Eight Social Networking Sites for Men Who Love Men

Is this how you and Michael met? This helps explain the dorm-like, all male situation at the Arrington ranch, not that there’s anything wrong with it…

One word. “Ewww!…”

Now, we want a review of lesbian dating sites too!

Ali, that’s a great idea - please leave any suggestions you have for sites to look at.

Ditto what Ali stated. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions…

This is just what I needed! Thank you again, TechCrunch

Ah you forgot GayRomeo.com (based in Amsterdam, NL) - it’s free, available in six languages, they have a nice and feature-rich interface and 400.000 users after all.

Lipstick lesbians only, PLEASE!

Why can’t some one just start a niche “group” on Orkut or other similar site. How different is that from developing a totally exclusive site ?

India:

Three words: “Money, money, money”.

Ew? Lipstick lesbians only? Seriously?

Come on folks, please don’t tell me all the readers of this board are 12 years old.

noticeably missing from your list is downelink.com. in a nutshell i would describe it as and even more niche gay social networking site catering to gay asian men. of course that’s not to say that anybody is excluded. I would say its pretty popular in California, but as a user stats are not available to me.

What does this mean: “Transgendered identity is supported on this site but not gender queer identities outside of those based on the Male/Female binary.”? Seriously.

Marshall - bet you really had fun reviewing these sites mate haha

You forgot Gaydar.co.uk. It’s been around for aaaaaaaaaages… Waaaaay before the social-networking bubble we’re going through. And it’s not only popular in the UK, it’s the most used gay hook-up site world-wide.

It’s interface is a bit dated and messy, and they should really get rid of the paid functionality and develop an ad-supported business model, though.

When a site calls itself “ManJam” I can’t help but laugh.

For some reason when I read this post I had “Its Raining Men” stuck in my head; just like that old skit on In Living Color.

Can’t wait for the lesbian review. I am sure the reviews for Vagmasters, Vagster, and Vagerati will be titilating.

GuyParty.com is a gay social network!!!

Seee http://gaysocialnetworks.com/ for a full list of gay dating and social network sites.

This is just wonderful. What’s next? NAMBLA social networking sites? How about some polygamy social networking sites? But like others have said, let’s have some equal time for the lesbian social networking sites.

“Hated it!”

Slow news day, today?

Nice article.. i’m a lesbian girl myself, here in Denmark we have some very very nice sites for guys and lesbians.. very 2.0ish.. the one for guys is called http://www.flyguys.dk, and the one for girls is called http://www.flygirls.dk - i don’t know if they exists in an international version.

Skeptic - But for the money they really aren’t solving any other problem.

I dont understand why there needs to be so many options. Not just for gay\lesbian social networking … but for everything else. For the most part, they are all the same. Some may look nicer than others, but they offer the same features. Myspace is so popular becuase… because its so popular! All they had some right is to become popular with a few people, then the viral growth took over.

Whether it is niche social networking, ajax homepages, user-generated news, or an online office suite… If none of these sites stand out from the crowd, what makes them all think they can survive?

We also reviewed the UK gay social netwroking site QueensSpeech a few months ago. http://uk.techcrunch.com/2006/.....ensspeech/

It doesn’t suprise me that there are so many GAY social networks. They are all chasing the “pink pound” as we call it in the UK which has a very strong advertising pull behind it. i.e advertisers of potentially gay related products have realised this community is very lucrative and also very tight-knitted and will certainly recommend good products to each other.

Sites like the QueensSpeech are going to do very well in getting their share of this advertising money IF they can build a community quickly.

Thank you so much for this post. It really encourages me that some people can get past the useless stereotypes and bigotry to realize that we’re all just people. Niche markets should be interesting to anyone who likes making money… Thank you, Marshall.

I wanted to see The ManHole. I think its a great name for a Gay Place.

Its pretty messed up that some of these reviewed websites have membership fees. OutEverywhere’s £19.95 for 6 months sounds like a rip-off. Wouldn’t this deter gay men and cause them to join gay social groups on MySpace, Facebook, etc?

@Amit:
People are willing to pay for it, if you can guarantee that there are no fakers and the scene / community is real. Interesting list.

