PlanetOut’s Gay.com spent untold sums of cash revamping its infrastructure in the past few months, which was most visibly seen with the relaunch of its chat program — easily the most used feature on the site.
Except ever since the gay hub debuted the new version of its site at the beginning of the month, Gay.com has been plagued by downtime. By our rough science, it’s been offline more than it’s been online. Quite embarrassing for a company that’s already had its fiscal misadventures widely reported (Queerty included), but we imagine few of you care how this affects the accounting books than it does your online cruising.
So, you tell us: How has Gay.com going offline hit you? Fewer hookups? Are you just signing up for Manhunt.net instead? Or are you suddenly abstinent? Hitting the bars more? Or banking on monogamy?
Queerty will have more on the problems festering at Gay.com — but first, we want to know if it’s really affecting you, or if Facebook already supplanted the site.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
(And yes, we’re prepared for any number of you saying how irrelevant Gay.com is, because it’s just a place to hunt for sex, and why should you care. But that’s idiot logic, because plenty of fags use the site quite often. Sometimes daily.)
And below, Gay.com’s open apology letter to members.
Since the launch of the new gay.com, the site‘s performance has been up and down. For those of you who have experienced the site during an outage or when it is slow, we want to apologize. We know that you expect more from us. Many of you have let us know that directly, and you are right. We are listening.
Not only are we listening, but we are literally working around the clock to give you the experience you expect from gay.com. Site speed and performance are rapidly improving each day. Still, we are not yet where we need to be.
So what can you expect in the days ahead in terms of on-going improvements and our communication to you about them?
We are adjusting our hardware configurations and software code to further speed processes. Despite extensive pre-launch testing, a site of the scale and complexity of gay.com is virtually impossible to emulate in a test lab. Additionally, we have seen new usage patterns from the site that we could not model and are adjusting our hardware and code to streamline and improve performance. With the addition of more servers earlier in the week, we have seen positive results in overall site speed. We continue to monitor site performance and may add additional capacity as necessary.
We continue to identify and fix the bugs that have resulted in unplanned system outages.
We are committed to customer service and getting everyone on the site. We have received a tremendous number of phone calls and emails with your questions and suggestions. We are working to meet your needs as fast as we can. We also know that many people still cannot get into chat for technical reasons. Should you need help immediately, we keep an up-to-date Known Issues link on our blog at http://gay.blogs.com/gaycomblog.
We promise to be as open as possible in our communication to you. We know these changes (both the relaunch itself and the follow-on outages) can be confusing and frustrating. We will do our best to let you know what is happening, and when and how it may affect you as a user of the site. Given the changes that we need to make, we know that we will need to have a few more planned outages. We will do everything possible to give everyone adequate advance warning of these outages. Whenever possible, planned outages will be conducted in off-peak hours.
Many of you have called upon us to revert back to the “old” site. While the launch of the new site has had its own early challenges, we strongly believe that the new site will be more stable, more flexible and more capable of rapidly meeting your needs, especially when we have worked these last kinks out.To that end, the feedback we are getting about our new features is valued and appreciated. Yes, there are things that we still need to do (i.e., restoring the ignore and /me features in group chat), but we also have received a lot of positive feedback on many of the changes. Please keep it coming. We really are listening.
We hope this letter helps you better understand what has been happening since the launch. Our first priority throughout this time has been to get all of you on the site and having a great time. We know that we have work to do to get there.
We appreciate your continued patience and support and will do our best to promise you are not disappointed.
