What do you really now about myfreecams?

[MrSwoob]

A while ago, I was talking to a camgirl that I help now and then. She has been camming for a few years on another site. The site had some serious backing with phone and IT companies. It was public knowledge who owned it.

I do IT work and when clients are looking for there online business services we do a lot of looking at the infrastructure of Internet providers. Where do they have their servers? How are the servers set up, what is the back end structure. How do they handle their financing? It is often a lengthy process before a contract is signed. I just do not see that type of information provided from Myfreecams, or any camsite for that matter. Where is there server network? Is it bunkered, is it purely privately secured or shared, is it on amazon, or google, servers or some other third party? How financially strong is the company, if mfc went bankrupt tomorrow what position would that leave the members who have tokens paid for and models who have money due?

Beyond Wikipedia, Alexa and of course the camgirlwiki what other sources are there on this major provider of net services to us as members and the wonderful models?

From a business standpoint this is a question that would be asked, but what are the answers? Does anyone know? Just a thought of my simple mind.

 

[Sevrin]

If you have any questions or would like to request information, please contact our legal department at:

All members and models know is that MFC has been paying out since 2004.

 

[MFCuser]

All members and models know is that MFC has been paying out since 2004.

agreed. of all the models i know, MFC seems to have the least amount of issues when it comes to payment, and ultimately that is what matters.

 

[Nordling]

*their

 

[ramblin]

Financials? It's privately owned, and that's all you're likely to ever find out. I bet they're making money though .

Servers is not at all hard to figure out. Open Chrome, press F12, go to the network tab, go to myfreecams.com. Observe what servers are serving the various bits of content. Open a command prompt, type "ping <servername>". Observe the IP address. Find a WHOIS service online, or install a program, look those up.

Saving you the hassle, myfreecams is currently served by MetaPeer CDN. (www.metapeer.com). They may also have some origin servers somewhere, but html, images, video, and chat all come from MetaPeer IPs. Of course MetaPeer is itself private, also founded in 2004, and their "flagship product" prohost.ws doesn't exist anymore, as they've chosen to "service a small number of large enterprise clients". Still, they do have a network map and published datacenter locations.

If MFC decided to close up shop for some reason, I expect they'd pay out models. They have no obligation whatsoever to members, since tokens have no cash value.

 

[FloorGirl]

This is what I imagine the owners of MFC doing

 

[MrSwoob]

Financials? It's privately owned, and that's all you're likely to ever find out. I bet they're making money though .

Servers is not at all hard to figure out. Open Chrome, press F12, go to the network tab, go to myfreecams.com. Observe what servers are serving the various bits of content. Open a command prompt, type "ping <servername>". Observe the IP address. Find a WHOIS service online, or install a program, look those up.

Saving you the hassle, myfreecams is currently served by MetaPeer CDN. (www.metapeer.com). They may also have some origin servers somewhere, but html, images, video, and chat all come from MetaPeer IPs. Of course MetaPeer is itself private, also founded in 2004, and their "flagship product" prohost.ws doesn't exist anymore, as they've chosen to "service a small number of large enterprise clients". Still, they do have a network map and published datacenter locations.

If MFC decided to close up shop for some reason, I expect they'd pay out models. They have no obligation whatsoever to members, since tokens have no cash value.

Valid points Ramblin. The MetaPeer network and there datacenters answer some of there questions I would ask for a client looking for webservices. It is interesting to see that the owner is listed as a home in a suburb of Chicago.

If you think about the financial, models get 50%, and rightfully so. 1-2% for Credit Card processing 20-25% for network hosting and management (this is a conservative number). A team of coders that remote in from probably anywhere in the world, as long as they are cheap (think india). Support is extremely lean since it is only via email. . The take of the owner is 10-25% with no real risk or additional cost. Beyond that we are just speculating.

It works but since it is privately owned, probably by the one dude in suburban Chicago. There is a risk for the models. If MFC shutdown for whatever reason today where would that leave the model? If a model is totally dependent on one (mfc) network for her audience and that network disappeared she can probably kiss her expected income good bye. Can she switch to another network with out a major delay in cash flow? Does she have a platform to communicate with her clients from the mfc network to another one?

Just thoughts I would tell a client to consider with a webservice provider.

Or just ramblings from a person with too much time on his hands.

 

[shylurkerdude]

When I think of the owner making even 5% of all the tokens that are spent 24/7/365, my mind nearly splodes. I wonder where he keeps all the tokens

 

[Puffin]

If you think about the financial, models get 50%

Err.. see the thread: 61.4% of money spent on MFC is sent to models

Beyond that we are just speculating.

http://wiki.myfreecams.com/wiki/Payment_Information_for_Models#Payout_percentage
3.6% (65-61.4%) goes to Miss MyFreeCams prizes and free tokens from the Bring-a-Friend program
5% (80%-75%) goes to refunds and chargebacks.
11% (75%-64%) pays all transaction costs, accepts credit cards, debit cards, checks, wire transfers, telephone payments, and many other forms of payments from everywhere around the world.