LOL Marshall,

Thanks for this.

=/

Interesting.. You have made a statement there for TechCrunch that there is no place for bias in your reviews. Way to go!

alternative culture is the net.

You forgot cottaging.co.uk we\’re UK dedicated social network for gay guys seeking intimate encounters… also gaydar which is the largest in the UK by miles.

xx

Phoenix - we’re all about bias at techcrunch, we just don’t happen to have a sexual orientation bias.

From the looks of it, the BigJock website is the only “true” social network in that it costs nothing, unlike most of those mentioned, and it will have all the regular stuff….and the monkey is very cool, I love the tank top!

I think it’s pretty obvious that Marshall and Mike are both straight. They also missed a subtly named site called gay.com

You also forgot gayther.com which is the international version of rezog.com, the biggest gay social network in France.

It’s widely free, and more than 25 000 members sends 400 000 messages to each other daily.

Site navigation is really great ! the french experience of the “minitel” ?

There’s one kind a new and recently launched called Uniformen.co.uk.

Not many users there, though.

Fridae.com >160k members.. beats all the websites profiled here…

yup, Gaydar is missing, very popular everywhere.

re gay.com and gaydar exclusion: I just reviewed what is being tgalked about right now in blogs and tags - both of these would have been good and will include them in the future. thanks

Interesting to see how people are confused between a dating site (the gay leaders are gay.com and gaydar.co.uk) and a social network site like Jake.org

Social Networks and dating sites grew out of online communities. So what makes a social network and what makes a dating site? Features? Positioning? Target market?

As anyone managed to get laid using LinkedIn yet?

By the way, Mike, your rainbow flag is not very 2.0
The current one only has 6 stripes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag).

And there’s my little baby, http://www.thingbox.com/

It’s possibly the largest Ruby On Rails-based community site anywhere. How much more Web 2.0 do you want?

You forgot to mention http://www.manhunt.net, it is more of a dating/hookup site, but it is probably the most successful of all of them out there.

@41 And the fact that it’s based on Ruby On Rails means…..what? to the end user?

The website Big Jock looks like it uses phpFox. Hundreds of sites use phpFox which is a very limited and buggy software. For only $39.99 a month anyone can have a social network… not sure that a review of this social network is merited in Techcrunch.

It means from a team of 1 person working in their spare time, they get more features from a free to use site quicker than teams of 7 or 8 working full time and charging subscription fees.

So after looking at such a vast number of gay sites, is it really worth launching another one?

Apart from Jake no traffic numbers are mentioned, it’d be interesting to see if any of these sites get any kind of traction or they are just “coming out” to make whatever money is left to be made…..

I didn’t know there where so many

Thingbox has around 5000 members. 30 million page views since launch just under 18 months ago, and around 900,000 private messages sent. And about 600,000 forum postings.

Of course, there is Gay.com

Good luck for bringing a great new social networking site to the gay guys in the States! As you recognized, the UK already has a few aimed at different markets, including Jake for business professionals and OUTeverywhere.com for pure social networking - its members organise around 5,000 events every year and its forums have more than 5 *million* posts. It’s been around since 1995, so good to see the States catching up with the UK for once

What about digg.com? At first glance it seems like just a news site, but the community feature are pretty deep.

Right on n00b! digg.com is definitely a big gay social community!

Niche social sights will rule the world one day. I have other sites in mind:

- HoseDown.Com -> Social community for firefighters
- TeachMeNow.Com -> Social community for the inept
- 6thStreetGs.Net -> Social Community for the gang members of 6th and Hawthorne in LA

Here’s the first Man 2 Man Mobile Social Networking Site…

http://www.mCruising.com

It seems hard to drive traffic to the huge growth of these sites. It’s a veritable orgy of male interaction that may explode in a world less inhibited. i’m groping for words here, and don’t mean to jerk your readers around but the potential load is enormous.

Gross!!

Not really sure why there is such a diferentiation nor the need for special sites

One has to guess that this post was in response to “National Coming Out Day” which was October 11th (which though welcomed as a nod to the gay&lesbian community is akin to posting about Latin social networking sites on Cinco De Mayo but with the caveat that likely only no more than a third of the even the gay community knew yesterday was NCOD)

>I won’t pretend to speak for gay men and I’m sure there are some sites I’m missing, but these appear to be the most talked about gay male social networking sites online.

