GayRomeo.com
PlanetRomeo.com
Localize, Localize, Localize!
By Kiki Tan
PUBLISHED: JULY 2009

"GayRomeo.com didn't spring up like a mushroom overnight. The way that lead to it was long and often stony,” states arguably one of the biggest social networking Web sites for the gay community in the world.  Supposedly, in 2002, “an innocent young German lad came to the twinkling capital of (England) to learn its strange ways.  Naturally, our lad was eager for high jinks and good times with other lads of his ilk.  And to find them there was a new-fangled invention called the Internet where our lad came across a big portal offering him what he wanted, when he wanted it.”
But the “lad” soon discovered the limitations of the available portals – e.g. paying to access, extreme localized focus, et cetera, so that while “he could now chat away to his heart's content, the ‘companion for his studies’ he so dearly wanted still proved strangely elusive.”

That was when the “lad” started GayRomeo.com

By 2006, due to the site’s growing fame, GayRomeo.com (then also known as PlanetRomeo, the G-rated version; with special sites for male escorts, a site for messaging, et cetera interconnected under the banner of the PlanetRomeo.com) moved to Amsterdam (“An obvious choice for us – the city is in the heart of Europe, and has long been a champion of liberal, open values”), although it remains to have offices in, among others, Berlin (for software development).

For Filipinos, the site’s main claim to fame is its buying out Guys4Men.com – that once popular MSM social networking site, easily swallowed by a gay so-so multinational like GayRomeo.com.

Giving the site credits for its merits is in order.

Firstly, that it has a global scope is more than commendable.  After all, the world, as is always said, is getting smaller.  Who know how many guys I may want to hook up with in Singapore this weekend, when I am supposed to fly for work for the weekend?

Secondly, as is the tendency of the more media-savvy West, the site is chock-full of everything – e.g. info on fakers, on barebacking, of porn flicks, XXX pictures (site users and/or porn stars and would-be stars, club guides, et cetera.  It, basically, wants to stuff everything in the site – and in so many ways, it does.

Thirdly, attention to details is, again, commendable – if you just want to search for those in Sampaloc, Manila, that can be done with… two to three clicks.

And fourthly, it gives a sense of “upgrading,” e.g. up to 25 profile pictures are allowed, and even more in private folders; there are club memberships (and they really monitor clubs, too, with the inactive ones deleted THAT fast); et cetera.

But this site is, definitely, flawed.

Remember the FORUM site in G4M, wherein you just enter that section, and select a sub-section where you want to join some talks?  That was easy, right?  Well, GayRomeo.com thought it knew better and got rid of that – now, entering such fora is just about non-existent, so no sharing of knowledge is done (except through groups/clubs or through personal messaging).

And there’s the excessive focus on details – the pop-ups of the site users have, among others: Leave a Footprint (if you find them sexy, hot, good dick, good body, beautiful face, whatever), Message History, Save Profile (which will then give you more of the same and even more options), et cetera.  They don’t know the word “simplify” in the GayRomeo.com headquarters, I guess…

Remember those stories about smaller companies bought out by big companies – and then ending up losing the markets they wanted to gather, too, under their wings because the big companies do not have the personal touch that the smaller companies used to offer?  This is what is happening with GayRomeo.com, as it gives emerging similarly-themed sites an opportunity to rise, considering Guys4Men.com was able to control them before.

It has to:

• Learn what made Guys4Men.com worked, and then adapt the same;
• Contextualize what works in different markets, not give us something generic;
• Make it more, more, more interactive – sans all the troublesome ways of doing so;
• Et cetera.

Else, expect for this one to just fade away to nothingness…