 

[BobbyB]

Valid points Ramblin. The MetaPeer network and there datacenters answer some of there questions I would ask for a client looking for webservices. It is interesting to see that the owner is listed as a home in a suburb of Chicago.

If you think about the financial, models get 50%, and rightfully so. 1-2% for Credit Card processing 20-25% for network hosting and management (this is a conservative number). A team of coders that remote in from probably anywhere in the world, as long as they are cheap (think india). Support is extremely lean since it is only via email. . The take of the owner is 10-25% with no real risk or additional cost. Beyond that we are just speculating.

It works but since it is privately owned, probably by the one dude in suburban Chicago. There is a risk for the models. If MFC shutdown for whatever reason today where would that leave the model? If a model is totally dependent on one (mfc) network for her audience and that network disappeared she can probably kiss her expected income good bye. Can she switch to another network with out a major delay in cash flow? Does she have a platform to communicate with her clients from the mfc network to another one?

Just thoughts I would tell a client to consider with a webservice provider.

Or just ramblings from a person with too much time on his hands.

Life is always risky, you can have an accident, you can get sick, you can lose your job, plenty of stuff to worry about if you want to.....

or you can simply enjoy life and deal with problems when they show up.....so if MFC goes down you simply move to another camsite and start again...

 

[LaceyRoyce]

Valid points Ramblin. The MetaPeer network and there datacenters answer some of there questions I would ask for a client looking for webservices. It is interesting to see that the owner is listed as a home in a suburb of Chicago.

If you think about the financial, models get 50%, and rightfully so. 1-2% for Credit Card processing 20-25% for network hosting and management (this is a conservative number). A team of coders that remote in from probably anywhere in the world, as long as they are cheap (think india). Support is extremely lean since it is only via email. . The take of the owner is 10-25% with no real risk or additional cost. Beyond that we are just speculating.

It works but since it is privately owned, probably by the one dude in suburban Chicago. There is a risk for the models. If MFC shutdown for whatever reason today where would that leave the model? If a model is totally dependent on one (mfc) network for her audience and that network disappeared she can probably kiss her expected income good bye. Can she switch to another network with out a major delay in cash flow? Does she have a platform to communicate with her clients from the mfc network to another one?

Just thoughts I would tell a client to consider with a webservice provider.

Or just ramblings from a person with too much time on his hands.

not only is the 50% incorrect, also the CC processing is using 'high risk' processors. I'm not sure what kind of fees mfc gets for the higher volume processing they do, but at risk is 12-15% most places... I highly doubt they're paying 1-2% for CC processing.

 

[mynameisbob84]

Unless I was looking to go in to business with MFC, it's not something that I'd really give a second thought. Models seem to be paid, I've always gotten tokens in exchange for my money, but past that, it's not something that's gonna keep me awake at night. And judging purely by the amount of tokens that are visibly being tipped (and thus bought) each and every day, I'd say MFC are turning a healthy profit.

 

[JickyJuly]

If you include legal in your support category, I doubt it's that lean. A camsite wouldn't survive this long without awesome legal advisors.

 

[Sevrin]

not only is the 50% incorrect, also the CC processing is using 'high risk' processors. I'm not sure what kind of fees mfc gets for the higher volume processing they do, but at risk is 12-15% most places... I highly doubt they're paying 1-2% for CC processing.

Yeah, MFC doesn't have a merchant account with VISA, etc. CCBill, for instance, offer a volume rate of "as low as 10.8%" to merchants. You can't buy large packages through CCBill, so I'm pretty sure that some other processors like Rocketgate offer a better rate, but even those will be closer to CCBill's rate than what you would get with a regular merchant account with a CC company.

https://www.ccbill.com/online-merchants/business-solutions-for/highrisk.php

 

[MrSwoob]

Ok, so we know the MFC service is hosted Metapeer. The key with that it has redundancy, datacenters in Seattle and Chicago. Thanks to the wiki we know that models get 64% and MFC is spending 11% on financial cost. In the webservices world 20% for such services that mfc provides is a realistic cost. that leaves 5% profit margin. Tight margin for a business, 15% is considered acceptably low profit. 5% or less is seen in business such as grocery stores and gas stations. Both grocery stores and gas stations base their business model on moving huge volumes, optimizing utilization. This is a common model for the internet but still based upon huge volume, think ebay (but ebay makes 20% profit margin) and the like. Interesting.

 

[JubalCobb]

You can't buy large packages through CCBill

In the past you could only get the larger packages through netbilling. I didn't think that was the case anymore.

