BeautifulPeople.com

BeautifulPeople.com is an online dating service where applicants to the website are voted in or out by existing members of the opposite sex over a 48-hour period.

The vote is democratic, if applicants secure a majority of positive votes they are accepted.

BeautifulPeople.com was launched in Denmark in 2002. The site was launched in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2005 and went global in 2009. The website has attracted considerable controversy in the media and much criticism since its inception due to its exclusive business model of only allowing perceived attractive men and women to join the dating community. Managing Director of BeautifulPeople Greg Hodge states that people were tired of using mainstream online dating sites when looking for an attractive partner, since they allow anyone to join and have mediocre or non-existent filters for finding attractive people. Hodge acknowledges that attraction is a strong criterion when romantically approaching prospective mates, and attempts to transfer this aspect of dating onto the website. Greg Hodge said: "BeautifulPeople.com is based on a fundamental principle of human nature, that being we all romantically want to be with someone we find attractive, it's Darwinism, it's millions of years of evolution".

About 20 percent of applications to the site make it into the community. Each applicant is rated by the existing members with the majority vote being the deciding factor.

In 2012, BeautifulPeople launched an exclusively gay version of BeautifulPeople.com. BeautifulPeople launched a satirical campaign in support of same-sex marriage in the United States in June 2012 by producing images using look a likes. The images depicted Michele Bachmann marrying Sarah Palin and Donald Trump marrying Mitt Romney with President Barack Obama as the priest. The images were displayed on billboards around the county however many were banned. BeautifulPeople then placed the banned billboards on the back of trucks which were driven around New York.

In January 2010, BeautifulPeople removed 5,000 members from the site for gaining weight.

In June 2011, BeautifulPeople.com was attacked by a virus which allowed users to join without going through the mandatory 48 hour voting process. Reportedly 30,000 people who were mistakenly let into the dating community were kicked off of the website as a result. A helpline was set up by BeautifulPeople.com for users who were removed from the site and who falsely believed they were beautiful. The media dubbed the virus "Shrek" after the animated film with an underlying story line of how looks should not matter.

BeautifulPeople regularly hosts events for its members in major cities around the world. In order to gain entrance to BeautifulPeople.com events, attendees must look as attractive as they have represented themselves online or they will be turned away by the door screeners, who the media have coined the Beauty Police.

In 2012, Greg Hodge, Managing Director of BeautifulPeople.com, wrote three blog posts for the Huffington Post, mainly about women, men and relationships.

In 2016, private data from over 1.1 million user profiles and 15 million messages exchanged between members were leaked after BeautifulPeople had erroneously made it available on a MongoDB test server. The information made public included addresses, education employment, income, and sexual preferences.