Well speaking _as_ a gay man, I have never heard of any of these sites except for DListed and Connexion (the latter for no other reason than I _think_ that it has been a blog ad here on TechCrunch).

Although perhaps not “Web 2.0″ surely gaydar.co.uk, gay.com, bigmuscle.com and manhunt.com ….outstrip… the number of users of the sites listed above.

If one makes a distinction between a “social networking” site and a “gurl-get-your-groove-on” sites the only one listed by Mr. Kirkpatrick that would fall in the latter and not the former appear to be Jake and perhaps Connexion. The others while definitely not explicit like Manhunt et al, certainly still show a good deal of skin.

>certainly still show a good deal of skin.

Not that there is anything wrong with _that_

The need for different sites is advertising, pointless crap not targeted to you at all, and feeling more welcome. Sites like MySpace just let trolling be, all the gay groups there are worthless and full of nothing but trolls. I don’t even check the groups on there anymore.

Thanks for this post, it’s very much appreciated. I didn’t even know these sites were out there yet!

Marshall, thanks for the great post. A simple rundown like this that embraces inclusion and interaction (and business) within the _entire_ tech community is fantastic. You’ve made me an even more loyal reader than I already was. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some clicking to do.

I didn’t see you mention a couple of sites like justusboys.com (big profile system and free) and gay.com which has to be the biggest. There is also one called biggercity. Here are the ones I visit and an indication of their traffic…

http://www.alexaholic.com/www......usboys.com

Way to go, techcrunch. It’s nice to see that someone has the chutzpah to review social networks of all stripes. Ignore the homophobes. Just call it like you see it. No big deal.

I’m not really afraid of gays, so phobic isn’t the issue. I’m more disgusted by two men putting their penis’ in each others anuses (there’s corn and bacteria in there - btw, sperm is for eggs, not colons). Yeah, not afraid, repulsed. So, realize that anytime your hear the term homophobe, aptly replace that word with the word repulsed and you’ll be more on target with what 98.9% of the people feel. Don’t be hatin’, just flying my straight flag.

As you can see, gay areas are primarily dominated by MEN. Kinda like the old days when women were not allowed to golf… The ladies need to stick together.

One site aimed at doing just that is http://www.unifornication.com

This website is being built for strictly for lesbians and due out soon. Unifornication is in pre-alpha stage, open to the public, free, and offering $100 to those that register, rate and review… every month!

Features are being added daily and is expected to reach Beta by Halloween.

In 1 year from this date I will make the prediction that I be the most well known gay tech guy on the planet. If you’re smart, watch what I will do to GuyParty.com (um techcrunch, type in “gay social network” and GuyParty is on the first page! 40k+ users).

By the way, there are a TON of wannabes in the gay dating/social network market. If you look at traffic and advertising revenue alone, none of the social network Myspace clones come even close to what kind of traffic hook up sites are doing like adam4adam.com and manhunt.net. Gaydar is a joke and Gay.com is spamtastic a chat-only benefit for joining.

Who cares what features these social network sites claim to have in terms of being the most Myspace like. Myspace has the most gays of all sites combined and no other site will be able to match that traction. Ask most gays and they will tell you that if you want to meet a gay guy online go to Craigslist, Gay.com, an AOL chatroom, Myspace, Adam4adam or Manhunt. It’s easy to see which site is doing well by how many active online users there are during peak hours. Even my site GuyParty.com has had a struggle attracting and retaining due to “the myspace phenomena” and most paid sites are becoming ad supported. There won’t be enough advertisers to support all these clones and the reality is that the hook up sites are doing so well and much more connected to the promoters within the industry none of these social networking sites set themselves up for long term sustainability.

