Introducing Daily Digest

We want to direct your attention to a new feature we've been working on

which we call Daily Digest.  Daily Digest is an email sent to your

personal email account notifying you when someone has hot listed you or

viewed your profile. We want you to know who has been active on your

profile! 

Daily Digest was created to keep you in constant contact with people

checking out what you have to offer. We don't want you to miss any

possible connections with other members.   

Some of you may have started to receive the Daily Digest. Currently, we

are delivering to a smaller amount of members, and the roll out will

increase to all of our members over the next few weeks. We want to make

sure the experience with this new feature is flawless and extremely

helpful to the Gay.com community.

If you’re wondering how to adjust receiving this email just visit the My Account 

tab of your profile, open the Email and Notification section and make sure the 

‘Send me a daily email with a summary of activity on my profile’ box is checked

in the Profile Activity Notification section. You can also change your preference

at any time by un-checking this box. You can also update your personal 

email address to make sure you are receiving all important account 

notifications for gay.com.

Remember to keep your profile up-to-date and that you have an active email account associated with your membership.

Stay tuned for more updates that will be heading your way very soon.

Gay.com becomes part of Here Media

We wanted to take a moment to let Gay.com visitors and members know that

Gay.com is the newest, welcomed addition to the Here Media family.  We

look forward to interacting with you on the site and improving the

user-experience for our members and guests.

In an attempt to stay connected with you, the members, we have created

our own member profile. We will use the profile make site announcements

and share photos from various events from around the country.

Additionally, feel free to use the profile to send any comments or

concerns our way. Our profile name is "Gay.com".  Add us as a friend!

Please visit "Site News" often as we will begin to post more frequently.

Site update: Messenger loading issue

Some users may be experiencing problems loading messenger as of today’s site update. If you are having trouble loading messenger as of this morning, try clearing your browser cache – see instructions below for specific browser instructions.

To clear the browser cache and cookies on Firefox:
1. Open a Firefox browser window.
2. Click on Tools and choose Options from the drop down menu.
3. Select Advanced and click on the Network tab.
4. Under the Cache section click Clear Now.
5. Select Privacy.
6. Select Show Cookies. Click on the Remove All Cookies button. When done, click Close.
7. From the Privacy window select Exceptions.
8. Type in "www.gay.com" and click Allow. Close the window.
9. Click OK to close the Options window.

To clear the browser cache on Safari:
1. Open a Safari browser window.
2. Click on the Safari menu and choose Empty Cache from the drop down menu.
3. Click the Empty button on the confirmation window.

To clear the browser cache and cookies on the Internet Explorer 7:
1. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools from the menu along the top of the browser screen.
3. Choose Internet Options from the drop down menu. This will open a separate box.
4. On the General Tab (which should already be displayed) you will see under Browsing History(in the middle of the box) two  buttons labeled Delete and Settings. Please click on the Delete button to bring up the Delete Browsing History box.
5. Click the buttons labeled Delete Files…, Delete Cookies…,and Delete History…. Click yes to the confirmation windows that follow for each.

Site Update - April 28

We updated the gay.com site today with bug fixes and performance improvements.

Site Update - March 10

Today we released an update to gay.com, with a number of improvements.  Here are two big ones:

• Your Who’s Viewed Me list is now always sorted by date, with the latest first.

• Who’s Online search results are now more inclusive.

Hey, where is Local Scene? 

We’ve removed the Local Scene section to make way for a more dynamic, interactive and informative Nightlife channel.  Instead of covering events in six major U.S. cities, our new Nightlife channel will cover every major city.  In fact, we’ve recruited over 50 nightlife insiders who will be writing about the hottest, hippest, and most fun things to do in their particular cities.

Oh – and if you think you’ve got what it takes to be a gay.com Nightlife Correspondent, click her to find out how: http://travel.gay.com/2009/02/wanted-nightlife-correspondents.html

Stay tuned to gay.com Travel Blog and watch for the new Nightlife channel.

How to cancel your gay.com membership

Although we hate to see you go, some members have asked how to cancel their account with gay.com.

Follow these steps to cancel your free or premium gay.com account:

1. Sign in to the gay.com site with the account you wish to cancel.
2. Click the link for My Account: http://www.gay.com/members/account/home.do
3. Edit the section Membership and Billing.
4. Click the link to Cancel Your Membership or Cancel your premium subscription, and follow the prompts to complete the process.

