Bear411 / BearWorld - the most bears

This is my first site review. I'm highlighting the broad areas I intend to cover regularly with the blue banners. I know some sitesPublish Post won't have some sections. If you have a better term for one of the headers, please let me know. I appreciate any constructive criticism you may have about these reviews. I have the next couple of sites picked out and should have another written in about a week.

POPULATION:

Bear411 has sort of become "where the bears are" in the last 5-7 years. It has reached a "critical mass" in population that sustains itself as well as attracts new members. At this writing, Bear411 has almost 120,000 members worldwide with over 200 new members daily and over 4500 members logged on at what would be off-peak hours in the US. The membership isn't just bears, but includes cubs and some types of chasers or admirers. Bear411 is also known as BearWorld with slightly different graphics. Gay411 appears to use the same base code, but is aimed at the larger gay male community rather than just bears. Another site, a misspelling of a competitor, bearww (only 2 w, not 3) redirects to bearworld. Bear411 has stayed largely the same in the 4+ years I've been a member. The site owner has added some minor new features and has given the site's look and feel a small facelift earlier this year.

PROFILE:

For your personal profile, Bear411 offers most of the standard fields as well as a couple of unusual ones. You can list your phone's area code for broader geographic searching than city name, but tighter than statewide. You can specify your travel plans whether it is just a visit to another city or you are attending an organized Bear event. You can have upto 11 pictures uploaded to your profile and you can make your profile visible only to other members. You can identify yourself as a bear, cub, daddybear, chubby or leatherbear, but not which of those types you are interested in. You can also choose to have a guest book where other members can leave one of a handful of canned compliments for you.

You can feature yourself by changing your profile or creating a new one (after deleting your old one). When you create a new profile, you get a "New" graphic overlay, which should generate plenty of welcome messages. If you have modified your profile in the last couple of days, you get an "Updated" overlay which serves to alert members that you may have new pictures. Previously, there was a paid option to get the "Hot!" overlay, but that appears to have been discontinued. Finally, there is a way to be featured over which you have no control. The site shows a featured member that changes every few minutes called the "Bear411 Star." It appears that the site owner can mark your profile as being eligible to be randomly selected as the Bear411 Star as some members do not seem to be featured this way. There does not appear to be a limit to how many times a member can be the Bear411 Star. I know I have been the Bear411 Star at least 3 or 4 times just because I was refreshing at the right time to spot it.

SEARCHING:

For basic searching, you can search on city, state, country, and area code if you know your geography. If you know the name of the member you are looking for, even a partial spelling, you can search "nickname" and combine it with the geographic criteria. Free members also get to search on the "Bear Events" field so you can see who else is coming to particular events. Finally, you can limit your searches to "who's online" to give you a more immediate connection. Premium members can search on more fields, such as the first name, email address or keywords in the free form text. They can also search some of the self-identifying descriptors such as top, bottom, versatile, or "looking for friends" vs "looking for sex." While you can combine the various criteria, you cannot select more than one in the same grouping. For example, you can't select to search for "bottom" and "versatile" at the same time, you'd have to search again. You also have to start your search from scratch every time as it doesn't remember any of your preferences or previous searches.

MESSAGING:

For messaging, Bear411 offers a simple pop-up message box where you can reply to your messages sequentially in the order they are received. The message pop up provides links to the member's full profile and offers the ability to add him to your buddy list. Until about a year ago, you could only reply or delete the message, ending the conversation. Now, you can select "reply later" so that you can go on to the next message or put off replying to someone for a few minutes. You can also refuse messages from a sender, putting him on your ignore list or you can report a profile or message to the site owner to be dealt with as a spammer. There is very limited message history. You can only see the last 2 responses in a conversation, usually your previous comment and his reply. If you do not have a new message from a member, you cannot see any message history. To the best of my knowledge, there is no external notification system. In other words, if you have a message and have not logged in recently, the site will not e-mail you to remind you to check messages. However, members can bypass the internal messaging system by clicking "e-mail me" on your profile and sending an e-mail directly to the e-mail address you have in your profile. The site uses a web form to keep from giving your e-mail address out. If you receive such a message, the sender will not get your e-mail address until you reply.

The basic usage of the site is to login and see if you have messages. From there, you can select "refresh chat list" and be presented a page of 12 members in your state or country in the order they logged in, with the most recent being first. At the bottom of the page, it'll say "Page #1 / ..." of however many dozen guys are registered as logged in at the moment. In the two mid-morning hours I've been writing this article, the number of pages has jumped from 385 (about 4620 members) to 480 (5760 members). The number of members in Texas who are online has jumped from 242 to 324 and I expect that to double during the peak evening hours.

PREMIUM:

I've mentioned premium member perks a little bit under searching, but for your $9.95 per month, you get several more features and a couple of fewer annoyances. You get 600 contacts on your buddy list instead of 120. The "refresh chat list" to see who is on in your area and the broader "search" are only available to regular members every other day (even numbered days) while paid members always get to use this vital function. Premium members get to see all photos in any member's profile without restriction. The "second location" can only be set by a premium member. Regular members may only update their profiles every 12 days, but premium members have unlimited updates.

MOBILE:

Bear411 has recently started offering a trimmed down mobile version of the site. It is definitely more friendly to mobile browsers that don't support frames like on the Palm and Blackberry. It offers a data-plan saving option of turning off auto-refresh. Once you receive a message, though, it is virtually the same as if you received it on the full-sized version of the site, but with a link back to the mobile home page. You do get your pal list and notes page, but no searching or the list of all members online. Responding to messages or initiating new messages from the pal list seems a bit iffy, but that may be my mobile browser's shortcomings as much as the site's.

WARNINGS:

There does seem to be some politics involved with the site. The site owner, Buddy Bear Greg, takes an aggressively biased role in policing the site, particularly with respect to approving new members and updating existing profiles. As the site owner, he certainly has the right to do all the things that people have been complaining about. Evidently, he hasn't angered enough of the most vocal and most heard people to effect a change. As a user, the only grievance I had was the hidden censorship. Certain words, like "ugly", in messages would cause messages to be deleted without being sent. The sender didn't know the message had failed and the recipient never saw anything. While I might have tolerated some list of forbidden words and terms, not knowing what they were made it infuriating when conversations cut off unexpectedly. Some of the censorship appears to have gone away, but a lot of potential members still cannot get their profiles approved because they're "not bear enough" for Greg. If you want to know more about what's wrong with Bear411, check out Bear411Sucks for the full scoop.