We recently had the opportunity to sit down and meet the ow
ners of Mugshot Junkie - a website featuring mugshots of inmates and offenders. In this interview, the CEO wishes to remain anonymous, as there are many irate offenders that would love to be malicious. Reading and displaying of public records is completely legal, and all users are innocent until proven guilty
but that doesn’t mean they won’t be pissed anyway. Read on below, and make sure to check out their website, it’s pretty epic!
What is MugshotJunkie and where did the idea come from?
Mugshot Junkie stemmed from an idea of bridging the gap between public data, which has long been successful in traditional print media, with the even larger base of users that read and interact with news entirely online. We scrape over 50 websites to aggregate the data, and will continue to grow and expand to new areas as our user base requests it.
What makes MSJ successful, and what kind of users visit the site?
Let’s answer that question with another question.. you ever watch the show COPS? COPS is one of the longest running shows of all time, and we can learn from their success that people love to watch the stupidity of others. We take this a step further by letting people rate users “Hot or Not”, write captions, and comment on photos.
What are your long term plans for the website, and where do you see MSJ in 5 years?
We’re already working on our first of many mobile apps, which will allow users to browse while on the crapper, bus or couch. We will support both the iPhone and android with our apps. After we launch our first app, we will then be working on a social component as a facebook app that will let users search, subscribe, and share offenders in our database, allowing one-click matching of the users friends list and much more.
Thanks for giving us your time, MSJ and let us know when you release the mobile app, we’re all eager to check it out! Go check out Mugshot Junkie for local mugshots and arrests
Tagged: consumers, interview
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