BBRTS site needs help!

[Truversebb]

First let me say that I truly appreciate having BBRTS. However the site is outdated, clunky, slow, and overly difficult to navigate around. I was just trying to change states to look around in and page changes take forever to load. Want to change your location? Dig deep to find the area to do so then have to know the zip code. On the mobile version you are stuck in your home location and the GPS position does not update. I come home from somewhere far away and my geolocation is forever stuck there until I manually update it. I could go on. Am I being overly picky here? I imagine the site hosts are operating on thin margins even without covid. To go on BBRTS is  nostalgic online hookup journey to 2006 IMHO!

[NastyRigPig]

Valid complaints. 

[Truversebb]

I would like to add that all the site deficiencies  are likely keeping their paid subscriptions down! 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Truversebb

[mixnzz]

i have to agree......i find it getting harder to hook up on

[viking8x6]

All that, definitely. And also the page load time is much longer than it ought to be, which is likely because the implementation is inefficient. I estimated it at something on the order of 5 seconds the other day when there were only 10,000 users or so connected. Of course, all the other apps suffer from similar problems in greater or lesser amounts. Of the ones I've used, Scruff seems to be the best, as far as implementation goes. The whole thing is occasionally irritating enough that I think about giving them some competition, but then I come to my senses and remember that it's a crowded market and going head to head with services that have an established foothold would be a recipe for frustration.

[blackrobe]

1 minute ago, viking8x6 said:

All that, definitely. And also the page load time is much longer than it ought to be, which is likely because the implementation is inefficient. I estimated it at something on the order of 5 seconds the other day when there were only 10,000 users or so connected. Of course, all the other apps suffer from similar problems in greater or lesser amounts. Of the ones I've used, Scruff seems to be the best, as far as implementation goes. The whole thing is occasionally irritating enough that I think about giving them some competition, but then I come to my senses and remember that it's a crowded market and going head to head with services that have an established foothold would be a recipe for frustration.

I think Sniffies dot com is the least-worst newish entry in the space. It's sufficiently differentiated being focused primarily on geolocation or "sex right now wherever you are/are going", but most apps have fallen below the minimum utility bar. Scruff is the best of the bunch in my location, despite a terrible recent period of outages related due, I believe, to a software update they boned. The worst now in my location is A4A - it's become nothing more than a) the number one home for bot generated and scam profiles and b) an advertising pipeline for offers I don't care about. I send more reports for fake profiles that message me than I do messages to real men. It doesn't help that advertising posts outnumber interactions with real people as well. 

BBRT's UX is very dated and not very focused on the user. Visual hierarchy isn't at all clear leaving the eye to wander fruitlessly for long seconds until you find what should be obvious and fast to locate. Even simple UX consistency is broken with the location of the back buttons changing location in the frame as you change view. Load times are in the 5 second range here also. The number of men on BBRT has declined too. 

It's frustrating when you have an urge to serve and a cunt to offer.

[Truversebb]

BBRTS also came into existence when (openly seeking) BB sex was more uncommon and an outlier. I’m not on any of the other sites but I imagine the “safe only” percentage of users has fallen off in a meaningful way. Making what BBRTS offers not so special and having a clunky old website to go along with it!

Edited July 28, 2020 by Truversebb

[BootmanLA]

I endorse pretty much all of the above. 

I'll add that some of BBRT's problems seem self-inflicted in their coding choices, and it's possible their choice of hosting companies is more limited than, say, Scruff's or Growlr's or whatever, because of the specific nature of the site.

I don't know to what extent they're aware of the speed problems their site has, or whether they're doing adequate investigation of where the bottlenecks are. And again, the nature of the site presents a problem: there are thousands of companies that will step in to help a generic commercial site overhaul its data storage & retrieval routines, for instance, to optimize site responsiveness, but how many of them are going to jump at the chance to work for a company that promotes bareback sex right in its name? Lower supply means the contracted price is likely to be considerably higher than it would be, say, for a company selling orthotic shoe inserts.

All in all it's still a better option than most other hookup apps for certain populations. A4A, as noted above, is so full of bots and scams that it's basically useless. The best thing I find about BBRT is that the content is available across both the mobile and web platforms. In order to conform to Google and Apple rules, apps like Scruff and Growlr have to restrict certain things in the app from being available to anyone without a paid account (since the apps are downloadable from their app stores, pretty much by anyone). Recon's app differs from its website in that even paying customers can't see X-rated photos on the app; for that, you have to use the website on a mobile device, and it's not completely scaled for the mobile environment.

I hope they get their shit together. BBRT does have one of the best searching interfaces out there - it's amazing that in 2020, virtually no gay hook-up sites other than theirs allow you to search for something as basic as smoking vs. non-smoking, for instance - and letting you choose multiple options for a particular characteristic (ie "top, versatile top, or versatile", to screen out versatile bottoms and bottoms) is easy. Too many sites only let you pick one of the above at a time.

[evilcoyote]

7 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Recon's app differs from its website in that even paying customers can't see X-rated photos on the app

This is only an Apple issue. If you have Android you can download direct from Recon and access x-rated pics...if you are a subscriber.

As for BBRT, I don't find the mobile site an issue. It works really well for me. However, the desktop site is terrible and I never use it as well. 

BBRT does have the best search of all the app.

