of strangers.

Share on Facebook

Post on X