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.

AOL Review

I must confess I was not an early adopter of AOL. I was a casual observer on their earlier product Quantum Link, which my post-college roommate used. I didn't see the value in paying for the service's hourly rate. I didn't create my own account on AOL until they switched to a flat monthly fee. I was a member off and on from about 1999 to 2005. I used several different screen names, trying on different identities and different interests, but ultimately, my main use was to cruise the AOL M4M chat rooms. Around 2002 or 2003, there could have been as many as 8 "DallasM4M" rooms due to the 21 member limit to their chat rooms. By the time they finally upped the limit to 35, the local userbase could only support 2 such larger rooms. The 3rd room would eventually form when DallasM4M1 and DallasM4M2 were too full to hammer into, but it wouldn't grow enough to be usable. I'm sure I'll be relating some of those stories later, but I wanted to establish some background for this review. I'm using AOL 9.1 for this review, but some of my history may refer back to versions as early as 4.0.

POPULATION:

Because AOL is a public, general use service, the population is very diverse including people of all ages and backgrounds regardless of sexual orientation. They have a dating system powered by match.com which is outside the scope of this review. AOL has a gay community, QueerSighted, which I've never used and will not include in this review. I'm sure there are other areas that some gay men will find useful, but the primary areas in my experience are the M4M chat rooms, the AOL profile system, e-mail and instant messenger which form the backbone of the services that came later.

PROFILE:

AOL has been changing the "People Connection" profile system over the last 5 years or s. Previously, it was a limited number of fields (Name, Location, Marital Status, Hobbies and Interests, Occupation, and Personal Quote) and there were certain words you couldn't say (SLUT, for example) and other words the system would let you put, but were subject to being reported as inappropriate by other members. Now, you have a free form "About Me" that can include formatting, links and images, "My Photo," "Personal Details," "Interests," "Pictures," "Themes," "Code Snippet," and "Privacy Settings." The My Photo seems very intuitive and is your primary profile photo. You can add more photos using the "Pictures" section of the profile and separate them into named albums. The "Interests" tab lets you have free form fields for Music, Movies, TV Shows, Books/Magazines, Activities, Love It, and Hate It. The "Personal Details" provides for some of the usual searchable data elements like Name (First and/or Last if you want to give that much information), Birthday with options to display either current age or birthday, Gender (male, female, or leave it unspecified), Relationship Status (with 6 choices like Single, In A Relationship, Divorced), Looking For (Casual Dating, Long-Term Relationships) and With Men or Women, or less gender-specific things like Friendship, Online Buddies, Networking Contacts or Ask Me. You can give some location information, occupation, web links, and up to 4 quotes. The "Themes" is just wallpaper and color schemes. You can add a custom HTML code snippet if you'd like, so you can easily embed YouTube videos or the latest internet meme. In actual usage, the gay men left on the site haven't really gone to the trouble of fleshing out their profiles, so don't expect much.

SEARCHING:

You'd think AOL would shine at such a basic task, but the recent changes in the profile system haven't kept pace with the search feature. In other words, Searching sucks. The initial search form lets you fill in search words for the various profile fields, but the default is to only return results "with profile pictures" but it doesn't return anything until you search again from a more limited search form. Once you get results, they are inconsistent: it may say "53 results" found and show the first 10, but when you go to page 2, it doesn't show more than a few more results.

MESSAGING:

This is AOL's biggest strength: E-mail and instant messaging. They basically invented instant messaging and have spent a lot of time and effort into making both e-mail and IM flexible, dependable, and highly customizable. You can basically e-mail or instant message anyone from AOL if you know their AOL or AIM screen name. In fact, the Buddy List is now labeled "AIM" to make it clear that it is fully interoperable with the standalone AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). Both email and IM have extensive privacy settings allowing you to control who can contact you by which method. The last time I was a regular user, I had a huge block list of both spammers and flakes as well the allowed buddies. I would use AIM to export those lists and reimport them to new screen names so I could automatically and semi-intelligently screen new contacts. I opted to keep it fresh this time and still got a couple of those pesky old flakes chasing after me.
A few years ago, AOL started automatically adding new email and IM contacts to a special Buddy List group called "Recent Buddies." This can be handy when trying to remember who you talked to before, but can also create confusion since it doesn't differentiate e-mail contacts and IM contacts. I received some executable virus attachment e-mails (files masquerading as screen savers) from a couple of other members, sometimes they end up in the Spam folder and sometimes they don't. Those users ended up on my Recent Buddies list and I ended up on theirs. One contacted me to see if I remembered talking to him and wouldn't believe me when I claimed it was from a virus e-mail sent from his screen name.
Other recent enhancements include multiple attachment methods in E-mail (inserting multiple inline images versus attaching a single archive file), "Instant Images" in IMs, "Live Video" (webcam), "AOL Talk" and "Send File," however, these require recent versions of the official AOL clients and may not work with all users.