Site Update - Chat Rooms Added

We recently asked gay.com members to submit chat room suggestions. In today’s site update, we added 18 chat rooms – see the list of updated chat rooms below.

If you have a room you would like to see added, let us know.

United States
  Arkansas
    -Jonesboro

  California
    -Chico
    -Humboldt
    -Monterey

  Florida
    -FLorida Keys

  Indiana
    -IN, Northwest
    -Lafayette

  Massachusetts
    -Worcester

  Minnesota
    -St. Cloud

  Missouri
    -MO, Southeast
    -Rolla

  Ohio
    -Mansfield

  Oregon
    -OR, Central
    -Portland Bears
    -Salem

  Pennsylvania
    -Reading

  Texas
    -Laredo

Asia & Middle East
  Afghanistan

AOL User Recommendation

After investigating reported AOL issues, we are recommending that AOL users download the Firefox 3 web browser, and use Firefox as your web browser for gay.com.  gay.com chat is currently not compatible with the AOL web browser.

We do not recommend AOL users download the Internet Explorer browser because of a conflict that may arise when using both AOL and Internet Explorer. Specifically, users may experience difficulties chatting when using both AOL and Internet Explorer side-by-side if both browsers are open to gay.com at the same time.

NOTE: Firefox is not a software patch that enables use of the AOL Browser. You must use Firefox, not the AOL browser, as your web browser for gay.com.

To download and use Firefox, please follow the instructions below.

For Firefox:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Click on the green "Free Download" button and follow the prompts.

Once you have Firefox installed you will need to set the pop-up blocker to allow for gay.com:
1. Open the Firefox browser.
2. On the menu bar, click on Tools, and select Options.
3. Click on the Content tab.
4. Click on the Exceptions button to the right of the "Block pop-up windows" check box.
5. Enter www.gay.com and click Allow
6. Refresh the page.

To access gay.com:
After connecting to the internet, please close your AOL browser. Launch the Firefox browser and go to www.gay.com.

Site Update

We updated the gay.com site today, with a number of changes focused on the chat suite.  Ignore is now available, in both Group Chat and IM.  Support for “/me” in chat is also available now.  Finally, we’ve made several fixes intended to further improve site performance and stability.

Ignore
Ignore is a chat specific feature which prevents you from seeing IM requests or group chat messages from other members.  You can choose to ignore a member from their mini-profile within IM or group chat.  Ignored members will be displayed grayed out in chat windows.  You can choose to remove the ignore from mini-profile as well.  Ignore is available to all gay.com members.

For Premium members, blocking a member will also ignore them.

/me
We’ve returned support for the /me command in both IM and group chat.  What’s /me?  When you begin a chat message with /me, your member name will be displayed instead.  Here’s what it looks like:

Tuesday, November 25th Update

Two chat related issues have been identified for some members who use Firefox or Safari as there primary browser.  Members may have difficulty accessing group chat or initiating an IM.  When accessing group chat a member may be presented with an error message.  When attempting to initiate an IM or view a member’s mini-profile, the member you are trying to contact or view may appear to be Ignored.

Both instances can be resolved by doing the following:

·        Sign-out of gay.com

·        Clear your cache (see below for more browser specific information)

·        Close your browser

·        Re-launch your browser and sign-in to gay.com

Some members may be experiencing difficulties with Group Chat

If you are having problems with Group Chat, please follow the instructions below to clear your browser cache.

To clear the browser cache and cookies on Firefox:
1. Open a Firefox browser window.

2. Click on Tools and choose Options from the drop down menu.

3. Select Advanced and click on the Network tab.

4. Under the Cache section click Clear Now.

5. Select Privacy.

6. Select Show Cookies. Click on the Remove All Cookies button. When done, click Close.

7. From the Privacy window select Exceptions.

8. Type in "www.gay.com" and click Allow. Close the window.

9. Click OK to close the Options window.

To clear the browser cache on Safari:
1. Open a Safari browser window.

2. Click on the Safari menu and choose Empty Cache from the drop down menu.

3. Click the Empty button on the confirmation window.

To clear the browser cache and cookies on the Internet Explorer 7:
1. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools from the menu along the top of the browser screen.

