VampireFreaks.com

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**Vampirefreaks.com**

URL	http://vampirefreaks.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	social network service
Owner	Jethro Berelson ("Jet")
Created by	Jethro Berelson
Launched	1999
Current status of site	Active

VampireFreaks.com is a virtual community and rate-me website which allows its members to post photos, comments, create a personal profile, and interact through usergroups, messageboard and bulletins.

The minimum age required to sign up and interact with other users is thirteen. The domain's primary source of revenue is its pertinent counter-part and E-commerce entity, Synth-Tec [1], which primarily sells attire aimed at the same target audience of VampireFreaks.com through Fuck The Mainstream [2]. It also offers paid "Premium Memberships" with advanced member features.

1 History
2 Statistics
3 Cults
4 Notable bands
5 Media coverage
6 See also
7 Notes
8 External links

[edit] History

Vampirefreaks.com started in the end of 1999 as the personal homepage of its creator and webmaster, Jethro Berelson, known by his online handle "Jet". The original version of the website consisted of a simple animated flash intro, links to pictures of members, a messageboard, and a few music reviews. By 2000, the site had a dedicated following on the messageboard.^[1]

More components were added over the following years, until it came to its current form, an interactive website with profiles that gives users the ability to rate others, leave messages, and create friends lists. There are also usergroups, called 'cults', and an integrated messageboard with over 15 forum categories including "Crackwhores", where respected long-term members can meet and chat with one-another, named after the original messageboard, an ezboard forum, called 'The Crackwhore Messageboard'

[edit] Statistics

Vampirefreaks.com now gets over 3 million page views and 150,000 visitors a day. It has over 700,000 signed up members, of which about 400,000 are considered "active" (profiles that are inactive for 6 months are deleted), and reaches over 5,000 members logged into the site at once during peak times.^[1] In an interview with Side-Line magazine, Jet, the webmaster and owner of the site, gives an insight on how things are run.^[2]

^ ^a ^b Site History vampirefreaks.com
^ Side-Line Magazine: interview with Jet Vampirefreaks.com

[edit] Cults

VampireFreaks.com has given members the ability to create messageboard groups, dubbed "cults", which can be created by any user for the discussion of specific topics and/or themes. This is similar to the system in place on MySpace. Many of the cults on the site are dedicated to the bands H.I.M., Slipknot, My Chemical Romance, Marilyn Manson, and films such as "The Crow" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Due to the recent media exposure of VampireFreaks.com, many members of the press noticed the word "cults" and took it as a sign of formal religious veneration.

There are over 26,000 different user created groups ranging from one member (most often populated by just the owner), to groups with almost 25,000 members.

The top ten (as of December 2006) most populated user created groups on VampireFreaks.com are: [3]

sex - 25,934 members
The_Nightmare_Before_Christmas - 24,768 members
My_Chemical_Romance - 17,705 members
Slipknot - 15,591 members
LeaveMyKidzAlone - 14,483
Girl-Support - 13,888
Marilyn Manson - 12,687
HIM - 12,618
Wicca - 10,555
Emo_Kids - 9894

[edit] Notable bands

VampireFreaks.com has also given their members the opportunity to create a Band page. Notable Bands with pages on VampireFreaks.com include:

[edit] Media coverage

Much of the mainstream media coverage of VampireFreaks.com has focused on the actions of several people, notable for their alleged involvement in criminal activity, who were members of the site. These include:

Kimveer Gill, the sole gunman who committed the Dawson College shooting in Montreal (September 2006)
Jasmine Richardson and Jeremy Steinke, accused in the Richardson family murders in Medicine Hat, Alberta (April 2006)
Kelsey Ray Taylor, 21, of Brandon, Manitoba got three years in prison and Deanna Lynn Mathews, 19, of Brandon, Manitoba was sentenced to two years in prison for the Manitoba church burning.
The first trial for the murder of Johnathon Madden ended in a mistrial, after it was revealed that the unidentified key witness for the Crown had perjured herself when, in her VampireFreaks.com profile, she had expressed interest in vampirism. Earlier, she had testified in court that she had no such interest. ^[3]