PREMIUM:

Using the full AOL client is a premium feature at $9.99 per month. If you just want the basic IM and E-mail, the AIM client and access is free. The M4M chat rooms I've mentioned require the premium AOL client and are found in the Town Square "Created by AOL Members" portion of the People Connection Chat (Keyword: Chat Room Listings). If you don't find your city on the first page, be sure and click "More" to see more chat rooms.

MOBILE:

AOL has a mobile browser portal at mobile.aol.com where you can access your e-mail on the go. There are numerous IM clients for various phones and mobile devices. AOL also offers a "Mobile AOL" client for particular models of phones for an additional $19.95 that integrates the E-mail and IM into a specific application, but there is no support for chat rooms on the go.

WARNINGS:

The only warning I have is "how the mighty have fallen." I wouldn't say it is completely useless as the remaining people are generally friendly; however, all the wrong things are still wrong, like bots spamming the chat room, escorts, massage therapists and other rent boys occupying space in the limited chat room. There are also plenty of closeted, no profile, no picture people hanging around that have the potential to be hidden gems or complete flakes, so proceed with caution.

Manhunt Review

I wasn't planning on writing another review quite so soon, but I got a free pass for a week's worth of premium access to Manhunt. Use it or lose it!

POPULATION:

First of all, Manhunt is not a bear-oriented site and has very little profile details for bear properties. There were 40406 members online at 7 pm on a Tuesday night, 456 ads online in the Dallas region (Fort Worth is a separate region), and 1406 ads online in Texas. There are 9448 members in the Dallas region and I again noticed the spikes in numbers of members at the milestone ages. 37% of the members are 18-29, 37% are 30-39, and the remaining 25% are 40 or older. Ethnically, the site is a puzzle. Around 40% of the members identify as white, while over 40% identify as "ask me" with minuscule numbers for black, latino, asian, middle eastern, mixed or other. Only 2% (200 members) overall identified their "Build" as "Bear" while another 2% (182) identified as "Heavy Set."

PROFILE:

Under "Account Info," you set your most basic information like billing, language, location elements such as State, Region, City, Neighborhood as well as your email/text messaging configuration. For your profile, you get to write yourself a headline and some ad text, upto 650 characters. You get a shortcut URL directly to your profile, unlike Men4SexNow, but similar to most bear sites. Your stats and sexual preferences are divided into 5 sections "The Flavor," "The Time," "The Position," "The Place," and "The Stats."
The Flavor is basically concerned with the sexual activities you are interested. There are 25 options ranging from JO, 1 on 1, Group Sex to Friends, Dating, LTR to Pig Play, WS, FF. Interestingly enough, there is an option for "No PNP" but no option for "PNP," not that I would encourage such an option.
The Time indicates your availability to hookup. You can always change this whenever you login as it has a special pulldown on the main page. You have 10 choices such as "Right Now!" or "After Work," as well as "Away," or "Not looking."
The Position seems pretty obvious. You have the usual choices including "Into JO Only," "Into Oral Only," hybrid choices like "Top/Vers." as well as the deliberately vague "Ask Me."
The Place seems to be a reasonably common selection. It's the classic "Your place or mine" with more choices like "In Public" or "Anywhere."
The Stats is where you get to do your self-examination. Age is a free form numeric field and we already know men lie about their age. Your "Build" can be any one of the following: Ask Me, Slim, Swimmers, Athletic, Average, Muscular, Heavy Set, or Bear. This is the only place that you can select any kind of bear characteristics. Your "Ethnicity" can be Ask Me, Asian, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, Mixed, White, or Other. It appears almost half the guys will select "Ask Me" just because it is the first choice and "White" is hidden way over in the last column. You get a number of choices for eye color, hair color and HIV status. Finally, you can set your height in feet & inches or centimeters. There is no entry for weight.
For pictures, you can upload a primary, always public picture and/or upto 11 other pictures that you can specify whether they are public, private or inactive.