3. Choose Internet Options from the drop down menu. This will open a separate box.

4. On the General Tab (which should already be displayed) you will see under Browsing History(in the middle of the box) two  buttons labeled Delete and Settings. Please click on the Delete button to bring up the Delete Browsing History box.

5. Click the buttons labeled Delete Files…, Delete Cookies…,and Delete History…. Click yes to the confirmation windows that follow for each.

Browser recommendation: Upgrade to Firefox 3 or Internet Explorer 7

We recommend that members upgrade or change to Internet Explorer 7(IE 7) or Firefox 3(FF3). Members using other older browsers may encounter layout and performance issues across the site. gay.com will look and run better on IE 7 and FF3.

Download Instructions for FF3

Download Instructions for IE7

Tips and Tricks: Entering Rooms

You can enter rooms on the Find a Room tab from within Group Chat.

If you are a Premium gay.com member, you can enter any room you like, even full rooms. Chat rooms are full when they reach 100 members. To enter a specific room instance, click on the Enter link for that room instance.

Free members can also use the Enter links on the Find a Room tab to enter any room instance that has less than 100 members.

If you are already in a room and want to change to a different room, or different instance of that room, go back to the Find a Room tab and click the Enter link for the room instance you want to enter.

Monday October 13th - Update

This past weekend had highs and lows.

Friday night we made the decision to take gay.com offline during prime time to fix some bugs that had been causing repeated instability within chat. While we normally schedule outages in non-peak time, we felt that the code release was important enough to justify the down time. Happily, the release significantly improved the overall chat experience for many of our users throughout the day on Saturday.

Unfortunately, there were also several unplanned outages this weekend. While none of these outages were related to the new chat code, the site was offline during prime weekend hours.

To help remedy that, we made a few more changes to the code early this morning. We will likely have several short, planned outages this week, which we will endeavor to do in off-peak hours, as we continue to improve and stabilize the site.

An Open Letter to gay.com Subscribers, Members and Guests

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?

1. 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.
2. We continue to identify and fix the bugs that have resulted in unplanned system outages.
3. 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.
4. 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.

AOL User Access Solution

We have many reports of many AOL users (specifically version 9.0.1 and possibly others) having trouble logging onto the site or getting into chat. We believe that this is due to conflict with Internet Explorer (both versions 6 and 7) and AOL service accessing the site. We have been able to get many of our AOL users back online by having them use Firefox instead. Firefox can be downloaded here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Tips and Tricks: Turn off Profile View Tracker

Sometimes you want to send a message and sometimes, you’re just looking. We hear you. Don’t want to appear on someone’s Who’s Viewed Me List?  You can view all the profiles you want without anyone knowing about it by turning off your View Tracker setting. 

Tips and Tricks: IM Sound Alerts

The new IM has sound alerts that let you know if someone is sending you a message or IM request. If you have another window in focus, sound alerts tell you that someone is trying to contact you.

However, there are times when you may not want the sound alerts on.  For that reason we created a control on the IM Window that allows you to turn the sound alerts off. Simply click on the IM Sound Control button to turn sound alerts on or off.

Status Update: Search Indexing

We’ve heard concern from a handful of users that gay.com profiles are being indexed on some search engines. As a reminder, we have never blocked search engines from crawling our site. Only publicly available information on the site can be indexed. If you would like to ensure that your profile is not indexed, please go to My Account and set your profile privacy setting to "Private."

Launch Day 3 - chat improvements added

We took the site offline for a few hours this morning to make some additional performance improvements.

Specifically, we have fixed some problems we were seeing with slow loading of the Group Chat lists. This may have been preventing some users from getting into rooms as well. The new code we pushed live this afternoon should help address this problem.

As promised, we also removed the entry and exit alerts from chat. We heard from users that they were taking up too much space. If and when we bring them back, it will be as a user-controlled setting.

Thanks again for your patience and support. Keep the feedback coming.

Eric Wilson

VP, Product Planning and Strategy

Launch Day 2 - making improvements, and still working on performance

We know that yesterday was rough for many of our users.  We are improving hardware and software performance to get the site’s speed up to where we know you want it to be.