The management team of PlanetOut
Want to know the latest, give us your thoughts or need to contact us? Here’s how:
For news on the site, go to http://gay.blogs.com/gaycomblog
For comments or feedback, click on the Feedback link on the top of every page of the site
For customer service, click on the Help link on the top of every page of the site.
gay.gone
They actually spent tens of millions over the last several years, the tell us in their financials, with bloated marketing, product and dev teams (bloated in terms of people who do nothing but report to people and have other people reporting to them). The underlying technology is ok — circa 2005, but ok. They have some good tech folks still. But the overhaul of the customer facing side, and the marketing in general, have been abysmal, and expensive. Now the site is strangely un-sexy. It feels like you’re hooking up at a Jamba Juice. Not surprising since the company and much of its operations are now run by Lesbians whose idea of sex among men is only what would be allowed for broadcast on the Ellen Show. I have an account on ManHunt, and if Alexa rankings are to be believed, ManHunt has long since surpassed Gay.com, which must be hanging on to its critical mass by the same thread that holds its NASDAQ listing status.
Mark
Frankly, I’m fed-up with Gay.com – and have been for years. It’s not the same as it was 10 years ago when two guys ran it. Now a corporation has taken over looking to make big bucks and upset a lot of major stock holders. It has over-expanded itself, buying up The Advocate etc and by my book disregarded its core business. I have discovered http://www.outinamerica.com – not too many get in the chat rooms. But then I’m patient – they will when they are totally fed-up with Gay.com (some are already and have like me found Outinamerica!).
crazylove
My problem with gay.com and the gay “community” in general is that in their own way they are as doctrinaire and boring as the straight community. The doctrines may be different, but they are still straightjackets about what it means to be gay. I’ve been out since 1994. I feel like I left one closet just to enter another. I’m guessing Ia m not along in this. Maybe that explains why these companies aren’t making money. The first two post responding to why the site isn’t doing well typify the problem. A bunch of queens not wanting to grow up.
C. Gerard
What’s Gay.com?
TheWeyrd1
Silly me…I haven’t been to gay.com in months and they go and change it to the point that the Chattage chat module I use doesn’t work…THAT’s when I went investigating and found out about the changes. Oh well, I can just not chat. I’ve gone this long without a chat fix…what’s a few more months…heh.
Eric
Thanks to Mark for posting yet another site that seems to have much more appeal and STABILITY than gay.comedy.
They have been down for most of this entire weekend with “system and programming code changes and upgrades”. Now we are being told there is a program “code error”. Someone again dropped the balls over at gay.com. I will be content if gay.com goes bye bye. Not a whole lot worth it there anymore.
Shirokuma66
Fine by me. Why don’t people meet people with human-to-human contact? We can have back room and t-room revivals, cruising on the streets, and god forbid, at bars! After the trick, you can also send hand-written thank you notes, when necessary.
BillyBob Thornton
ignores “someone”. Stupidity isn’t worth getting into a piss fight.
As for gay.com, or any other site that charges a fee for premium service, I do not patronize. Advertising revenue should more than provide adequate profit. And as a totally free site grows, so do the ad revenues. More visitors, means higher advertising rates.
sogay
Someone — Straight people are promiscuous and “bounce from one partner to another,” having immoral sexual relations sometimes as well. But that’s different? You’re making an unfair generalization. We don’t deserve to be discriminated and hated. It’s because of people like you that LGBT teens commit suicide and are killed and harassed every day (which is probably fine with you). YOU and your disgusting views are what’s wrong with America. Not us.
Eric
I am gay. And I agree with “Someone.”
Why do we have to make ourselves so easy to hate?
Why can’t we take more personal responsibility?
Why aren’t we looking for love with the intensity we look for sex?
Why is it assumed that everyone who reads this blog is a cruisy whore?
I’m really kind of sick of gay men. Really. Myself included.
crazylove
The most profitable entertainment business in the U.S. is straight porn. Just because I have a problem with the way we gays limit ourselves doesn’t mean Someone is right. By the way, while I am citing stats- 50 percent of all straight marriages end in divorce and upwards of 50 percent (polls differ) of straight married couples admit to having cheated on their spouses. Those who live in slutty houses Someone shoudn’t talk.
crazylove
reality check-
50 percent of straight marriages end in divorces
50-85 (depending on polls and gender) of married straight couples admit to having cheated on their spouse
Straight porn is by and large the largest component of both the entertainment industry and porn online. I have a gay friend who runs a straight porn site for this very reason.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t talk
Brian Miller
Got to love the trolls.
