joestump.net most popular site on the net

April 1st, 2002 Posted: 3:55 PM EST (2055 GMT)

Joe Stump, maintainer of joestump.net, says he's not surprised by the latest numbers.

YPSILANTI (AP) -- PHP freelancer stunned by recent Media Metrix numbers that report joestump.net as the most popular site on the Internet, beating both Yahoo! and MSN.

Asked in an interview with Newsweek magazine how he planned on leveraging his newfound users Stump replied by saying, "Like any other self-respecting megasite I plan on using popups, unsolicited spam, and annoying monkey banner ads to make my site profitable.

"I plan on going public by Q4 of this year," he said. "With the funds raised by the IPO I can buy the correct spelling of Meister and diversify into other business models, such as megapron sites devoted to spamming the world through every open relay."

The latest Media Metrix numbers put joestump.net in first place over both Yahoo! and MSN. When asked how he managed to do this on a shoestring budget he said, "By using open source technologies, such as Linux, I was able to increase my bottom line. I served over one billion pages a day off of a 386 using only a 14.4 modem as my connection." When asked whether or not he planned on open sourcing the code that runs his site Stump replied, "That GPL stuff is just a bunch of tree hugging hippies, I'm not giving my code to anyone."

Since the numbers came out late last night Mr. Stump has been fielding congradulatory phone calls from Sergey Brin of Google and Jerry Yang of Yahoo! When asked how he felt about a smalltimer taking over the top stop Jerry Yang responded by saying, "I think it's great that the essence of the Internet is still alive and kicking. I just got off the phone with Joe a few minutes ago and can honestly say you'll be seeing a lot more of him in the press.

RESOURCES joestump.net blows away the competition  * Media Metrix Numbers  * joestump.net's Homepage    IN DEPTH About Joe Stump

Stump, raised in a small town in Michigan, started using computers when he was a Junior in high school. He quickly took up HTML and other web technologies. By the end of his sophomore year in college he had mastered SQL and PHP, resulting in a computer programmer job at the wildly popular site Care2.com.

Stump, also known as miester on the Internet, is close friends with Paul Barton, who told CNN that he wasn't surprised Stump has reached such accalades. "I always knew Joe was a great coder and a funny guy, so it comes as no surprise to me he's the most popular guy on the Internet", Barton said.

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