New Gay.Com Still Sucks

Now that we've had a few weeks to explore and use the new gay.com, I find little reason to change my view that it sucks. Apparently, I'm not alone. The main topic of conversation in the few rooms I visit, next to politics, is how much people hate the new gay.com. In fact, I'd say we haven't seen such a flop since New Coke.

The number of users in the rooms I frequent at any one time is significantly less than what it was before the launch. I'm guessing this is in part the result of non-paying members only being able to be in one room at a time. I suspect, however, that it's at least partially due to a serious decline in gay.com visitors. At least here in Athens, Manhunt is now the cruise site of choice. To be fair, Manhunt had already eclipsed gay.com prior to the launch so the new gay.com is not entirely to blame.

I've always used Gayboi's chat client. It was the only way to prevent the adbots that plagued gay.com from harassing me. I guess you could say that integrating a botguard into gay.com is an improvement. But it's an improvement that comes with a few negatives.

When using the chat client, if someone made a comment in the room, I could easily find the profile for that person. All you had to do was click on the list of folks in the room and type the first letter of the screenname. Quick and easy. Now you have to scroll down a list that at least on my computer, bounces around a lot in an annoying way.

Another feature I liked was the ability to view all the pictures of those in a particular room. That is no longer possible on the new gay.com. I will say that it's a bit of a plus for nonpaying members to be able to view up to 3 pictures in a profile compared with only the main picture with the old software.

I also liked being able to see who was in a room before I actually entered it. If that's still possible, I can't figure out how to do it. Instead I find myself popping in to nearly empty rooms and then exiting to find a room with at least a few people in it that chat.

I don't like the way biolines are handled with the new gay.com, either. In the past if you clicked on the screenname you could see whatever they put on their bioline. Now only a truncated version of the bioline appears, and you have to scroll over it in just the right way to see the rest.

The good news is that I use gay.com exclusively for entertainment purposes. With the new gay.com, I find I spend considerably less time in the chatrooms than I did before, and I guess that's a good thing. It gives me more time to blog!

The Crotchety Old Man