PS “Someone,” I hope you don’t talk to Jesus with that mouth.
Road2Nowhere
Someone —
There’s no need to discriminate or hate. That just leads to the type of violence and harassment that causes gay people to be killed or commit suicide. Nobody is going to stop homosexuals from having promiscuous immoral sex, no matter what your views on it are, so just “Live and Let Live.”
someone, once
Anybody want to lay bets on the gist of “someone’s” Gay.com profile? Cause ya just know she’s got one… Let’s see, how about “Closeted self-hating psycho looking for anonymous encounters because that’s how far along I am in my personal development. My place is fine because I live alone, otherwise I would have something to do other than say nasty things about myself online. Versatile, so long as I get to wear my Sarah Palin ‘party’ shoes.”
Ted C.
Someone: I totally don’t see what pun you’re talking about when you say “no pun intended”.
ChristopherJ
Gay.com, as sad as it may sound, is where I get my community. There aren’t a lot of people in my area that I can talk to about who I am, so it was nice to have a place to talk to people who were like me. Now… I don’t have that place. Manhunt isn’t really what I’m looking for. Ideas?
Psychofag
gay.com sucks….and manhunt.net swallows
Qjersey
Gay.com, $20 a month for membership (that allows you to “cruise” profiles.
Manhunt, $30 for THREE months membership.
enough said
Mr C
Thank Goodness for being happily partnered.
Darth Paul
Who cares? There are dozens of other (BETTER) sites for social and/or sexual purposes.
(Eric- do us a favor and move to a muslim nation or eastern Europe where you can self-loath and feel completely socially-supported by it. Or just join Exodus. I’m sure “Someone” can give you an emphatic referral.)
Mr C
Hey Darth,
Who was this directed @:
??????? and you’re right there are many better sites you can use for free
To ChrtistopherJ
Chris, darling, surely you jest? Gay.gone = community? WHat? The poorly written puff pieces about Howard Stern and other lesbians? The advice columns written by a guy who looks like a Saturday night live spoof of an advice columnist? There is no community on Gay.com. If you’re smart enough to be on Queerty, you’re smart enough to find a real community.
liberal
It’s funny how, regardless of peoples religious beliefs or sexual orientation that so many Americans are still so fucked up about sex.
What is morally superior about a sexually exclusive relationship? Sure it may be what you want, but it is human and especially male to want to spread your seed: it’s a biological imperative (them there is science words so our religious brethren might not approve of, um, actual fact.)
Why is it morally right or correct in so many people’s minds to be sexually repressed?
Where did this perceived need for some kind of super human morality about sex come from?
The problem here isn’t how to get laid without gay.com the problem here is that far too many people find the natural normal drive for human sexual interaction to be somehow wrong.
How is it possible for us to evolve when we are stuck in this country that has been high-jacked by Christian extremists who would be happiest if sex was never mentioned and we just had it to procreate?
The arguments of the Christian terrorist (Someone) and of the self loathing gay man (Eric) just represent repression, ignorance and fear.
Sex is a wonderful thing, just like eating. It’s a natural healthy appetite and should be indulged in, responsibly. Period, full stop.
Everything else is just big bad scary old religious types trying to get into your pants and tell you what to do with your body.
Gay.com has always been awful and poorly designed and it’s competitor, successor if you will, Manhunt is 50% owned by a McCain supporting Republican so if you want to feel extra bad about sex and how you get it Manhunt is certainly your site.
Otherwise, maybe it’s time that the gay community came together as a community and went dancing or supported one of the many local gay bars. And if we were really concerned we would demand a proper bath house in NYC – great cities all over the world have created wonderful places for gay men to hang out, swim, steam or have a bite to eat. But again the provincial right (Giuliani in this case) has taken away from us one of the healthiest and most interactive ways of socializing.