Edited July 29, 2020 by evilcoyote

[BootmanLA]

2 minutes ago, evilcoyote said:

This is only an Apple issue. If you have Android you can download direct from Recon and access x-rated pics...if you are a subscriber.

As for BBRT, I don't find the mobile site an issue. It works really well for me. However, the desktop site is terrible and I never use it as a result.

So Recon has TWO Android apps? Because the one I have (presumably from the Google Play Store) clearly doesn't allow nudity in pics you can see there.

(Just checked and found it on the recon site. It's not a 100% solution, since there's no guarantee (unlike with stuff on the Play Store) that it's been checked for viruses, etc. but I suppose it's at least an option. And no, I'm not blaming Recon for Apple and Goggle's crappy policies. )

(Just checked again: it won't install on my not-terribly-outdated Galaxy Note 8, even with the appropriate security settings disabled to allow it. Could be a Samsung thing or a carrier thing. Whatever it is, it's clearly not a 100% workaround, but kudos to them for at least trying.)

[ErosWired]

The problems with BBRTS aren’t just technical - the management and customer support leave an enormous amount to be desired. In my experience, they treat even paying subscribers with contempt, so it’s unsurprising that they don’t seem to care if their product performs well or poorly. We’re just cash cattle to them, after all.

I won’t burden the thread with the details of my recent difficulty with them, or with the response I received from their “Pigmaster” - that’s all in another thread that you can read here if interested - suffice it to say that the shortcomings described in the posts above are yet more reasons not to give them any of your money. They’re not getting another nickel of mine.

[evilcoyote]

8 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

So Recon has TWO Android apps? Because the one I have (presumably from the Google Play Store) clearly doesn't allow nudity in pics you can see there.

(Just checked and found it on the recon site. It's not a 100% solution, since there's no guarantee (unlike with stuff on the Play Store) that it's been checked for viruses, etc. but I suppose it's at least an option. And no, I'm not blaming Recon for Apple and Goggle's crappy policies. )

(Just checked again: it won't install on my not-terribly-outdated Galaxy Note 8, even with the appropriate security settings disabled to allow it. Could be a Samsung thing or a carrier thing. Whatever it is, it's clearly not a 100% workaround, but kudos to them for at least trying.)

Wow, I had it on my Samsung 8, granted it wasn't a Note. That is very odd.

[gingerdaddyG]

On 7/29/2020 at 4:43 AM, ErosWired said:

The problems with BBRTS aren’t just technical - the management and customer support leave an enormous amount to be desired. In my experience, they treat even paying subscribers with contempt, so it’s unsurprising that they don’t seem to care if their product performs well or poorly. We’re just cash cattle to them, after all.

I won’t burden the thread with the details of my recent difficulty with them, or with the response I received from their “Pigmaster” - that’s all in another thread that you can read here if interested - suffice it to say that the shortcomings described in the posts above are yet more reasons not to give them any of your money. They’re not getting another nickel of mine.

I tried to place an ad and when it came to paying for it it said that my UK postcode (zip code across the pond) wasn’t valid so I can’t really use the site properly. Between that and finding a few flakes and prima donnas locally on it, I’m ready to delete my profile.  

[fskn]

The general issues and the individual issue with BBRTS that people have mentioned are frustrating, but BBRTS's platform-independent mobile Web site and direct payment options make the service a bastion of freedom in an increasingly regulated Internet landscape.

You could probably breed guys by accessing BBRTS from a $50 Raspberry Pi 4 hobby computer whose truly open-source operating system runs the Firefox Web browser. You don't need a smart phone that costs hundreds of dollars. (Apple iOS is an excellent, but totally proprietary, operating system, and though Google portrays Android as open-source, key components that make cell phones work are closed-source, and the product overall is of lower quality.)

A BBRTS app would be ineligible for distribution in Apple's and Google's official app stores. (Yes, some manufacturers of Android phones don't block access to unofficial app stores.) Even the direct credit card processing deal must constantly be at risk, given what was done to PornHub last year by MasterCard and Visa, based on nothing more than anecdotes compiled by a vindictive, puritanical reporter in a sloppy, heavily biased New York Times article.

I predict that we will see more mobile Web-based services, and a revival of old-fashioned payment methods such as mailing in a money order (which can be bought anonymously — for the time being — at any United States Post Office). I don't blame such services for having clunky Web sites. They are simply not allowed to access the fancy Apple iOS and Google Android OS features that officially-permitted apps can use, and their direct payment streams limit potential revenue.

(The sad part is that, whereas porn and sex sites provide pleasure and are by-and-large harmless, some extremist groups with harmful goals struggle to get access to common technology platforms and must also resort to similar, informal solutions. Hopefully we can draw a clear distinction between something that's good, like a site through which gay men can breed, and something that's bad, like a site where violent people, racists, etc. can meet.)

Edited January 17, 2022 by fskn

[barebackbro]

13 hours ago, fskn said:

The general issues and the individual issue with BBRTS that people have mentioned are frustrating, but BBRTS's platform-independent mobile Web site and direct payment options make the service a bastion of freedom in an increasingly regulated Internet landscape.

Thanks for these really helpful, if ominous, observations.

I admit the criticisms of BBRTS are mostly valid. Still, I'll always have a soft spot for BBRTS. When I started using it, raw sex was seriously deviant and BBRTS was the only place I felt comfortable. The website format may be very beneficial in future. And the visual design is still great. So, guys, let's not abandon the site!