I’ve always had an interest in web startups and web based businesses. There is a growing boom in internet-based companies in the past few years. The reason is clear… the cost to startup is far cheaper on the internet than it ever was. Sites are being designed for relatively minimal costs, and seem to be able to achieve overnight success. Now, of course, we only hear about the success stories (youtube, digg, myspace) rather than the countless failures or minor players in these spaces.

What’s interesting is that everyone’s measure of success is relative. I run a reasonably popular Mac-based site on the internet, but I have my sights aimed higher in the long run. A couple of notable blog entries from much larger successes underscores that for entrepreneurs what you have is never enough.

James Hong of HotorNot.com appears to make millions a year at his popular site, but has a burning desire to do more:

But we’re on a mission. We have something pretty neat that we want to build, and we’re willing to risk a lot to get there… and we’re hungry as hell. Maybe we’ll succeed, and maybe we’ll fail, but at least we’re going for it.

No details on what he plans on doing to HotorNot, but he is clearly moving away from the safety of the status-quo and trying to expand his empire.

Meanwhile, just yesterday, Marcus Frind who runs PlentyofFish, a free online dating site, posted about what he saw as the growing trend of social networking taking over dating sites.

But there is no way that [the current format] will take plentyoffish to 10 billion a month or even 2 billion. I’ve tried making many minor and semi big changes to site the last few months but nothing has had a real effect. By real effect I mean adding millions of new users. So once again time to change the format and move this category forward or create an entirely new category.

To give some perspective, Markus’s dating site generates over 22 million page views/day and over $4.5 million a year (with no employees). But looking at where the trends are going is pushing him to change his format, and try to expand.

I don’t think this is a side-product of greed…. it’s the fundamental desire to win. For entrepreneurs, it’s all about winning.

It will be very interesting to see how successful and dramatic these changes will be.