SEARCHING:

The basic searches on the site let you see "men online," "new profiles" or "all profiles" for your country, region, and city, all of which are adjustable at anytime. An odd effect of these searches is that the "ManhuntServiceMan" always appears in the results for "men online" in the city of "Manhunt HQ."
The Advanced Search is restricted to paid members. It allows you to search all those fields you specified for your own profile as well as keywords from the ad text, "only members online now" and "only members with pictures." You get several types of geographical search to help you narrow things down. You can use the zip code radius, specific city names or just the larger region. Once you have your criteria locked down, you can save your searches with a 12 letter name. You can have and edit multiple saved searches. This is a fairly versatile search. It uses the profile data very well allowing multiple selections on many search fields.
If you want to search by username, that's a completely different search and you do get to search on a partial username.

MESSAGING:

Manhunt has both an IM style messenger and e-mail style mailbox. You can disable the instant messenger if you like. You can control how frequently you are externally notified of messages in the mailbox. The mailbox offers 10 days of history or 500 messages for the inbox and sent items, upto 45 saved messages and a trash folder that auto-empties every 24 hours. Announcements, special offers and other site specific information comes to your inbox from "ManhuntServiceman."
You have your basic Buddy List that you can add or remove friends with the cool option of being able to choose which of the buddy's photos to use in your view of the list. The buddy list also includes the handy notes field.

PREMIUM:

The Full Access Membership is available for 7 Days for $7.00, 30 days for $12, or 90 days for $30. I like that they offer multiple duration memberships, such as the one week trial. Free users have different limits to their mailbox, but the main feature that free users don't get is the "blocked list." Remember that free users don't get access to the advanced search, nor do they get access to the mobile site.

MOBILE:

Mobile.Manhunt.Net is actually the best looking mobile hookup site I've seen so far. It has appropriate sized graphics, a great layout and features that make sense for a mobile device. The biggest drawbacks that I've seen are the "Men Online" query uses your state instead of your region or city, so you get a lot more hits outside your area and that you can't "add buddy" from the mobile interface. You have access to your Saved Searches, so you should create saved search for your most common mobile interests. For example, if you live and work in very different areas, you might have a saved search about "men online near work" and one about "men online near home" using the zip code radius and any other useful criteria you might want. You have to work out your mobile searches in advance since the advanced search is not present on the mobile site.

WARNINGS:

In conclusion, I really can't recommend Manhunt to bears whether they are looking or bears or chasers. There's not really any mechanism to find anyone interested in bears or chubs nor is the bear or chub population sufficient to attract chasers or admirers. I really don't find the overall population diverse enough based on the very goofy selections members have made. 85% white doesn't match my world or my experience. If you are young, white, and athletic and that's what you like, this is probably a good place with over twice the "online now" membership of gay.com.

Men4SexNow Review

POPULATION:

Men4SexNow is the 2007 winner of the Cybersocket "Best Hookup Site" webaward. M4SN always seems fairly busy to me based on the way it presents the "Quickview Guys Online" page. On a mid-afternoon Sunday check, there were 250 men logged in to the "TX - Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington" view of the site, with almost twice as many guys flagging "versatile" over the other choices (top, bottom, no preference). There are over 12000 users that have selected the DFW region as their home area. This data was a little difficult to gather; they don't exactly brag about their numbers like some other sites. I also noticed the tendency of people to stretch the truth a bit in their profiles, whether it is shave 10 pounds off their weight or add an inch or so to their dick size. It was very clear that milestone ages (25, 30, 35, 40, and 45, especially) were all safe ages to "stay" for a few years. All those ages showed significantly more men than the age above or below. About 40% of the men were in their 30's, 30% are in their 40's or older and the other 30% are 18-29. The DFW site is about 70% white, 14% hispanic, and 12% black with the most diversity in the younger ages.

PROFILE:

Under "Your Account," your ad is the most basic part of your profile. You get to write yourself a headline and some ad copy, set your region, specify your city or neighborhood and your ZIP code. There are 26 Texas regions to choose from and most states or countries have multiple regions. You can also upload upto 6 public pictures and 3 private pictures. You also get to set a bunch of statistical information about yourself such as sexual position, body hair, age, cock size, ethnicity, height, weight, hair color, body type, cut/uncut, smoking status, and HIV status. You also get to set some preferences such as your safe sex practices and where you prefer to meet. Finally, you get to indicate what kinds of activities and guys you are looking for. There's a fairly extensive list of "scenes you're into" which range from the basic "J/O" and "Oral Sex" to archetypes like "Jock," "Daddy," "Bear," "Chub," and "Twink" to more advanced activities like "Bondage," "Verbal," and "Anything Goes." You can also have a voice message, but I haven't noticed those being very common on the site. All the profile fields are specifically chosen to match the site's focus on ease of hooking up. You're not going to find anything about personality, mannerisms, cultural activities or entertainment here. There's absolutely no expectation about finding a long term relationship using this site, although it is funny to stumble across profiles trying to say they're not looking for sex.