Maybe that’s what we New Yorkers should be doing with our time: lobbying the city and state to allow business men to open up a proper bath house here. A place where you can work out chat with people, have a beer or some food, walk around, take a shower or a sauna and if the mood hits and someone catches your fancy – get laid. All within a civilized social setting.
Why is this so much to ask?
Don’t buy into your own oppression: Boycott Manhunt.
"repression, ignorance, and fear"
Liberal, I think your assessment of Eric is flawed and unkind and ignorant-in-and-of-itself and inappropriately personal.
James
I do not think there is anything wrong with wanting to find a deeper connection than sex can provide.
And if it works for you, there is nothing wrong with monogamy.
The only one “preaching” here seems to be Liberal.
I struggle myself with becoming the things I hate, so I understand where Liberal is coming from, but he seems to be as intolerant and enforcing of his own view on others as the Christianists he’s foaming at the mouth against.
Calm down, honey. And try to be a little nicer to your brothers.
ChristopherJ
>Chris, darling, surely you jest? Gay.gone = community? WHat? The poorly written puff pieces, etc…
I was referring to the chat rooms, not the articles.
myrios123
I’ve had a lot of success with gay.com meeting people in years past and even had a couple good relationships spring from it.
I do think it is over priced, and I think guys4men and adam4adam do a good job of providing social places for people to connect.
I’ve started to get more use of traditionally “date-free” sites like facebook for meeting people now. It’s kind of nice… those sites prevent you from posting penis pictures. I’d rather identify a person by a facepic than a picture of a penis any day. “Hi nice to meet you, would you mind taking off your pants so I can tell who I’m talking to?”
Alex
I live in a markey where, up until recently, it was either gay.com or nothing. So the changeover from gay.com to seeing people on LifeOut, Manhunt and the like is a pleasant one, though I no longer feel like I’m the avante-garde gay man.
One of my major problems – outside of the ridiculous amount of downtime – with the new gay.com is that they have taken a restrictive site set up that had a limited number of free things and made it even more restrictive and money oriented. Before it was hard enough seeing who you were talking to, now you’ve got to pay to see someone’s pictures that have been unlocked. Booooooo!
Second, I am in no way a fan of the lack of choice in chat clinets now. I was a staunch user of both chattage and gccc, both of which are now defunt in favor of gay.com’s chat messenger. I prefer a standalone chat messenger rather than a browser based one in general, mainly because you can close out of them easier if you’re in a hurry. No confirmations, no pop ups, just closed and back to work/school/etc. Also, since the new service has begun, I’ve noticed a quick pop-up browser window that auto-closes as soon as it loads. I don’t know what this means, but my suspicion is that is it tracking malware of some sort that is “necessary” for the chat system to work. Boooooo! The older system didn’t need this, and the standalone systems didn’t need this, so why is it needed now?
This is my crossover into conspiracy theorist, but I’m thinking that they are simply tracking our web traffic to see what we look at, and to shape our gay.com experience into things that we are more likely to buy from their site. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone uses interwebz traffic to do this, and it wouldn’t be the first time a commercial site insalls tracking cookies onto someone’s PC.
BOOOOOOOOO! new gay.com sucks!
liberal
#26 Sorry if you felt I was overly harsh about Eric – or that it was too personal – but he agreed with “Someone” – who wants you and I dead. You have to agree that’s upsetting, no? I get real tired of being called an abomination,a sick, sinner who is going to burn in hell etc., because I’m gay – I find it interesting that gay guys would rather defend our enemy then stick up for ourselves. Or support gay business that give money to people who want to make impossible for us to get our basic human rights.
James of course we all want to find love and connection – I’ve been in a relationship for over 20 years I understand.
As for “preaching” or “foaming at the mouth”? I’d argue I’m just telling the truth. And I am passionate, I really care and sometimes yes that makes you angry, anger isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. It’s called fighting for our rights and our survival.
It was that very same anger that ACT-UP used to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis while those same right wing republican Christians sat by and said we deserved to die. I think the more pertinent question is where is your anger? Hate crimes are on the rise, HIV rates are sky rocketing as crowds are yelling for Obama’s death? And you get mad at me but say nothing to Someone?
jack jett
Is it gay.com or gay.cum?
six of one.
