M4M-World: On the B-List

POPULATION:

I received an e-mail from the site offering a 7 day unlimited membership for $1 before reverting to the $10.95 monthly price. Even though I hadn't gotten a successful hookup from this site in over 2 years, I thought it was worth $1 to check out the latest features. Previously, this site was called M4M4Sex and it was one of the places I discovered from the list of profile sites in iTrick. It always seemed like a more reputable site than Men4SexNow, but I usually logged into both. People in Dallas had free use of the site for a couple of years until they upgraded and expanded some of their offerings. I suppose I got the most use out of it in those free days. As for the population of the site, they keep a region structure roughly similar to Men4SexNow, so users generally only see other members in their metropolitan area. However, that e-mail I mentioned earlier stated that the site had over 800,000 members, but that's over 41 U.S. cities and 16 international cities. Apparently, there's around 6000 users in the DFW area, but I'm not entirely sure I trust their search engine. Demographically, the Dallas site is 76% white, 6% black, and 9% latino with the rest scattered across a multitude of listed ethnicities. Agewise, it breaks down to about 22% in the 18-26 group, 40% in the 27-35 group, 31% in the 36-44 group and about 7% over 45%. Less than 6% of the members have their body type as "Large," "Bear" or "Muscle Bear." There are usually around 200-300 members online during peak hours.

PROFILE:

On the My M4M tab, you can update your ad text and photos (7 private, 2 public) like most sites. You can add a voice recording or a video where the video can be either public or private. M4M-World also has an interesting feature called "Locked Stats" where you can detail what you are looking for (one-on-one, couples, orgy, a third, etc), what you'd meet for (sex-no strings, sex as fuck buddies, sex-maybe more, dating first-sex later, all open for discussion), conditions for a date (sober, pnp, etc), what you are into sexually with about 28 choices including such fetishes as "armpits/scents," "glory holes," and "verbal/porno", and your HIV status. You can choose to lock those stats from members until you unlock them for particular contacts. There are also your basic public stats like neighborhood, which breaks down the city into rather odd smaller chunks. You basically have to choose the one closest to you even if it isn't an exact fit. You can set your preference on where to meet (your place, my place, etc), your sexual position (top, versatile bottom, but no "oral only" or "manual/jack-off only"), your safe sex preference includes the ambiguous favorite "needs further discussion" rather than just flat out saying "bareback only", height and body type. They also have a couple of unique fields like "When seeking a date.." with responses of "it does not matter who goes first," "make sure to read my profile before making contact" (like that'll help!) as well "I prefer to make the first move" or "I prefer to be contacted first." Another unique field is a chart of "availability" describing how much time you have for your hookups. Basically, you have to choose the intersection of your work status and your availability. The work status choices are "student," "employed," and "not working/retired" and the availability can be "am always looking," "can be available," and "have limited availability."
Each time you log in, you can specify your online status regarding when you are looking for a hookup, such as "now" (meaning your profile is flagged that way for the next 2 hours), this evening, tonight,, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, just checking mail, etc). You can feature your ad on "sex central" (summary of all guys online now in your city) with some prepared secondary headlines and custom text. You can set some travel plans whether traveling soon or now so that your ad appears in the destination city. You can view ads in other cities to help you with your travel plans.

SEARCHING:

The search engine lets you search by username, randomly search the gallery based on visitors/new ads/updated ads or a more advanced search. You have some choices to search all members online, recently active, all member, all verified (more on that later), or combinations of those. You can search keywords in certain fields or select some of the fixed value fields like "sexual position," "safe sex preference", "ethnicity," neighborhood," "body type," etc. The search page appears to let you search 2 keywords in different free form text fields as well as any 2 of the fixed value fields. You can configure searches to limit to 50, 100, 200 or 500 members. You cannot get accurate results if your search returns more than 500 members. Some queries don't behave like you expect. If you choose values from the fixed value preferences, then all results for each preference are returned, not an intersection.
Overall, the search page is fairly handy with some quirks, but not as robust as the one at men4sexnow.

MESSAGING:

M4M-World offers both a mailbox system for keeping a history of contacts and conversations as well as a chat system for more immediate and interactive conversation to facilitate hookups. The mailbox system sends an e-mail notice to the e-mail address you listed when you signed up. Unlocking private photos and/or stats sends a message to your system mailbox and that will show up in the message history.
One feature of the M4M mail system is that it keeps a list of your contacts. People you've contacted automatically go on the "C-List" ("Fast Mail") and guys who have unlocked private photos show up in the "Fotos" list. You can also put members on the "B-List" ("Friends") or "D-List" ("Flakes") depending on how interested you are. New in the list system is "Feedback" which allows members you've hooked up with to leave you comments.
Another recent feature implemented to cut down on the "flakes" is called "Verified" members. When this feature was first implemented, I went on to the site and tagged all the guys I'd hooked up that used the site whether we hooked up from there or not. They were all notified that I confirmed we'd met and things went well. It only takes one to verify you. Now, they have a subset called "recently verified" in case some of us old timers have gotten flaky over the years.

PREMIUM:

M4M-World has gone to a hybrid premium model that is different from other places I've seen. They have an unlimited type of premium access for $10.99 per month, but they also have "per contact" token system where you can pay for a certain number of tokens to be able to message free or other token-using members. Premium members are in essence paying for the privilege of being contacted by free users.

MOBILE:

M4M-World's mobile site is called M4MGo and offers some basic features, but not the core experience of "Sex Central." On M4MGo, you get access to your mailbox, your B-List, your C-List, SMS notification, control of your "featured status," "travel your ad" and "view your account." You can also search by exact username. It's basic and functional with limited graphics. This is a premium feature.

WARNINGS:

The only other warning I have is that the site tends to e-mail you frequently with special deals, new features and other site news.