Evolution of Gay social networking sites.

Let's face it. At 43, I have been around. And what I am referring to is internet social networking in the gay world. My very first experience on gay chatroom was on AOL ChicagoM4M room in the early 90s. Back then people only had profile and they trade pictures during the chat when they like each other's profile. The major problem with that was people always insist the other send their picture first. And in many instances if they did not like what they saw, they don't even bother sending their pics even though they said "send to receive". So what usually happen is that nobody want to send first because they got burnt before. Then the demise of AOL come to pass. Other gay website popped up outside of AOL. What became popular here in the States is Gay.com. They have chat rooms in major urban cities and for specific fetish and racial groups. In gay.com, people can post picture in their profile. In a way, it was easier to to find somebody you like cause now you can see their pictures. But of course there were always the one that post their decapitated picture cause they are either closeted or unfair. Gay.com had a good run. In fact people still go on gay.com but I could tell it is slowly dying cause nobody hardly chats there nowadays. Sometime in the early 2000 Manhunt.net showed up. Manhunt was popular but primarily for hook-up rather than meet somebody you can actually date and have LTR with. And in MH there are more people who post their decapitated pictures which is very annoying really. Many people had the same attitude they had in AOL chatroom where they will only send or unlock their face pics after they see your face pic. And of course there will always be people like me who already post their face pics in their profile cause they are not all about playing this "send to receive" game. MH had its drawback cause only people with premium (paying) membership can see the full size pictures of profiles. I understand that they need to make money somehow but I sensed people got tired with this restriction. Now what is popular is Adam4Adam.com. In Adam4Adam, people can see the full pictures of profiles which is better than MH. What A4A does to recoup revenue is that they have more advertisers in their website. So I have noticed that people go more now on A4A. Gay.com and MH are still operating but not as popular now as they were. In Europe, Gaydar.co.uk was popular and is probably still popular. I do not really know cause gays here in the States hardly go to gaydar. The east coast has more followers but in the Chicago room, there are hardly anybody there. So there it is guys. That is my take of gay social networking websites.