Historian
Pretty much every local SF gay knows someone who worked at PlanetOut. And if you are a gay media maven (and who isn’t? Its an interesting subject) here in SF you have followed the trajectory of PlanetOut for years. It goes like this: Genius 1 is chased out by politics right when they went public. Started realjock.com with his huge windfall from PlanetOut stock. Replaced with idiot who wrought this latest site. Genius 2 is chased out and he starts gay ad network. Since he left, ad sales plummeted. Genius 3 (CEO) resigns due to poor health and is replaced by clueless incarnate. Bootstrapping tech boys who built original on a shoestring and had the chops to build the new one? Well they were chased out, too. Replaced by series of high dollar tech exec types and their swollen management teams. Marketing genius? Chased out and replaced with marketing not-so-genius. And so on and so forth. QM2 blows millions. Advocate and Out mismanaged and sold for a song. Etc. Etc. Etc. A lot of companies spiral down like this one. Its more common than my 401k would like to believe. Look at the stock markets these days. Its the cycle of life. Who will build the next one? That is the interesting question.
James
Oh, please, “Liberal.” “Someone” did not say he wants you (or me) or any of us dead.
Hysterical much?
Don’t put words in “Someone”‘s mouth.
Robert
Gay.com used to be a favorite of mine, but that was ten years ago… when people actually chatted.
Now its just a bunch of guys one on one chatting for a hook up and now one really ‘chats’ in the rooms… the log into the room and then start pvt chats…
I gave up gay.com years ago.
tallskin
I use GAYDAR much better than either manhunt or gay.com
Someone
Wow, thanks James! I was just scrolling through comments and read liberal’s statement that I want gays dead!!! That’s simply not true. Like James said: DON’T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH!!!!!
Someone
Legitimate question here: Do gay men use the term fag or faggot to describe themselves or other gay men? The reason I’m asking is that I’m pretty sure I saw a gay man on here referring to himself as a fag. I, unfortunately, watched an episode of the mostly liberal bitches on “The View” talking about how it’s okay for a black to use the “n-word” but that whites can’t use it. It got me to thinking that it might be okay for gays to call each other fags but that straights “can’t” call them that. I used the term “faggot” in my previous post and, I have to say, I actually hate that word and am not sure why I said it. I’m not apologizing because I still stand by the general premise of my post. Homosexuals get their undies in a bunch when straights talk about how so many gays are all about the sex and then this article about gay.com (and also all the disgusting ads on this queerty.com) appears and just reinforces our impression. You ARE all about the sex and trading partners and, for the most part, NOT about long-term commitments.
John Smith
Gay.com’s new chat service? Not much different from the old one. They put lipstick on the pig and nothing on the back end.
seitan-on-a-stick
Hmmm, “Someone” is a little too curious about Gay sites because he/she surely can’t be here to defend the pathetically sinking SS McCain Ship. Eric is in need of therapy as being Gay sucks sometimes, but you need help if it sucks all the time for you!
Gay.com was sinking for a long time. Never great at breaking news, de-sexualized and paying for personals when so many places on the net are free are easily identified death knells of any Gay-Paysites. Even Newsworty 365Gay.com is sinking fast with very old and infrequent news stories. I agree with the person who prefers MyGaydar.com except it’s not used so much by American Gays who prefer their torsos truncated and want a relationship/gay marriage/orgy with strangers on T.
There are always the Group-based sites (very Left Coast) which range from the fetishistic to relationship-oriented: http://www.tribe.net/home OR http://www.connexion.org/index.cfm which are based on (now homophobic) Yahoo Groups (but less SPAM producing) There is huge money tied up in Dating Sites which is why we must maintain Net Neutrality from the Corporate bullies.
