I'm thinking of starting a new bareback hookup site…

[Ravenholm]

I have some thoughts about the actual features and functions for the site itself, I'm on or at least was on pretty much every big gay dating website I've come across. If you would like some thoughts on that, I would like to share them.

[Pig Bottom]

Rule number 1: You do talk about Bareback Fuck Club.

[Pig Bottom]

As to 2 of your points.

Bareback implies fucking, so if it's a BB site people who like only sucking dick wouldn't want in anyway.

The word club would not have a connotation of being poz.

[Pig Bottom]

The Loading Dock.

[TigerMilner]

I voted for BBFuck Club. I like the idea of a club and like the association with a Fight Club mentality, i.e., you don't talk about Fight Club. But dshanebb makes a really good point about tapping into the established brand of Breeding Zone. Taking that one step further, why couldn't the new hookup site be a feature of this site? Instant membership. I know it is not a new vehicle for you to sell advertising on but it would increase traffic and retention and make your ads on this site more saleable to a new market and more valuable. Just thinking out loud.

I'd call it Breeding Zone Connect. Since the Breeding Zone is now an established brand/name people are familiar with, I would use the "brand" to your advantage. Utilizing the Breeding Zone brand would allow potential users to know that it is a "brand" they can trust which would not only encourage them to join the site, but also speed up the buzz about the site as users are more likely to recommend a brand they are comfortable with to their friends/fuck buddies.

So I suggest: Breeding Zone Connect

[PhoenixGeoff]

My goal is to have a revenue model similar to Adam4Adam - so primarily ad-based.

That might be problematic if you see much of your advantage coming from mobile devices.

To my mind, no-one has managed to make a web/mobile hybrid work really well. I agree that BBRT has done a good job on the web, and that their mobile site sucks ass. My guess is that you're going to have serious trouble making a mobile site work well vs. an app. A4A probably does this best, and even A4A has issues.

One thing to get absolutely right is setting your location. This is one place that app-only tools like Grindr or Growlr excel. You can (mostly) count on their location information to be fairly accurate (Scruff is somewhat worse at this). I can tell you that as someone who's moved around a lot and tried to cruise in a different place every night, manually updating your location in a web site like BBRT is a pain in the ass, even when I've been using a laptop.

It would be nice to know you can trust the site to know just how far away that guy is from you. Perhaps when you sign in online you could have a default location set by zip code like BBRT does but then have the site do a sanity check based on your IP address (and if it differs, prompt to verify your location automatically...and if you can somehow have it come up with your zip code for you, by perhaps tying into the USPS database, that would be nice too...figuring out what zip code I'm in for BBRT is part of the reason why their system is hard for me to use) and if GPS location information is available then that can temporarily overwrite your default location.

I can't really overstate the superiority of apps over mobile web sites though when it comes to doing mobile. The push notifications are only part of it. I'd point out that Growlr and Scruff do allow for X-rated private pics. Alternatively, you could always set up some way of allowing users to unlock their phone number and/or email address and trade pics and messages that way (which would also off load some of the heavy lifting from your servers albeit at the expense of losing eyeballs for the ads you're serving). On the other hand, I don't know if Apple would go for the kind of ads you'd be likely to run.

(Incidentally, this is precisely why I hate Apple and Steve Jobs. Jobs was a massive control freak; he wanted control over everything that happened in "his" computers. Even back in the Apple II days, Steve Wozniak had to fight hard to get expansion slots included in their computers. It's no coincidence that the original Mac was a sealed box screwed together with Torx screws that most people didn't have bits for at the time. Jobs never understood that once he sold a piece of hardware, it no longer belonged to him).

As far as the social aspect goes, I'm not sure I've ever run into a site that did both the social side of the things and the hooking up thing well. Most seem to end up being one or the other. The closest one I can think of off hand is a relatively new bear site, bearunderground.net. You may want to check out that site actually for a few ideas (I happen to know the guys behind the site...they're from Denver). They're forums aren't anywhere near as active as these are, but then a lot of the socializing on their site happens in the chat rooms, which is something else you might consider.

[einathens]

Is MyBareBuddies too cutesie?

[Guest TravelGuy4Bareback]

Not sure if this has been mention yet or not. But instead of starting a whole new hook-up site, why not make this site easier for people to find each other and hook up? Make the profiles more detailed, make the search easier to use and bring back better results. Us here are already wanting to do bareback, so you have a user base. And if you start another site, who says everyone here will move over to the next new hook-up site??? I know I have traveled in the past, and tried to find users on here in the cities I'm visiting, and it is hard as hell, and not in a good way. Just a thought. Thanks for this site.

