EDGE Boston

One very happy gay man in America said it all on a recent night--"This site is like an ice cream shop! I’ve tried many different flavors of men and can’t get enough! It’s sex 24/7"--in his personal endorsement for Outpersonals.com. The confession is charged with high-voltage sexual emotion. The surge of guilty pleasure in that admission presses all the right buttons in a cruiser: excitement, expectation, and anticipation: "It’s sex 24/7."

Chalk up another happy customer--that, and the effectiveness of the viral marketing that site directors are employing, as well as the tactical campaigns and more special features--to keep eyeballs, profiles and dollars streaming into paid hook-up sites. All this is drawing traffic to their sites in spite of competition from a raft of ad-supported free sites that have been gnawing at their heels. The key, they all agree, lies in customer service. That, and integrity.

Hooking up on the ’Net is only continuing to grow in popularity, much to the chagrin of bar owners and club promoters, who have been loudly complaining to the media about the encroachment on their turf. The devoted users--and those not overly frustrated by the many flakes, fakes and nutcases who populate many of the sites on any given night--believe this is the way to find sex. Certainly, the reality after the virtual can be just as painful as in the old days of bars and bathhouses. Hooking up is not always pleasant. We still have to deal with losers, flakers, picture-collectors, guys who sent you other people’s pictures to get yours, crystal tweakers, not to mention the inevitable trip across town only to hear "Sorry, this isn’t going to work out."

What draws so many of us to hook-up sites is the promise of sex 24/7. No last calls, no bar tabs, no loud music. But probably nothing more than a casual encounter, either.

"People turn to sex sites because it’s easier than ever before to indulge and find friends with benefits, often without guilt or repercussion. Despite reports, you probably won’t become addicted to hook-up sites. But if you’re looking for love, you’re out of luck," says a proud member of Gaydar.com.

The best sex sites give us an instant, indefinable sense of belonging to a community, no matter how superficial or virtual. When we hook up, we don’t think of ourselves as a part of a niche market. It is more like being a member of our own private club. When we go online it is a fiercely personal act, and we can instantly tell whether someone is our type or not by the site they prefer.

"It is absolutely a coordinated package," says Steven Underhill, a San Francisco-based author and photographer. "People should understand that the medium is so visual, and they are wasting a lot of time online not showing themselves in the best of light," adds Underhill.

Gay.com, then AOL, ruled the dating (and sex) sites in the ’90s. They served up fresh meat 24/7 and dominated the hook-up options with detailed profiles of men of all ages, shapes and sizes. For a glorious moment in the ’90s, an awed world looked to the sex superpowers. New sex sites (even some dating sites) followed in their footsteps.

Newer influential sites included Manhunt.com, Adam4adam.com, HornyMatches.com, Gaydar.com, Men4now.com, Outpersonals, and M4m-usa.com. Men use them to troll for erotic chat or email, discreet relationships, serious relationships, one-on-one sex, group sex, bondage and discipline, cross-dressing, other fetishes, exhibition/voyeurism, sadism/masochism, and any other kinds of "alternative" activities.

The world’s newest premier escort and masseur directory site, MenOnTime.com, is premiering now. It offers masseurs and escorts free access to post ads on the site. Paid sites, however, continue to offer special deals to attract more members and to add pressure to their competition, the free sites. Competition is keen for advertising dollars. The ultimate winner in this war of attrition is the consumer.

The losers for now appear to be the older players like Gay.com, AOL, and Craigslist. Men now expect real-time (RT) online rather than leaving messages and waiting for e-mail responses. Manhunt began the real battle when it hired a cruise director, Michael Alvear--sex columnist, much loved co-host of HBO’s The Sex Inspector and tutor of the best-selling gay sex advice book, Men Are Pigs But We Love Bacon--to enhance its "flavors" of men. "Michael Alvear is here to help you hawk on Manhunt’s hotties!" screams its front page.

"We always give our members what they are always looking for--give them a very simple, easy-to-use site loaded with thousands of guys who are searching for hot sex, friendship, relationships, community, and much more," says Michael MacDonald, Manhunt’s promotions manager. "The site is also tailored to each member’s location and you can search for members all around the world. If we can make our members’ experience as easy and accommodating as possible, we know that they’ll stick around and tell their friends about us. Of course we also do standard marketing such as print and web advertising, event sponsorships, etc, so there’s a good mix."

Manhunt is focusing now on international expansion. The site’s owners have already hired specialists in various languages and cultures from around the world. It is also looking to maintain and strengthen its domestic member sign-ups, so there will always be fresh faces for our members to see. From time to time, Manhunt runs specials for discounted or limited-time free-access memberships and as an incentive to visit the site. Lately, Manhunt discovered that social networking sites such as MySpace.com are a great way to attract guys who may not have known about the site.

Manhunt’s full access membership offers access to cool features like an expanded buddy list and its advance search options. Members can exchange unlimited e-mails with 900,000 members and look at over 3 million pictures in full size. Unlike Adam4Adam (two public and one private pictures), Manhunt members are allowed to post more pictures. Non-paying members (or "guests," as they are called) can access up to three pages a day plus a couple of e-mail exchanges before they are asked to purchase or refill their pass.

Adam4Adam, on the other hand, is free to all. Adam4Adam is targeting the black and Hispanic market, although not exclusively. Out of over 800 personal sites (heterosexual and otherwise) in the U.S., an article in the Middletown, N.Y., Times Herald-Record cites Adam4Adam. In December 2006, Hitwise ranked it among the top 10 such hook-up sites. Two years ago, the San Jose Mercury News ranked it as the second most popular online gay personals site in the country.

The site was launched at the end of 2003 and is operated by A4A Network Inc. Although the site has members of all ethnic groups, the percentage of non-white men represented in member profiles is far higher than the percentage of non-whites in the U.S. population. Unlike Manhunt, Adam4Adam is entirely free. Instead, Adam4Adam derives its revenues exclusively from advertising, mostly adult pay-per-view videos.

One potential competitor on the horizon for Adam4Adam might be Megamates.com. It had zero pop-ups and zero ads on a recent viewing. But the site is growing in popularity among guys on the "DL" (down low), because the site is totally private. This could make the next generation of online hook-up sites-at least among married men.

Manhunt has been adding to its site, however. It now offers a "plan-a-trip feature" to locate potential friends or dates for travelers. It also allows for posting party invitations. The site provides a "Health Resource" page as well as a page devoted to "Online Safety Tips." The site encourages health organizations to create "Health Counselor" accounts. All these measures encourage safe sex-something other sites sometimes give more lip service to than aggressively offer information to members.