To that end, this afternoon we took the site down for two hours to add more servers for better performance. Since bringing it back up, we have seen improved speed and stability. Still, we know there is more to do. We are on it.

Tomorrow morning (Friday) around 7am Pacific time, we will be taking the site down once again briefly to make some software changes. One of these changes will be to eliminate room entry and exit announcements in group chat. We have heard from you that they take up too much room, so we are disabling them. If we bring them back, it will be as a preference you can control.

Please keep the feedback and comments coming. Although we are swamped, we’re trying to get back to you as fast as we can. I promise we are reading everything. Your feedback helps make the site better for everyone.

As always, thanks for your patience and understanding

Eric Wilson
VP, Product Planning and Strategy

Pop-up Blocker Help

We’re hearing from some of you that you are having trouble with pop-up blockers. You must enable gay.com to allow pop-ups  to be able to use the full Communication Suite, which includes Messenger, Group Chat, or IM. 
 
Many people have found it simple - we had over 50,000 people online last night. But others have found the process of disabling pop-ups confusing and frustrating.  If you find yourself in the confused and frustrated camp, here are some step by step instructions on how to get rid of Pop-up Blockers for the gay.com site

new gay.com live, but slow...

This morning just after midnight, we launched the new gay.com.  We know the site is slow right now. Very slow. We are working as fast as we can to get performance improved. Please bear with us.

Not surprisingly, we've been hearing an earful from users. It’s a big change and there are still definitely kinks to iron out both on performance and features. We have a list of known issues posted here. We’re not perfect, but we’re working on it.

With this launch, we are trying to do things differently. One major change is that we plan to be continuously improving the site – look for updates and changes much more frequently than in the past. As we continue to evolve, we’ll look to you, our customers, for help in making it what you want it to be.  While we can’t please everyone all of the time, we are listening with open ears to both the positives and the negatives. We want and need you to be part of the conversation of how gay.com might grow in the future.

If you do find something you like or don’t like, let us know. We have made it easy for you to let us know your thoughts by clicking on a link to a feedback form at the top of every page of the site.

Finally, all of us here at gay.com want to extend a thank you for your continued patience and support.

Eric Wilson
VP, Product Planning and Strategy

GAY.COM Homepages – A Look Back

The GAY.COM team is busy right now getting the new site ready for its debut. While we’re working on the next evolution of GAY.COM, let’s take a minute to look back at some of the more interesting incarnations of the GAY.COM homepage.

The GAY.COM homepage has been through many changes through the years and as you can see it’s very different from what it was at our inception in the late 1990’s, both in its look and feel and in the features we’ve offered.  Take a stroll down memory lane with us as we revisit some of the past GAY.COM homepages.

Raquel Aceves, Director, GAY.COM User Experience

May 1997

The new GAY.COM is coming soon – are you ready?

We’ve told you a lot about the new GAY.COM. It’s coming soon, but before it does, now is a good time to review some of your account settings to make sure you are ready. You may have seen these before at the end of blog posts or in emails, but let’s go over them in more detail:

• Review your email address and update if necessary – Now is a good time to make sure the email address you have on file is current.
• Review your default photo and update if necessary – In the new GAY.COM, default photos can no longer be adult. If your current default photo is adult, please update to a non-adult photo. If you do have an adult default photo when the new site goes live, your profile will be shown as having no default photo.
• Review your privacy settings and update if necessary – Our privacy settings are getting simpler on the new GAY.COM - either your profile is visible or it's not, no more in between. If you are not visible to everyone now, your profile will automatically be made private on the new GAY.COM. If you don't want to be invisible on the new GAY.COM, change your Privacy settings now to allow everyone to see your profile.
• Forward any emails you have stored on GAY.COM  - Your current GAY.COM email address (eg. member-name@gay.com) will be going away in the new GAY.COM. You should forward any emails you want to keep to your personal (non-GAY.COM) email account. Also, let your friends know that they'll need to use another email address to contact you rather than your @gay.com email address.

We’re excited about the changes and the new site. Take a few minutes today to review these steps and get ready for the new GAY.COM. We can’t wait for you to try it out.

Raquel Aceves, Director, GAY.COM User Experience

GAY.COM Local Scene

Local Scene is refining our focus to emphasize entertainment and nightlife in a few of the top gay cities in the United States: Atlanta, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.