SEARCHING:

This site's strength is in its searching. There are a number of pre-configured searches that have their own buttons like "Cruise Ads," "Guys Online," "Fresh Meat," and "Sex Now," however, the full search is probably the most useful search page around. The advanced search really leverages all the profile data you've given, however, only the first 500 results are returned, so learn to narrow your search. I particularly like the ZIP code radius and the "Last Online" field so I'm not looking at abandoned profiles. If I was doing more serious sex research, this search form would be a dream. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised to find that "Safe Sex Only" is still selected as a preference more often than the vague "No Preference" and the bolder "Bareback" choice combined. The only thing I don't like about the search is that you can't do a partial name search; you have to enter an exact match for the username.

The advanced search is really only available to paid users. Free users have to get by with the pre-configured searches. The "Guys Online" and "Who Viewed You" are the best places to just hang out, refreshing periodically or peeking at who has viewed you. If you are in a bit of a hurry, the "Sex Now" page gives the guys that have indicated the best times they are free and looking to hookup. You can search for "Now" as well as some preset time frames like "7pm-11pm." You can set your Sex Now indicator for your optimal hookup times as well as some of the activities you are interested in, like "1 on 1," "Couples" or more.

And then there's the "Sex Parties" page. Free users can visit the Sex Parties page and indicate interest in attending any of the listed parties, but only paid membes can create their own sex parties. Be sure and check the details of the party to see time and location, that the types and number of guys are acceptable to you as well as the expected level of safety. Party hosts get to approve or decline men that have expressed interest in attending their sex parties.

MESSAGING:

The site offers an instant message style chat, but that's not available for free users. You can turn off the IM in one of the menus and I recommend that if you are going to remain a free user. Luckily, if you fail to answer an IM for whatever reason, it gets converted to an e-mail type message. The site e-mails you your contact's message and profile link. Paid members can get their messages on the site as well as by e-mail, however, free members can only send 5 messages per day. Basic level users can get 7 days worth of message history at the site and premium users can get 30 days history. Your site mailbox gives you the most basic information about the guy contacting you like his screen name, age, position and safety preferences. Their implementation of a buddy list is a paid feature called the "hottie list" and you can flag your prospects as "I'm Interested," "Let's Have Sex" or "Deactivate Him For Now" (which is not the same as removing him from your hottie list) plus a free form Notes field. If you add someone to your Hottie list, he can see it from his Hottie list and could receive an e-mail notification. You may also get a special notification if you match up on each other's hottie lists.

PREMIUM:

The site has 3 levels of membership: free, basic and premium. Free is the most restrictive, but free and you do get prompted to upgrade every time you login. Basic offers all the site's functionality with some limits, most of which I've covered previously. The premium member gets lots of perks like top listing in the pre-configured searches, 30 days of history in the mailbox and "who viewed you", 10 profile updates instead of 5, an extra travel location, plus several exclusive features like name change, stealth mode and photo rotator. Free members don't see the rotating photos. When I first upgraded to basic, it was very obvious which members were premium due to the photo rotator as every time I refreshed one of the searches, the thumbnails would change. The stealth mode is to hide yourself from other guys' "who viewed you" pages. I can see how that would be necessary as you have to view a profile in order to block it. Premium users also get some hardcore porn passes, but that's not the reason anyone buys the premium pack. The premium plan is as low as $10.95 per month if you commit to a year's worth, otherwise, a one time fee of $13.95 will let you try it for a month or $6.95 to try it for 4 days. Basic is $9.95 for one month non-recurring or $4.95 for 4 days.

MOBILE:

The mobile site, mobile.m4sn.com, is for paid members only. It offers some of the site's basic features, like the "Who's Online," "Who Viewed My Ad," and the "My Hotties Online Now" as well as the site mailbox. The biggest limitation I can see is that you cannot post your "Sex Now" ad from the mobile site, nor do you get any of the search power from the main site aside from the 3 pre-configured searches. In other words, you cannot initiate communication with someone is isn't online, has viewed your ad or sent you a message. The main site does offer some mobile tools you can setup in advance to be able to quickly respond to an incoming message with one of three pre-written responses. There is, otherwise, no indication to other members that you are using the mobile site.

