Markus also had the benefit of a lot of lead time-- he had several years of growth where the spammers hadn't evolved to their current level of effectiveness, and while his site wasn't as big a target, so a lower eradication rate while he developed his solution still wouldn't affect the majority of his user base.

Hot or Not was instantly a huge target, and coming up with a workable solution overnight to a problem of that scale is not easily done, no matter what the headcount.