Something sounds fishy:

"Every dating site i know and talk to tells me they are dealing with the same issue. Markus at plentyoffish seems to be doing a good job of fighting it, but tells me it gets harder and harder every month to maintain."

If Markus can deal with it as a one man team, how does James and his crew of hackers not have the resources to figure it out?

Markus also had the benefit of a lot of lead time-- he had several years of growth where the spammers hadn't evolved to their current level of effectiveness, and while his site wasn't as big a target, so a lower eradication rate while he developed his solution still wouldn't affect the majority of his user base.

Hot or Not was instantly a huge target, and coming up with a workable solution overnight to a problem of that scale is not easily done, no matter what the headcount.

The other question to ask: Is Markus really doing a good job of fighting it? You would have to use plentyoffish to get an idea.

I don't see why we should be hard on him for this.

However, if the other sites continue to explode and hotornot sinks into obscurity, he's free game.