Sexual Deviants Living In A Web 2.0 World

Until today, American’s could not specify what city they lived in which left people in the larger states frustrated when browsing through kinkster in their state.

So my American friends, login to FetLife, click on the edit link next to Profile in the top navigation bar and specify what city you live in.

So now Canadian and US cities are taken care of. Feels good!

I am really fortunate and humbled that I get emails from people who love FetLife and thank me for creating the site. Nothing feels better for someone like me who lives to grow software and communities.

This email in specific really made me feel good (they all do though):

Hey, just a note to say that I really enjoy this space. I actually deleted my profile on alt…. found enough good local people, and besides, alt is kind of… um …. creepy sometimes. Here I feel safer, I feel like the people are more on the level. I love the format… you can see what everyone is up to. I think it holds people to a slightly higher level of accountability. Being able to see threads of what others are writing has sparked some interesting conversations. It seems that there are alot of bloggers/writers on here, and that’s great. All in all I <3 fetlife. You are doing an amazing job, keep it up!!! –a.

LittleA even deleted her profile on ALT after joining FetLife. Wow… if that is not a compliment I do not know what is!

I am a big fan of long titles, this way I don’t really have to say much more if I don’t want to… but I do.

I am putting all my energy into groups for the next week or two. Over the last day I have deployed the following improvements:

• I tweaked the design of groups, I was not in love with my last design but then again I am never in love with any of my designs but this one I think is better. Constant improvement is the name of this story.
• The person who starts a new discussion/thread can now edit their post if after they posted it they want to make changes.
• Group moderators can now delete posts or comments if they feel they need to.
• You can now view all the members of a group

Enough about me, how are you doing?

At the beginning of every month I like to reflect on what was accomplished during the last month and look forward to the goals we are setting for the upcoming month.

What did we do last month?

We added a writing section so that people could blog or share their erotica with everyone on FetLife. We deployed the first basic version of groups. We put the proper precautions in place to prevent people from turning FetLife into the next mySpace. We added the ability to search on almost anything from every page i.e. added searc to the navigation bar. We added the ability to archive conversations, view every single conversation you started or had with a member of FetLife as well as view all your conversations you have been having with one specific person. We created the friend finder so you can see which one of your friends are already on FetLife and invite the ones who are not on yet. And unfortunately, we created the blocking feature for those who just don’t get along.

I really had no clue how much we accomplished in the last month. Times they are a changing. But last month is now over and all that matters is what is planned for next month.

What are we planning on doing this month?

We don’t have any new sections planned for this month. This month is going to be devoted to taking everything we already have and just make them better. We are going to push the groups, pictures, fetishes and sign-up to the next level.

I am a numbers geek, give me some numbers!

Here is FetLife by the numbers:

• 2791 kinksters have signed up to date from 51 different countries (we averaged just over 50 new members a day in the month of March)
• 4139 pictures have been uploaded to date with 2415 comments made on those pictures
• 10551 links have been made between people as friendships
• 6087 conversations have been started with 18,175 messages being sent to date.
• 187 blog posts have been written to date with 187 comments made on them (started 7 days ago)
• 1546 wall posts have been written to date
• 575 fetishes have been entered on the site to date with the community being into or curious about 39,659 fetishes
• 39,025 actions have been logged which results in 325,695 items placed into people’s mini-feed

A lot of these numbers might not mean much to most people here so to summarize: people seem to be enjoying what we are doing here at FetLife but we are far from what our vision for FetLife is.

A toast

So cheers my friends for helping me push the experience that is FetLife further with all your great feedback and support and thank you for helping me in my quest to take down the bondage.com and alt.com’s of the world that don’t give a shit about us other then our credit card number.

What is a group? A group is just another way of saying a “club”. I know, I know, I say club and you think Chess Club (which I was a member of in elementary school). But on FetLife, I think our clubs are going to have a slightly different feel to them.

What can you do with groups now: * you can create as many groups as you want * you can join and leave a group * you can start discussions and respond to discussions on groups * the groups you are apart of are listed on your profile

People have been asking for forums and this is where forums come in. Each group in essence has it’s own forum.

One thing I need to stress is that the person who starts the group is the group admin and is responsible for the group. If people behave badly it is your responsibility to take care of it and I will be creating tools to help you do this over the next month.

So how do I create a new group? There is no link on FetLife right now to create a new group because I wanted to let my blog readers at it first. So to start a new group you have to go here:

http://fetlife.com/groups/new

This is just the first iteration of groups and I am going to be spending the rest of the month improving on them.

How do you like groups so far? What would you do to improve them?