 

[weirdbr]

The key with that it has redundancy, datacenters in Seattle and Chicago.

(Disclaimer - I work on a very large CDN and could rant about MFC/metapeer for days)
Nope, it doesn't.

Metapeer claims to be a CDN and to be redundant, but it's not:
- insufficient locations - only 3 locations, two of which are on the same metropolitan area and one (Chicago) of which I don't think even exist: if you look at peeringdb (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1216), the only listed peering locations are in Seattle : one is their datacenter and the other is an internet exchange (AKA a fiber between their datacenter and a router on the internet exchange). If they had a datacenter in Chicago, it would usually be listed in peeringdb as one possible location to peer with other networks.
- insufficient peers that matter - they don't peer directly with end-user networks and reach those primarily via transit providers (which doesn't sound that bad unless you know that transit networks suck in terms of performance)
- insufficient/badly managed transit capacity- it's not uncommon for their transit interfaces to drop packages : I get almost daily lag on MFC because of this - the interface between Metapeer and GTT frequently drops packets at european peak (night time), which is usually a good indicator that the port is overloaded. Any decent CDN would had increased their peering to reduce/end the loss by now.

 

[MrSwoob]

(Disclaimer - I work on a very large CDN and could rant about MFC/metapeer for days)
Nope, it doesn't.

Metapeer claims to be a CDN and to be redundant, but it's not:
- insufficient locations - only 3 locations, two of which are on the same metropolitan area and one (Chicago) of which I don't think even exist: if you look at peeringdb (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1216), the only listed peering locations are in Seattle : one is their datacenter and the other is an internet exchange (AKA a fiber between their datacenter and a router on the internet exchange). If they had a datacenter in Chicago, it would usually be listed in peeringdb as one possible location to peer with other networks.
- insufficient peers that matter - they don't peer directly with end-user networks and reach those primarily via transit providers (which doesn't sound that bad unless you know that transit networks suck in terms of performance)
- insufficient/badly managed transit capacity- it's not uncommon for their transit interfaces to drop packages : I get almost daily lag on MFC because of this - the interface between Metapeer and GTT frequently drops packets at european peak (night time), which is usually a good indicator that the port is overloaded. Any decent CDN would had increased their peering to reduce/end the loss by now.

Great insight weirdbr. So there cost is less than I was guessing at. What would u say it would cost for the back end maintenance for mfc? I am just curious,

 

[Puffin]

Ok, so we know the MFC service is hosted Metapeer. The key with that it has redundancy, datacenters in Seattle and Chicago. Thanks to the wiki we know that models get 64% and MFC is spending 11% on financial cost. In the webservices world 20% for such services that mfc provides is a realistic cost. that leaves 5% profit margin. Tight margin for a business, 15% is considered acceptably low profit. 5% or less is seen in business such as grocery stores and gas stations. Both grocery stores and gas stations base their business model on moving huge volumes, optimizing utilization. This is a common model for the internet but still based upon huge volume, think ebay (but ebay makes 20% profit margin) and the like. Interesting.

Those figures don't add up. See my previous post.

 

[weirdbr]

What would u say it would cost for the back end maintenance for mfc?

It's hard for me to give an estimate, because I'm missing a ton of data:
- number of concurrent viewers at peak (to calculate bandwidth requirements)
- number of concurrent privates, average duration (to estimate disk to store the recordings)
- how efficient (or wasteful) their code is (determines how many machines you need)
- how much redundancy they have in place
- what sort of contract they have with the DC (24x7x365 support? full hands-on support? do they rent the machines or the space?)
- how much transit and peering connections at their traffic levels would cost (I'm in the engineering side of things, so the costs are never mentioned) and how many peers have agreed for settlement-free peering

 

[SoTxBob]

I'm curious why all the interest.... Sounds a lot more pointed than just a simple minded ramblings from too much time on your hands.

 

[BobbyB]

I'm curious why all the interest.... Sounds a lot more pointed than just a simple minded ramblings from too much time on your hands.

Maybe it gives him a nice hardon thinking about network connections and technical details......some are into feets - some have other fetishes...

 

[JoleneBrody]

The owner is no secret. His name is Leo and MFC is based out of Chicago. There are also a handful of executive admins such as Alex, Katie... Etc.
before you go running your brain across the ground for some info thats common knowledge. The admins even hang out sometimes. Even the owner can be seen sometimes as username adminLeo

 

[JerryBoBerry]

The owner is no secret. His name is Leo and MFC is based out of Chicago. There are also a handful of executive admins such as Alex, Katie... Etc.
before you go running your brain across the ground for some info thats common knowledge. The admins even hang out sometimes. Even the owner can be seen sometimes as username adminLeo

Agreed. He's found in Lounge10000 quite often actually. Maybe once a month or so I see him in there asking people opinions and suggestions for changes to MFC.