Gay Marketers tend to over-inflate our incomes despite record high unemployment in the Gay Male population. I also wonder who is auditing the real distribution claims and claimed membership activations including Ethan Interactive at Out in America with their over-inflated income claims… Nevertheless, I joined and though I like it broken down locally, there just are not many listed in my area (New York!) than Adam4Adam (AYOR Meet-up) and MANHuntdotnet (which I may re-join after Obama’s Presidential landslide win) though it’s full of Crystal-tweaking Sex Workers who should stay on Rentboy.com.
Then, there’s always Google-search for those who need their hand held through new innovations. Google: Gay News/ Gay Dating/ Gay Blogs/ Gay Groups.
Okay, so you may have a trillion profiles after all this but there are many FREE options without resorting to Upgrade Now option.
MassEdge35
Frankly none of the problems at gay.com should come as a surprise to anyone. Look, PlanetOut was a company run by a ship of morons and so-called “gay executives” completely out of touch with the mainstream gay audience it wanted to reach. I mean, let’s look at the math. One report after another says that the gay market (buying power) is worth $650+ million. Dear God, PlanetOut spent over $100 million and still couldn’t make a go of it. They gave away the magazines to Regent after proving they can’t marry print and online. And do we even want to get into their Titanic moment with RSVP? The best thing they can do to try to save both their faces is sell what’s left of the online world to Manhunt and call it a day. But what is truly sad is PlanetOut has RUINED the financial fundraising landscape for private companies that probably want to go public. A word to Regent – be smart about your properties and think about the community at large.
Just like to Chat
I just miss using Chattage to chat. It was simple and lots of nice people were there to chat with without all the trouble of opening up the website and slowing up my computer. No mas chat for me! I’ll survive though, manhunt.net is just as good, plus the pics are better on there.
blackheadibm
global see all trust house kitchen mail deliver german student tom
Anthony
I never used gay.com as a hook up place, always felt it was more like putting the FUN in DysFUNctional, but be that as it may, what I did find was a place to hang, chit chat, have some fun, and get on with life, but after a while in certain rooms, little communities were developed, and it was social.
Who ever the heterosexist bigot was, wake up hater..there are billions more straight pick up sites than gay ones, there are more straight hookers, and people paying for sex. Are you related to Palin or did you borrow one of her brain cells?
Gay.com blew it, badly. Actually, if someone could created a good chat site, they could make a mint, do one thing well, and reap the reward.
kevster
I’m happy to see that comments on gay.com’s new system issues have evolved into a discussion on gay morality (or immorality, as someone thinks) but the problem remains: I just upgraded my membership to a site that no longer works on my system. I cannot get any answer from gay.com after multiple attempts to find out WHAT THE F#@%ING MINIMUM OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ARE!!! I know, I have a Mac and its not exactly current but every other website works fine on it. At least when gay.com upgraded their system in 2006 and I couldn’t use the chat feature, at least I could use chatclient but now I don’t even have that option. I just got a message from gay.com the other day and I thought “great, at least I’ll know what I need to upgrade my Mac to in order to get the chat to work.” No such luck….they extended my “subscription” another month…..just f&@#ing great, another month on a website that doesn’t work….what a slap in the face….does anyone have any ideas on how I can get my $$ back? The funniest thing is on the gay.com blog, they say to hit the help button if you have a problem….THAT F%@KING BUTTON DOESN’T WORK!!!
Michael
Gay.com is in the situation they are in due to greed and not giving back. There are plenty of sites out there that are making a difference. I am the proud owner of guyquestlive.com and can say that there are alternatives out there. The way I see it, most of these sites are so greedy that they won’t be missed very much. All I hear is excuses from them saying its impossible to test the scope out of a site like theirs. They never did a beta test. They did an internal test and saw it was working and rushed it out. It would have been very easy to have a public beta test of the site. 1 month would have been spent with errors in a beta (and acceptable) environment. The real test for them now is putting new features out on a regular basis. It is one thing to catch up to the level that you promised to begin with. Now is the real test.
