The other day I calculated my net contribution to the IMVU client, in lines of code. Excluding third-party libraries, I have subtracted about 100,000 lines since 2005.
Reminds me of an old presentation by Alan Kay. He was demoing some networked virtual world he'd written, including avatars, portals, and chat. He wrote it in Smalltalk, and said it summed to 60,000 lines. He said with a bit more effort, he could probably reduce it to 20,000.
There's something to be said for a complete lack of duplication in the system.
Alan Kay's current project is to implement a full operating system from bare metal to userland GUI in 20,000 LoC, using as many meta-languages as necessary to get there in a pedagogically cogent way: http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm
Given IMVU's development practices I think your problem is more like "Delete all those people who click on photos of big-chested anime girls in sapphic embraces." (Edited to add: I assume they go on to convert as well. sigh)
Heads up to every person who wants to run an ad-based startup: remnant inventory is the term for the inventory -- i.e. page views -- you have to sell after you sell those spots which are actually worth money. Remnant inventory is nearly worthless. The only people who will pay money for it are either a) idiots who will shortly exit the business or b) people appealing to the lowest common denominator.
If you don't want your website to be cluttered up with Punch My Scantily Clad Diploma Now, My Lord, then you should charge money for it.
Reminds me of an old presentation by Alan Kay. He was demoing some networked virtual world he'd written, including avatars, portals, and chat. He wrote it in Smalltalk, and said it summed to 60,000 lines. He said with a bit more effort, he could probably reduce it to 20,000.
There's something to be said for a complete lack of duplication in the system.