Within Local Scene, you'll find four primary sections.

The events calendar strives to include a wide range of activities to appeal to the at least some facet of the entire spectrum of the LGBT community -- concerts and plays, poetry readings, club nights and circuit parties, street fairs and Pride festivals, charity fundraisers, and the like -- while the business directory focuses on social venues like restaurants, bars and clubs, theaters, and other businesses that are part of the city's gay social scene.

Our articles also emphasize the social scene, including interviews with visiting and local celebrities about events they are promoting or their favorite places to go in the city. Spotlight articles provide a narrative overview of the city, providing a quick snapshot of the city for visitors and newcomers. It also includes highlighting some of the top events coming up in the next month.

- Kevin Goebel, Manager, GAY.COM Local Scene

Your Profile: Photos & Lists

We’ve already given you a sneak peek at the new GAY.COM profile page, with its streamlined look & feel.  We are also making enhancements to your photos and lists.

The new GAY.COM will let you upload up to 25 photos to your profile.  You will still be able to choose to make each of your photos either public or private, and select whether it’s an adult image, but you will have more control when it comes time to unlock your private photos.  For each member you decide to unlock photos for, you will be able to select individually from your private photos – share some, all or none of them.  And on the flip side, when you’re interested in seeing someone else’s private photos, we’re making things simpler by removing the private photo requests.  If you’re interested, just ask in chat or send a mail.

We’re also making it much easier to manage your lists using the new site.  Quick links for each list will always be in the dashboard, and the My Lists page will be the starting point for all of them:

• Friends – We’re renaming Buddies to Friends, but they’re still the same – you have to ask or be asked, and you each have to agree to be Friends.  Your Friend list is public, and appears on your profile.

• Hot List – This is your public list of other members you think are hot.  You’ll show up on the other member’s Who Thinks I’m Hot list, and we’ll send them a mail message to let them know.

• Bookmarks – Bookmarks, which will be available to both free and premium members, are your private list of members you want to keep track of.

• Block List – As a premium member, you can block another member.  This will prevent you from receiving mail messages or IMs from them, as well as remove existing connections you might have as Friends, from your Hot List, or shared private photos.

• Who’s Viewed Me – As a premium member, you will be able to see Who’s Viewed Me, a list of the last 50 members to view your profile.  As a basic member, your dashboard will show you the latest member to view your profile.

• Who Thinks I’m Hot – Who Thinks I’m Hot is a list of those members who think you’re hot!  We’ll show you the latest one if you’re a free member, and all of them when you’re premium.

We think these changes will be a big improvement, but you don’t have to take our word for it.  You’ll be able to try them out for yourself soon, along with the rest of the new GAY.COM.

Jason Herrick, Director, GAY.COM Product Management

GAY.COM Dashboard

The Dashboard is a handy quick links and status update tool. Once you’ve logged in, the Dashboard will appear on every page of the site on the right hand column. 

The top half of the Dashboard, My Stuff, will let you to go to pages in your own profile (Mail, Profile, Photos, Lists, Account) in just one click from anywhere on the site.  Pretty nifty, right? From here you will also be able to see at a glance if you have any pending friend invites or any unread mail messages and how many you have of each.

My Stuff will also display your current online status and your location. You will be able to edit your online status from the Messenger and your location from your profile edit page.

The lower half of the Dashboard will contain the “My Views” section. The Profile Views at the top shows the number of times your profile has been viewed. This number includes views by guests as well as members. Below that, you will be able to see the thumbnail of the last member who viewed your profile (Who’s Viewed Me) and the thumbnail of the last member who added you to his or her Hot List (Who Thinks I’m Hot). Premium members will be able to see the rest of their Who’s Viewed Me and Who Thinks I’m Hot lists by clicking on the “View All” links above the respective thumbnails.

With the addition of the Dashboard we have made getting to and managing your mail, profile and account information quicker and easier. And let’s not forget those intriguing thumbnails of the members who are looking at your profile and those who think you’re hot. We think those could be very entertaining indeed.