kevster
Hey guys, thanks for all the info concerning the “new system” at GAY.COMedy (LMAO), esp regarding other options and the history of PlanetOut. I just logged onto gay.com to see if by chance the site was more functional and I noticed the main page has a STRAIGHT AD for penis enhancers! OMFG….so I fired off this letter to [email protected]:
“Hey bitches,
You know I just logged on to gay.com again to see if you’d made any progress with getting things functional and I noticed that you guys have a crazy bitch in an advertisement with the line underneath “Surprise her with a bigger penis”. Now let’s think about this for a minute….why would any MAN who logs onto a website called GAY.com want to surprise any WOMAN with a bigger penis…? HMMMM????? Do you guys even know who your clientele is? I would love to surprise my BOYFRIEND with a bigger penis…..um…..let’s see…..I think a lesbian would certainly be surprised by her girlfriend getting a “larger penis”. So just exactly who is this ad aimed at? If you ad department is trying to sell penis enhancers to straight guys on a gay website (gay.com is a gay website, right?), then must be doing about as well as your site design department.
Unbelievable….it’s really quite fucking unbelievable…..”
Obviously they are morons and I prolly won’t get my $$ back…time to call the lawyer! LOL
MassEdge35
Maybe they should just rename the site something like outoftouch.com or moron.com or wearetryingveryhardtogooutofbusiness.com Frankly, guys just call your credit card company and have them reverse the charges. If the banks get enough of those complaints, PlanetOut’s credit card processing company may suspend their transactions and their ability to charge credit cards.
Below_The_Belt
I just called Master Card and asked them if they could help with getting some of my money back, because I was trying to get Planet Out to give me back the balance of my yearly fee and they said right out not a chance.
Anyway , M/C said not a problem and they did a full reversal of the full amount for the year. The lady that I spoke to at Capital One said they had received thousands of complaints.
Ryan
Someone needs to get 365gay.com to have a chat feature.
sourmug2
I tried, I really tried. I gave them a chance time after time only to come up short each and every time. As a gay.com premium subscriber, I hoped for better.
One evening it took me almost 20 minutes (i was just trying to see how long it would take) to log on, then the system locked up and stopped responding.
It’s unbelieveable to me that a company that acts like this is still in business.
Hopefully, that will end soon enough…
used to work there
@Historian:
Historian is absolutely correct. I can attest to this as I was hired just as PlanetOut went public. Just as Historian said…The Genius/founders and all the bootstrapping tech folks were chased out. The savvy marketers were also chased out. The only management people that remain are clueless, overly paid, and have done nothing but drive the company into the ground. Within those walls now… exists pointless bureaucracy, kissing ass, meetings about meetings, planning about plans, and nothing real ever develops. I found out most everyone around me just tried to look busy. Management is to blame. Plain and simple.
They really took their eye off of the ball when going public. Instead of serving their core (and once very loyal)audience with content and cutting edge technology, they got greedy and just started gobbling up cruise companies, magazines, adult pubs. Literally poured millions into these divisions… all the while truly ignoring their core audience. It’s really a shame and I find it a sad story in the history of our community. They had the opportunity to be the best, out and proud gay website serving their core audience…but Gay.com blew it. Bad.
Mark
Like “Used to Work There” – I did, too. Well not there in San Francisco, but for their London Office. My boss was a French guy who was European Vice President of Gay.com. All this was back in the days when they had a Mens US/Canada chat floor, a Mens UK chat floor, a Youth chat floor, a Women’s chat floor and an Mens International chat floor for those outside US/Canada/UK. It was a “happy” chat site back last century – and it was the largest in the world.
I was an unpaid “monitor” and rose to be a team leader and then “manager of the UK floor – still unpaid, but not complaining.
Then the two guys who founded the site were “pushed out” – arguably the worst thing that happened at Gay.com.- and the “corporate suits” arrived. As “Used to Work There” suggests, they totally lost the plot!