[sarutobi]

I like Pig Bottom's suggestion of The Loading Dock. It's catchy, easier to remember, clear about being about barebacking, and it can work for referring to socializing (you could actually call the forum The Dock and each blog a person's "dock").

One thing I have noticed with sites that do both hookups and social networking is that eventually one takes over the other. That's a big risk if you're really going for a hookup site because some guys may just want to blog or hangout online.

[Billingsbbboy]

I like dshanebb's idea of using the already popular Breeding Zone name but out of your suggestions BBFuckClub is the best IMO

[Guest JizzDumpWI]

Or perhaps, rawFUCK.com?

[rawTOP]

The Loading Dock.

LoadingDock.com has been registered since 1997.

Instant membership.

That would result in lots of spam. Plus on a hookup site you want to know the person is genuine in some way - validating an email address seems like a small step.

[Advertising] might be problematic if you see much of your advantage coming from mobile devices.

Good point. Which is why eventually there will be some form of paid membership.

One thing to get absolutely right is setting your location. This is one place that app-only tools like Grindr or Growlr excel. You can (mostly) count on their location information to be fairly accurate (Scruff is somewhat worse at this). I can tell you that as someone who's moved around a lot and tried to cruise in a different place every night, manually updating your location in a web site like BBRT is a pain in the ass, even when I've been using a laptop.

It would be nice to know you can trust the site to know just how far away that guy is from you. Perhaps when you sign in online you could have a default location set by zip code like BBRT does but then have the site do a sanity check based on your IP address (and if it differs, prompt to verify your location automatically...and if you can somehow have it come up with your zip code for you, by perhaps tying into the USPS database, that would be nice too...figuring out what zip code I'm in for BBRT is part of the reason why their system is hard for me to use) and if GPS location information is available then that can temporarily overwrite your default location.

With all mobile devices you can query the device for the lat/long. In the browser this pops up an alert something like "Would you like to share your location with this site?" Saying yes could be required to use the site. Curiously the same code can be run on a laptop and it's spooky how accurate the results are even though the laptop doesn't have a GPS chip. But I can always fall back to a geoIP look up against a database like I do here on the member map page.

I can't really overstate the superiority of apps over mobile web sites though when it comes to doing mobile. The push notifications are only part of it. I'd point out that Growlr and Scruff do allow for X-rated private pics.

Yeah, I know, but apps start at around $100K - at least for decent ones.

As far as the social aspect goes, I'm not sure I've ever run into a site that did both the social side of the things and the hooking up thing well. Most seem to end up being one or the other. The closest one I can think of off hand is a relatively new bear site, bearunderground.net.

I'll check that site out. Thanks.

Is MyBareBuddies too cutesie?

Yes.

Not sure if this has been mention yet or not. But instead of starting a whole new hook-up site, why not make this site easier for people to find each other and hook up? Make the profiles more detailed, make the search easier to use and bring back better results. Us here are already wanting to do bareback, so you have a user base. And if you start another site, who says everyone here will move over to the next new hook-up site??? I know I have traveled in the past, and tried to find users on here in the cities I'm visiting, and it is hard as hell, and not in a good way. Just a thought. Thanks for this site.

Covered in the first post in this thread - Breeding Zone has too narrow an audience.

Or perhaps, rawFUCK.com?

Registered since 1999.

[bearcubboy]

yes I hate when I try on my tablet or my blackberry to go on BBRT, which is why I use my home computer........but alas hard to lug that around when I am in another city LOL

[PhoenixGeoff]

Curiously the same code can be run on a laptop and it's spooky how accurate the results are even though the laptop doesn't have a GPS chip.

Meh...I checked my current IP address (I've got a dynamic IP from our local MSO) here while I was at home in Denver and had one result that was wildly inaccurate, one that was either wildly inaccurate or put me in a suburb on the other side of town, and two that got the city right. It's an inexact thing, which is actually kind of reassuring. And that's also why I see it working more as a sanity check rather than a reliable means of locating you. It's probably much more reliable if you're using a mobile device to connect, even if it doesn't have a GPS (I'm assuming the location data can reference cell tower info on pretty much any mobile data connection...I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case)

[genericuser]

@RawTop any thoughts on my suggestion that you utilize the brand awareness/brand power of Breeding Zone and call the site Breeding Zone Connect or BZ Connect (if you think that Breeding Zone limits your potential audience)?

IMO brand awareness of BreedingZone / RawTop is key to leverage when launching such a medium, especially at a time when folks are becoming less trusting about divulging their private information. Given your clear track record of being a responsible, user-oriented forum in which users can feel "safe" about discussing most private subjects, I would argue it is critically important to build upon your already established brand reputation when launching such a venture.