Raquel Aceves, Director, GAY.COM User Experience

Get ready for the new GAY.COM
We will be making changes all over the place for the new GAY.COM, so there are a couple of things you may want to do. Check out the quick list below:

• Update your email address
• Change your primary photo from Adult to non-Adult
• Change your privacy settings to allow everyone to view your profile
• Forward any emails you have stored on GAY.COM to your personal email account

The New GAY.COM Mail

Over the years GAY.COM has received a lot of feedback regarding our current mail system and to be honest it was not always positive.  A lot of the feedback was about the amount of spam mail members would receive from those outside of GAY.COM.  Even though we actively blocked incoming spam mail we were unable to block all of it which resulted in a negative user experience (and that’s not cool).  Naturally members became frustrated and many simply said ‘why bother’ and stopped using our mail altogether.  Hearing your concerns we’ve made GAY.COM mail more member focused, cutting out the spammers.  The new GAY.COM mail will be entirely within GAY.COM and amongst GAY.COM members only.  As a result your current @gay.com email address will no longer function and more importantly will no longer be available to outside spammers.

But don’t worry . . . just because we got rid of your @gay.com email address doesn’t mean that you can’t mail members on the site.  Quite the opposite is true.  You can still send mail messages directly to other members from a number of different places like a member’s profile, a member’s mini-profile or from search results.  We’ve made other improvement too including the display of a member’s primary photo next to the subject line so you always know who you are mailing.  And if you want to find out more about that person when you are reading their mail you can always view their mini-profile by mousing over their member name or primary photo.  And one more thing, when viewing a list of mails in any one of your folders (inbox, sent, saved or trash) you will instantly if someone is online by the online indicator displayed next to their user name.   

If you are a Premium member we’ve given you some added benefits like the ability to monitor the status of your sent mail.  Now you will know if the other person opened your mail, responded to it, deleted your message or, worst of all, deleted your mail without even reading it (gasp).  If the other person hasn’t read your mail and you changed your mind about sending that message . . . whatever the reason . . . don’t worry, simply select the ‘recall’ link and that email is instantly removed from the other member’s in-box.  It’s like you never sent it. 

I’m confident that you will find these changes a step in the right direction.  And after you’ve used the new GAY.COM mail for a while, I’d like I hear your thoughts and suggestions to ensure this feature continues to meet the needs of the GAY.COM community.   

Tom Behnke, Director GAY.COM Product Planning and Strategy

Get ready for the new GAY.COM
We will be making changes all over the place for the new GAY.COM, so there are a couple of things you may want to do. Check out the quick list below:

• Update your email address
• Change your primary photo from Adult to non-Adult
• Change your privacy settings to allow everyone to view your profile
• Forward any emails you have stored on GAY.COM to your personal email account

GAY.COM IM Shield

We know the bots (adbots) are annoying, and we don’t like them any more than you do.  In fact, we fight them every day, but they’re quite persistent.  We want to make sure that you aren’t bothered by fakes, and the new IM Shield can help.

With a link from either Messenger or IM, you will be able to setup a question which other members will have to answer before you see an IM request.  Your friends and members on your hot list will be exempt from this challenge.

GAY.COM IM

PVT okay?  In the new GAY.COM, private chat will be called IM, but it’ll still be one-to-one chat.  We’ve focused a lot of attention on rebuilding IM for the new GAY.COM, re-envisioning and evolving the interface over time with the help of member surveys, focus groups, and hands-on usability testing.  We hope you’ll find it a big improvement.  The first thing you’ll notice is that we’ve grouped all open IMs into one window, reducing your screen clutter, but letting you easily see when you have new messages or new IM requests.

You will also have more control over who can IM you.  And when you do get an incoming IM request, we screen them for you first.  If you have it enabled, the new IM Shield will help to screen out bots (I’ll share more on the details of IM Shield in the next blog post.)  Once an IM request makes it to you, they will be grouped together above your Open IMs, with some choices.  Want to just start chatting?  Click yes to accept.  If you need some more info before deciding, clicking the member will show their mini-profile.   Selecting not now will silently ignore the IM request one time.  Selecting ignore will silently ignore this member for the remainder of your chat session, keeping you from getting pestered. 

There’s a bit more as well.  If you decide to go invisible, nobody will be able to initiate an IM with you, but you can still continue open IM sessions.  Closing Messenger will also prevent anyone from sending you an IM.  You’ll still show up as online when Messenger is closed, but you won’t have access to Group Chat or IM.  Lastly, the block feature, available to premium members, is a permanent ignore for IM (among other things.)

