You may be surprised to learn that the new social-networking site that has been dubbed the "gay Facebook" was made in China, and based in Shanghai. Gays.com is run by a small, multinational team who are keen to put the "Web 2.0" into the gay Webosphere in order to make the site more real name and sociable.

If it is something of a bombshell that Gays.com came to be located in China, then you'll likely be aware that the country has not yet quite opened up culturally as much as it has economically. For a Web startup, though, it should be a no-brainer that Shanghai, with its abundance of young, technically minded talent, is a sweet place to be stationed.

Gays.com emphasises real-name, real-world, place-specific interaction in a similar manner to which Facebook discourages the old, random "CrazySexyAngel1999" mentality that still plagues MySpace and Friendster.

So, upon initial signup, the site requests your full name, and then offers inclusive options for one's gender and sexuality. Aside from user profiles, Gays.com also features "CityScene" which not only indexes user-submitted venues in a particular city (see the Shanghai CityScene page below), but also allows users to specify which places they go to, sort of like Foursquare's increasingly ubiquitous check-ins.



Q&A
I'm delighted that Gays.com "strategist and evangelist" Kenneth Tan (pictured in his profile photo, top) could take time out of his busy blogging and evangelizing schedule to explain in more detail about what drives the site, how it came to be born in China, and how it interacts with its users.

Sinobytes: What was the main idea behind starting Gays.com?

Kenneth: Over the last few years, we've seen a tectonic shift toward what I call the "onymous Internet". As people get past the security concerns they had in the earlier days of the Internet, and as Web sites now offer ever more granular privacy options, we're now moving away from anonymous or pseudonymous online identities, and sharing more and more of our lives and our real identities. It's astounding what we're sharing online these days--we've gone way past sharing just our own photos and videos to sharing who we know, what we're doing, what's on our mind, and even where we are exactly. Previously, the gay Internet landscape was made up of only hookups and dating Web sites--where people hide behind pseudonyms, where face pictures are pixelated, and images of other anatomical parts aren't. You get the idea. While more and more people have been coming out, the gay Internet landscape wasn't a reflection of that. Gay Internet portals were nothing but huge closets, if you will. Another negative side effect of this, of course, was that the gay and lesbian communities were hanging out in separate online hangouts. We wanted to change all this, build an online home where what-you-see-is-what-you-get and people didn't feel like they have to hide; plus, most importantly, we wanted this to be a Web site that reaches out to all quarters of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) spectrum.

Sinobytes: The site was created, and is based, in China, but there's no Chinese-language version yet. Will this launch soon?

Kenneth: Most of last year was spent developing two features that we believe will be key pillars to our future growth: CityScene (our global directory of listings for gay venues, community centres, non-profit organizations and other services in major cities), as well as Groups (which anyone can create based on shared interests, activities, causes). The earlier part of this year will be devoted to the third key pillar of our growth: Events, which will allow anyone to post anything from a private dinner party to huge dance parties. Once these key pillars are up and running, we'll think about offering multilingual versions for our site, including Chinese and several other important global languages. This will happen probably some time later this year.

Sinobytes: How many China-based users (both locals and expats) do you have on the site now?

Kenneth: We now have coming to 3,000 China-based members, which is just a fraction of our more than 122,000 members, but not a bad figure, really, considering we're just an English language Web site for now. But as soon as the site is available in Chinese, we expect this figure to skyrocket.

Sinobytes: How did the site come to be created in China? How is it a good place for a Web startup in terms of hiring designers, developers, etc.?

Kenneth: I myself have been in Shanghai for over seven years, but really, we didn't decide to locate ourselves here because of cost considerations. It was because we truly believe this is one of the best places in the world to attract best-of-breed talent from just about anywhere. The Gays.com team is a small, tightly knit team of about 12 people from Germany, Greece, China, Switzerland, Slovakia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the UK. When you have so many young, energetic, creative people from all over the world (at 32, I'm the oldest in the team!), working and rubbing shoulders together in a place as vibrant and dynamic as Shanghai, each bringing his own unique experience to the table, everything seems possible and the world is yours for the taking.

Sinobytes: Your site has been called the "gay Facebook"--what Web 2.0 features does it have?

Kenneth: One of our cooler features is the Communiverse which is a wonderful visual tool that shows you how you and your friends, and the friends of your friends are all connected to each other. We've put up a demo video of it in action on our YouTube channel. Another of the projects we're really proud of is a viral video project we executed last year for our first anniversary, which coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia. We challenged our members to step out in front of their own cameras and tell us in their own language how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and this really cool video was the result. The video has now chalked up over 277,000 video views and counting.

Sinobytes: Any upcoming plans for 2010?

Kenneth: This year is really about the transformation of ourselves into a global site that serves local gay communities everywhere. By the end of the year, we hope to reach out to non-English speakers in a big way by translating the site into the world's key languages. On top of that, the Events feature that I mentioned earlier is one of the features that will help us get more plugged into the lives of local gay communities. Once this feature is ready, we'll be working on the tight integration of CityScene, Groups and Events. We envision this as a set of tools to help local gay community leaders around the world organize, reach out to their own constituents, and get their job done.

For more people who positively impact China's Webosphere, check out my two previous interviews: With the co-founder of Zuosa, the Chinese Twitter service, and the CEO of Hotspot Shield, the free VPN provider.