WARNINGS:

Although M4SN is strongly focussed on getting "sex now" with guys nearby, most of its members aren't bears or interested in bears. The powerful search does make it easy to find the members that want or are bears. A telling piece of information is that weight choices stop at "230 pounds or more" and that's pretty much where bear weights begin. I got much more use out of it 3-4 years ago than I've been getting recently. Another limitation is that the site is not smart enough to turn off the "IM" button on profiles for users that have the Instant Messenger disabled. It also shows the "hot" button even if you already have them on your hot list or block list or if he has put you on his block list.

Beardar

POPULATION:

I wasn't expecting to do one of the smallest bear profile sites as the first of the free sites I was reviewing. I remembered joining Beardar about a year and a half ago after hearing Vito on Bearpodcast during the IBR 2006 episodes. I had some expectation that it would have grown in over 18 months, but it looks like there is less than 1600 bears currently and they average 5-9 online users at the times I've checked, with 2 of those being Texan, including me. It appears there are less than 75 Texans on the site, but I can't verify that as the page 1 of the search gives the first 25 results I want, but selecting any other page, the results default to the entire database.

PROFILE:

The "My Profile" page gives options to select Modify Profile, My Photo, My Video Clip, Preview Profile, Suspend My Profile or Re-Activate your profile, or Cancel your membership. The profile lets you select a large number of details such as drinking habits, smoking habits, relationship status, plenty of appearance options, personal background options, what you're looking for, what you are, your interests. Several of these areas include a series of check boxes and pull-downs as well as a free-form text field to tell more about yourself. I remember being particularly intimidated that I had to write 3 paragraphs about particular aspects of myself.

Under "My Photos," you can upload, set or edit a description, mark some photos as public or private with a password. You don't have to have a photo set up a profile on Beardar. There is a size limit for photos, but it is not explicitly detailed while a limit of 20 photos is mentioned on the home page. Editing your photo's description may require administrator approval. You can also upload a video. The format must be MPEG or AVI, but no other formatting or size requirements are mentioned. While the video seems an innovative feature, there's not a mechanism to search for bears who have made a video clip available.

"Suspend" seems to be for those occasions when you make your profile unavailable without having to delete it. For example, you've just hooked up with a new boyfriend and you want to take yourself off the market for the time being to see how it all goes. You can cancel your profile later if it gets seriously monogamous. However, you don't have to go to those lengths, you can change your "Privacy Settings" to control how invisible you appear on the site.

SEARCHING:

The "Search" option here has plenty of features. In fact, it might have too many features, but I've generally found them pretty intuitive. If you were overwhelmed by the level of detail asked during the profile creation phase, the advanced search uses all those fields and choices. You can save and name your searches. You really have to save your search if you want to look past the first page of search results. You can delete or re-run your saved searches from the "Saved Searches" link naturally enough. Beardar offers or plans to offer an offline search feature that notifies you of new matches by e-mail called alternatively "Bear Locator" or "Matchfinder." Basically, you can select most of the search criteria as a sort of an ongoing matchmaker, although I'm not sure how useful it is with the current userbase and growth pattern.

You also have links to "Hot Lists" which includes Members Who Have "Messaged You," "IM'd You," "Viewed You," as well as those you performed the same actions toward. Looking at the list of people who have "viewed you" without contacting you is kind of interesting and bittersweet. Why didn't he contact me? Should I contact him? You might need to prepared for the answer if you decide to pursue it. You might also check the date he looked at your profile. The Address Book is just the list of guys you've contacted and Blocked Users are the ones you've deliberately ignored. When viewing another member's profile, you can add him to your Favorites list.

MESSAGING:

Messaging uses the e-mail model more than the instant message model. You get plenty of history to follow the thread of your conversations. It's a basic inbox with the ability to delete messages, send new messages, or check your sent messages. While you get the Favorites list in addition to the address book on your Mailbox page, you don't get the option to contact the user from the Favorites list, but you can go to his profile and do it from there.

You may send a "Virtual Kiss" for those situations where you want to let someone know you are interested without having to write any kind of message. The member is notified of who sent the virtual kiss by regular e-mail rather than the in-house mailbox.

There is also supposed to be a "Live Chat" feature, but I was unable to get it to work in 2 different browsers on various occasions.

PREMIUM:

There does not appear to be any premium services on Beardar currently. They are showing to be setup to use iBill whenever that gets implemented.

MOBILE:

Beardar does not appear to offer a mobile-compatible version of the site.

WARNINGS:

The only warnings I have about the site are related to its small userbase and relative newness. Some of the bugs I found on the site would probably have been addressed sooner if more people were using it regularly. I'll be happy to update this review if Beardar grows sufficiently or remodels significantly to warrant.

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.