We’ve been having fun using the new GAY.COM IM, while getting it ready for prime time, and we think it’s going to be a big improvement.

Jason Herrick, Director, GAY.COM Product Management

Get ready for the new GAY.COM
We will be making changes all over the place for the new GAY.COM, so there are a couple of things you may want to do. Check out the quick list below:

• Update your email address
• Change your primary photo from Adult to non-Adult
• Change your privacy settings to allow everyone to view your profile
• Forward any emails you have stored on GAY.COM to your personal email account

GAY.COM Group Chat

We know you love the GAY.COM chat rooms, so we haven’t really messed with them too much.  We’ve cleaned up the design, by grouping your open chat rooms into tabs so you will have fewer windows to hassle with.  We’ve also cleared out the cobwebs by streamlining the room list, making it easier to find where people are hanging out.  You will be able to see how many people are in all of the rooms while scanning the list too.

In the new GAY.COM group chat, all members, basic and premium, will be able to see who’s in a chat room before entering, and there will be thumbnail images of the occupants alongside name and bio.   Inside the room, you’ll be able to see the same list of chatters, with mini-thumbnails, member names and chat bio.  Selecting a member will show their mini-profile, and double click will start an IM session (if they accept.)  Selecting a member name from the chat transcript will show their mini-profile too.

We think you’ll like the enhancements we’ve made to the group chat experience on GAY.COM, and we have more planned for the future.  Got ideas?  Let us know.

GAY.COM Messenger

Chat has always been central to the experience on GAY.COM, and we’ve worked hard to improve it in some exciting new ways.  Even though the Messenger might look familiar, underneath it’s completely rebuilt using modern web technologies.  The web has evolved, and so have we.  Our current chat application uses a Java applet, which will be retired, and replaced with a new chat suite built using AJAX .  What’s that mean to you?  It means we’ve designed the new GAY.COM chat to load fast, run quickly, and just plain work better on more computers.

Messenger will still be your chat control center.  It will let you see which of the members on your lists – like friends and bookmarks – are online now, and give you more choices for online status.  You will be able to set your chat bio quickly, and setup your IM Shield too (more on that soon!)  The My Rooms tab will serve as your shortcut to Group Chat, with links to all of your favorite rooms.

We’ll be sharing more of the new chat features this week, covering Group Chat and IM in more detail.  In the meantime, let us know what you think! 

Jason Herrick, Director, GAY.COM Product Management

GAY.COM's new look and feel

One of the first things you'll notice about the redesigned GAY.COM is the new look and feel. We've updated the look of the site to be lighter, cleaner and more modern. The palette consists of mostly grays and blues on white with pops of orange and green for highlight and contrast.

Take a look at a screenshot of the redesigned profile page for example:

This is one of our most important pages. We went through lots of rounds of user testing and several (seemed like thousands, but it was probably dozens) iterations to get it right. We streamlined and re-organized the entire page including the profile fields, lists and interactions.

We wanted our member content to take center stage, not our graphics. We've followed that "content gets the spotlight" philosophy thoughout the site, from the editorial sections to the personals.

Our goal was to give the site a fresh look while making it easier for users to navigate and browse. Of course, ease of use is always going to be our goal. We're always looking to make improvements towards that goal so let us know what you think.

Raquel Aceves, Director, GAY.COM User Experience

Get ready for the new GAY.COM
We will be making changes all over the place for the new GAY.COM, so there are a couple of things you may want to do. Check out the quick list below:

• Update your email address
• Change your primary photo from Adult to non-Adult
• Change your privacy settings to allow everyone to view your profile

Welcome to a sneak peek at the new GAY.COM

We have been working for more than a year on an entirely new GAY.COM site and will be launching the new site soon. New Features.  New Look and Feel.  New technology.  New everything, in fact.

Starting today and up through the launch, the GAY.COM Product team will be taking turns introducing you to some of the key features of the new site.

Below is a screenshot of the new home page. We have made it smaller, faster and – a lot easier to use.

We welcome your feedback – positive or negative. Believe me, by now, we have heard it all.

Eric Wilson, VP, GAY.COM Product Planning & Strategy