BigJock, a Silicon Valley gay social networking start-up

October 11, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

bigjock_logo.jpgRichard Rudometkin, founder of new gay social networking site BigJock.com, looked us up today to mention his site went live last Thursday. It’s offering a drawing for a free iPod for those who register before the official launch on Nov 5th.

He has launched this from a spare bedroom in North San Jose, and it is self-funded.

Naturally, our question was how his site differs from all the other gay social networking companies out there. Our suspicion is that it is getting late to launch new social networking sites, even if they are niche. We pointed out there is at least ten or so rivals out there, including Gay.com, Manjam, GuyParty and Jake. How is his service any better, we asked?

For starters, BigJock will have photo albums, blogs, journals, forums and classifieds, as well as “Hot or Not” ratings of members. It will be adding IM, and free video and email. He wants to emulate MySpace’s features and user-friendly feel. So far, so good. Many of those are standard features.

manjam.bmpManJam is very thorough, he conceded. (Type in “gay social network” into Google, and it is the second result). But ManJam and Jake are both UK-based, and his research found that U.S. men had a level of “disconnect” with these sites, he said.

gay.bmpGay.com was the most mentioned site, but that site attempts to be all things to all people (meaning women), he said.

So BigJock is aiming for the educated urban professionals and college-aged. He’s aiming to go international. And he hopes to offer features that exceed these others. Being based in Silicon Valley, that might help.

We’ve just noticed that TechCrunch has also just written a more thorough review of the gay sites.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Kai
    Good luck for bringing a great new social networking site to the gay guys in the States! As you recognized, the UK already has a few aimed at different markets, including Jake for business professionals and OUTeverywhere for pure social networking - its members organise around 5,000 events every year and its forums have more than 5 *million* posts. It's been around since 1995, so good to see the States catching up with the UK for once ;)
  • Thanks for this article Matt. I've been waiting for sites such as VentureBeat to start discussing the innovation that's happening in the gay community. My gripe is that a lot of 'gay' websites are only focused on either gay guys, or men wanting sex with men - there is far more to the 'gay' community than this.

    So, here's a new one to add to your list: http://www.queensspeech.com
    …launch is scheduled for the start of January and will be a true social network aimed at the entire ‘lgbt’ community - not just men looking for a ‘quickie’.

    Unlike other the other gay social networks, QueensSpeech will aggregate content published by its members to build topic-based, magazine style frontpages that summarise what’s being discussed throughout the community, by the community. We're calling this concept 'Conversational Publishing' - and we'll be giving it a 'glossy finish' to meet the needs of the non-contributing members, readers, or lurkers as they're sometimes called.

    Anyway, thanks so much for starting this conversation - i can't wait to see how it progresses...
  • BT
    Great blog post, Matt. I, for one, have signed up for BigJock, and am very excited about its debut and future success. It seems to offer really cool features, a combination of myspace and dlist. Big hairy muscle hugs of thanks.