When the “ad bots” struck and plagued the chatrooms, nothing constructive was done at head office. The 50+ UK monitors and I spent countless hours crusing all the rooms and removing the “ad bots” which were becoming a serious nuicance. How I remember those day – we were each removing something like 300-400 ad bots an hour EACH. These automated bots could by-pass the “ban” facility on the IP “address” and reappeared very quickly after we banned them from the site!
Fortunately, the vast majority of the UK chatters realised the situation the (unpaid) monitors were in and we escaped their anger, which was directed at head office in San Francisco, who did nothing except make excuses.
It even got to the stage where were were able to trace the people with the ad bots to Alaska and knew their internet service provider. This was reported to San Francisco, who continued to do nothing. So with the blessing of the Vice President Europe (who was getting totally pissed-off with head office and the situation), I got in touch with the ISP in Alaska and eventually it’s head of security (who turned out to be gay and a user of Gay.com!). He booted the guys running the ad bots off his company’s system. But they returned a day later, using another ISP.
I was effecitvely fired by San Francisco for going to the ISP in Alaska when they found out what I had done! The UK monitors, who were totally fed-up, all quit – and the VP Europe also quit.
At that time, Gay.com had some 85% of the UK chat market, and Gaydar had 15%. UK chatters deserted Gay.com in droves and within a couple of months Gaydar had 80% of the UK chat market.
This shows how the corporate Gay.com view their customers back some eight years ago. And their attitude to the customers has not changed – they just don’t want to know.
unknown
@Robert: some do chat.. with themselves in two, three or more browsers open at once thinking they can get attention and people to private them for cyber fantasy. You can always spot them by the keep leaving the room with one of the profiles and then come back and greet themselves with the other then go back to the same drivel of main room messages about all the slaves they own and are looking for more to complete their slave collection. ( no profile name mentioned because anyone that has been on gay com knows who i am talking about ) gay.comedy is right. same losers on there 24 hrs a day, makes me wonder when and if they actually sleep….
pozqueer
I left gay.com some time ago as it seemed everyne there was just looking to hookup. The one thing I noticed was that The Advocate came out with the news about the Manhunt CCEO giving to McCain and then the following day OUT Magazine came out with the “Is Manhunt Destroying Gay Culture.” OUT is also owned by the same company. I figured that they did that one hoping to draw more new business away from Manhunt to gay.com. Just recently The Advocate sent out an article with a horrible headline about Obama concerning the HBO/Obama transition blunder about Rev Robisons speech at the pre inagural ceremony. The gist of that article was questioning Obama’s agenda towards our community. Then of course three days later Gay.com sends out the “Obama GLBT agenda” story (more favorable). I couldn’t help but feel that all they were doing was trying to draw attention to themselves as a marketing ploy. Personally speaking I feel that the gay.com advocate out mag planet out has also attempted to take over some PRIDE events in major cities. It really smells like some sort of monoply. Asking people to pay for PRIDE entry and to donate money while getting dollars from major sponsors reeks of greed.
brandon
Gay.com went down I was unable to access it and several of my friends were not either something happened with the dns with isp providers. My cellphone was able to access gay.com so I pinged it and got an ip address.
here is a link
http://tinyurl.com/ip-gay-dot-com
here is the ip address:
http://209.249.6.15/
Nic
I tried that ip address, got the log in page but when I logged in, I received an error page that says “Server not found. Firefox can’t find the server at secure.gay.com.” So maybe their servers crashed?? You would think they would share some updates on their other websites like out.com or advocate.com…so, what’s up gay.com?
Brandon
I was able to login on my phone. I was able to pull the site up by its typed name. I have a linux based phone using t-mobile. I pinged gay.com and that was IP i came up with.
I believe the DNS entry for most ISP has been removed for gay.com
Brandon
I think providers like AT&T and Comcast removed the DNS entry so users could not go to that site.
Brandon
Yes I am right gay.com is not off line I used open DNS as my DNS and was able to load gay.com
Comcast and AT&T has removed gay.com from their DNS Servers.
http://www.opendns.com/
***there is a free version.