Worlds largest forum gets 9 million bucks in VC funding

[Rex]

Read the blog here:
http://mashable.com/2006/06/19/gaia-...ime-community/

But looks like they have some inestors pumping money in the site. I would assume they took a fairly large stake in the equity for 9 million bucks.

Can't wait to see what exactly they spend the money on.

[bairy]

[numbers]


I don't like the design of gaia but I admire their ability to handle incredibly large numbers.

Total Posts:
673,995,350
Registered Users:
4,020,825
Users Online:
44,589

phpbb defaults to 5 mins for whos online counts so if we assume it's 5 mins we can estimate ~15% have been active in the last minute (on the basis that 90% are reading threads or have wondered off, however activity spurs activity) we can say that perhaps 7000 people are demanding pages every minute which turns out at about 100 per second.
According to big-boards they have over 100 servers though that is likely to be out of date info. It takes less than a second to make a page, even on phpbb and even with the kinds of table scans they'd be using, but lets say they have room for expansion so lets go with 120 servers.
It's safe to assume they either own a datacenter or they have a bulk discount so lets say $100-150 per server. That works out at about $10-20,000 per month.

To get a board up to that standard requires tons and tons of work. It's extensively templated and tweaked and it's pretty responsive despite only having a few database servers, so I would imagine they have a team of professional coders that created it and maintained it. We all know what professional coders charge.

I doubt that accounts for $9m. Maybe they have a business plan or extensive forward thinking. Maybe it's a reward for all the work they've done so far.
It's an interesting donation though.
I'd just hope it doesn't suddenly turn into a pay-to-use site.

[/numbers]

[LeeD]

Yeah, I am really wondering what the enhancements or additions will be.

[Arnoud]

If I'd have that much money available I'd probably get my own forum software coded, together will all sorts of nice additions for it .

[MetalPrincess]

Good lord! WOW! That's alot, I guess I have a long way to go now LOL


MP