Biography
A lesson lived is a lesson learned
Robert Vonn Vitus Hintze is of a Danish mother and a Sicilian father, born in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 19th 1976.
Robert grew up as the oldest of five children. He spent most of his time engaged in sports such as handball, volleyball and gymnastics, but it was his love for soccer, which ultimately gave rise to a career as an elite level soccer player resulting in the selection for the Danish national youth team (U16).
In his early twenties Robert changed his focus from sports to music. He mastered the guitar as well as singing and songwriting and soon he was traveling the country as a lead singer in his own rock band named “Torrid Flow”.
In 2000 Robert graduated as a Media Economist from IMMA (Interactive Marketing & Multimedia Academy) in Denmark and due to his music background and newly acquired IT and marketing expertise, he was headhunted to a position as Online Media Director at the largest commercial radio station in Denmark, The Voice.
During the two years of employment Robert headed the Online Media department at The Voice and contributed in building the largest audience of online listeners and users for any radio station in Denmark at the time. This was partly due to “The Voice – LoveFinder”, which, in his time grew to become the second largest dating site in Denmark only surpassed by Dating.dk.
This endeavor inspired Robert to start his own online dating business after selling of The Voice Lovefinder to Jubii.dk in 2001.
THE DAWN OF BEAUTIFULPEOPLE.COM
With no regular income or pending investors, Robert had no financial backing to help him through this transition. He therefore had to move out of his apartment and into a tent in his friend’s yard. For three months Robert lived in his tent while he was dreaming up the concept of BeautifulPeople.com. With no initial start-up money Robert knew he would have to come up with a concept that could generate free PR.Together with his two former schoolmates Kasper Hjorth and Kasper Lausen, they founded and built the platform for BeautifulPeople in 2001.
THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTIFULPEOPLE.COM
The nature of BeautifulPeople.com is based on the simple concept of attraction.
By having all potential members go through a voting process in which the existing members vote on whether or not they find applicants of the opposite sex attractive enough to grant them membership, Robert would touch upon a universal and very sensitive topic: The perception of beauty.
Together with a clever media strategy Robert had made the perfect recipe for free and universal advertising.
On the morning of November 2nd 2002, Robert launched BeautifulPeople.
He simply sent out a press release in Denmark with a headline saying: Ugly people forbidden!
And as if by magic, within 48 hours, the concept of BeautifulPeople had attained national media coverage from just about every media outlet in Denmark.
This formula was duplicated and perfected over an over again as Robert and his new assistant Greg Hodge (2004) launched the concept in more than 30 countries worldwide creating controversy and media attention beyond their wildest imagination and without spending one dollar on conventional marketing or advertising. ‘
In the year of 2005 BeautifulPeople had an estimated reach of 2 billion people through media coverage across the 6 continents. At the launch of BeautifulPeople in the US and the UK, Robert and Greg did more than 1200 interviews and BeautifulPeople were featured in almost every national newspaper, radio and TV outlet, hereunder CNN, BBC, New York Times, The Times, USA Today, Good Morning America, The View, MTV, E! Entertainment, CNBC, ABC, Pakistan Times, Hongkong Times, Inside Edition, Russia Today, Global TV South America, Sydney Herald, just to mention a small number of appearances.
By the end of 2008 Robert and Greg were living in Toronto, Canada and were featured as the main characters in their own 13 episodes TV Documentary Series on the national TV station SLICE, called “BeautifulPeople”.
By this time the website had acquired 7 million applicants.
NEXT
THE NEXT SOCIAL MEDIA SENSATION IS CALLED LIST101
In 2017 Robert Hintze introduced his new concept, a unique social media app named LIST101.
LIST101 is a concept that combines real life social status, competitive content sharing and the individual power of influence in every interaction – in an ever more addictive social game!
The app publishes data 24/7, showing exactly who is the most popular and influential people in every city, state and country around the world!
This new phenomenon introduces a unique way to measure everyone’s popularity and influence – in real time.
Based on a “Public Opinion Point System” you receive Popularity Points depending on the sum of praise and feedback you receive on your profile and content from fellow users (likes, super likes, dislikes, comments, etc.). Likewise you receive Influence Points every time you interact with other users’ content.
LIST101 introduces a number of groundbreaking features that will help you monetize your shared content. Long story short: The more you or your content are deemed as popular by your peers – the more money you are able to generate from using LIST101.
Download the LIST101 app for iOS on the Apple App Store or read more about the concept on list101global.com