But wait, there is a way for these social networking sites to explode in myspace like proportions. After all the trial and error developing the best features for GuyParty, I only recently realized the answer to massive growth. I won’t say exactly what that is of course here where all my competitors may be looking. The answer is so simple yet its so powerful that applying the idea may lead to a new myspace like growth opportunity.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and want to know more email me.

gigaboy20 at yahoo is where u can find me. I’d love to talk to web 2.0 gay tech guys. That’s one real niche of a niche of a niche group that’s hard to network with. Maybe we can start a gay tech web 2.0+ mailing list to share ideas, network and collaborate. Contact me if anyone is interested in this idea. If all us smart fags get together we can probably do great things to help the gay community at large which in general eats itself out - no pun intended.

“This is just wonderful. What’s next? NAMBLA social networking sites?”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Karl Rove speaking. Just so you know, “gay” and “child molester” are now officially synonyms. This change will be reflected in tonight’s Two Minute Hate. Before that, though, we return to the 700 Club with the great man himself, Paaaat Robertson who will help you find demons in your town.

One more to add to that list: http://www.queensspeech.com
…launch is scheduled for the start of January and will be a true social network aimed at the entire ‘lgbt’ community - not just men looking for a ‘quickie’.

Going one step further with the social networking is http://www.AdultWork.co.uk. They do have a gay site (www.GaySwap.co.uk) not really to my tastes although there do seem to be a few lesbians on there displaying their ‘goods’!

AdultWork.co.uk is definitely worth a browse, kind of like the MySpace for adults

Thank you for saying this:

Niche social networks are likely a viable business because they allow specialized functionality and a subjective community feel as opposed to general interest sites that defer to either the lowest common denominator or the 15-25 year old demographic. Many people want to participate in social networks, but many people prefer networks set up for people they can relate to. That makes sense to me.

I think it’s hard to migrate business and people minds off of MySpace right now, as it’s been where a lot of people have cut their teeth on interactive communities, but I own a niche site, participate in a lot of niche communities, and it’s just not for everybody. I said this to an exec at MySpace not long ago - he said, “we have the eyeballs”. and I said, “yea, but not everybody wants your client”.

i think it’s comments like this that explain why I said that - and why niche sites need to thrive!

I think Patricia has it right, even over time, the crowd at myspace will soon need to grow up and go to work. They are skilled at social networking, but need to find new clothes.. where will they go?

downelink.com is actually a pretty big GLBT social network community. The site seems to be multi-racial.

Major kudos to TechCrunch for publishing this. I am also impressed with the commenters, most of whom are pretty mature about it, rather than promising to leave TechCrunch forever.

Thx, alot. I just had my coming out a while ago, and now i am looking for a proper social network. unfortunatly most are uk or us based and my regional ones are mostly like gaydar

And I stubled over this here : gays.com

Anybody knows whats coming on there ?

Have you tried BigJock.com? It is local, US-based and live. Pretty cool and seems to be working out the kinks. They have a news headlines section, not sure what this will be, but says Coming This Week.

I think manjam is doing something great by allowing people to actually network via their personal profile. many of these sites are just sex hookup sites and are really boring.

check out these great profiles and why they are different:

ozmarky has video and actually talks about himself instead of wanking! great profile!
http://www.manjam.com/ozmarky

goldenboy uses his profile to network for Business and has a Resume:
http://www.manjam.com/goldenboy5187

wolfsblue is using his profile to network his accommodation in palm spings:
http://www.manjam.com/wolfsblue

There is another new social networking site that is based on different lifestyles and they have a listing for “GAY/LESBIAN/BI.” Seems like a cool site where you can meet people from all over the place. http://www.muvas.com

gay

You should check out http://www.muvas.com. They offer social networking by lifestyles so you can meet gay/lesbian/bi people as well as anything from artists, musicians etc. It’s good to have niche sites just for one interest but that only limits what the site can offer. On Muvas you can meet people based on over 50 different lifestyles, for whatever reason you want and you can add pics, write blogs and share music. http://www.muvas.com

i am looking for house job in europe.i am 26 yrs and i live senegal.i am ready to serve any boby in europe.

Looks like there is another one to add to the list
http://www.cruisingformen.net

Looks like a clean nice design

hi i really enjoy this site well am just new and am now screwing every pla ce i just want all fellas to know i was here.

YOMIGO

How come you did not delve into the more popular sites for men who love men like http://www.AtomicMen.com

The are many sites that you can choose to look for love or not.