EMAIL WIRE — Feb 12 — Various, Inc., the leading owner of intimate dating and relationships websites, has acquired Bondage.com, a highly popular site devoted to alternative lifestyles. The newly acquired company will join the Various site Alt.com and together they will create the world's largest online community for bondage, discipline and fetish enthusiasts (BDSM).
The full article was originally published at ChatMag, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: This deal was a long time in the making. Since 2003. It's the perfect fit for extreme niche dating site, Alt.com.
I realize that Various is primarily a dating company however, is this news really dating related?
fyi, Here’s a traffic comparison of AdultFriendFinder.com vs Match.com. http://tinyurl.com/2cnteo
Bondage.com’s acquisitions is on the fringe of what I would cover on OPW, for sure, but FriendFinder acquisitions are significant and I feel I have an obligation to provide some visibility on the business dealings of FriendFinder’s holding company to you.
At the end of the day, we are all in the business of love, which makes us to some extent, also in the sex business. Your comments please…
Mark Brooks
Editor, Online Personals Watch
mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com
212-444-1636
I know of a a good half-dozen couples who met, fell in love and go married through adult dating sites like AFF and bondage.com. I think the people who deny they’re dating sites have never used them. Gay dating sites probably got the same rap back before being gay was acceptable to the mainstream.
Having said that, this acquisition is not good news. Bondage.com was a C+ site at best in terms of usability and customer value, but it was one of the few low-cost alternatives to AFF/alt.com’s revenue model, which consists of targeting drunk, lonely men with credit cards at 2 a.m.
>Bondage.com was a C+ site at best in terms of usability
are you serious? the site is well advanced compared to anything various has to offer. you might want to take a closer look at their site.
chris-
Yeah, I’m serious. My ranking of Bondage.com as C+ is based largely on the fact that they failed to draw a large audience (even with a perfectly usable free account option and inexpensive premium account option). Various does a better job attracting members to its adult dating sites. If you were just comparing features, then yes, I could see why you would say Bondage.com was good.
Being a member since 2004-07-28 I can comment that since Various has taken the site over they have not improved the site markedly as far as look and feel.
Andrew came on and said that there was a host of improvemnts to be made based on member feedback but other than features that feed business to Various’ other sites the level of site experienced has dropped markedly.
Slow perfromance, almost an entire month of site reliability issues related to a platfrom change coupled with aggressive and sometimes unwarranted site administration of the forums (its really MOST popular feature) have alienated many long term members.
The AUP has been made more restrictive and is not kink friendly and the level of customer service compared to when Aiken owned it has drop and damn near testy when members bring up issues.
Was a member of Bondage.com since 2003. Paid for 2 memberships at 20 bucks a month each…up until Various bought it.
What use to be a wonderful site, is now a piece of crap.
Longtime members are leaving in droves.
Longtime members are being banned left and right,(some with post counts over 50,000) For nothing more then asking a question.
Over the years, Ive met well over 200 people from Bondage.com, 90% of those people no longer even log into it. The other 10% are just there to watch it crumble.
Support is a joke, made up of two people, whom when asked a question replys with “Email support@bondage.com” which, goes right to the same two people. People ask for clarification on subjects and are told, “Not going to answer that, Locking the thread”
Bondage.com is a HUGE joke these days, and longtime members are leaving, the same members who made the site what it was. I for one would never again recommend the site.
And the 400% new paid membership rating..is nothing more the phoney profiles, and Various offering longtime members free memberships for 3 months to make thier numbers look good.
Good job Various, on destroying a great site.
As a current member, I have to say that many of the complaints listed here reflect the attitudes of long-time members who never got over the fact that the previous owners sold the site in the first place.
The previous owners were actively involved and many of the users there formed personal friendships with them. When they signed on one fine morning and found out that their “friends ” had sold them, the shock and dismay was pretty high.
I had some of it myself, but the reality of the situation was simple. Various owned the sire and none of the current users were even aware of the sale beforehand.
Because the previous owners were revered as friends, the general consensus was to direct the negative feelings at the big, bad, corporate entity, (Various Inc.) rather than their good buddies.
Various never stood a chance with these people. Various has changed very little at Bondage.com and invested in new servers and tried to connect with the user base to the best of their ability.
Their other sites were never as user-interactive as B.com though, so they stumbled around a lot and made some blunders that alienated some of the user base even more.
The site is still basically the same as it was when I joined some 3 years ago. The changes were minor and mostly affected free users.
Various itself, was just bought out by Penthouse media group. So there will be more changes coming. But so far, so good!
Bondage.com is still by far and away the best alternative lifestyle site out there.
But that’s just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
PEACE!
I have to say, Bondage is a joke now. That last comment by someone who is obviously an employee is hilarious. The site is not even accessible at this moment in time due to the inept handling of the site by Various, they have ruined what was once an excellent venue for the community to discuss anything and everything. The users are leaving in droves. It has become nothing more than a bondage.com branded version of Alt.
I can only assume that “current b.com member” is Tre the Administrator, the MO for slagging off disgruntled members fits.
I was a member for 4 years.
B.Com is a hell in a hand basket existence, brought to its knees by the lack of corporate care and the megalomania of its two site administrators, who ban members from renewing their membership and deprive Penthouse of an income in order to keep control. They refuse to allow any complaints to go beyond themselves and their attitude to justifiable complaints is to ban the complainer.
B.Com is a shadow of its former unique self for one reason only – lousy administration
Bondage.com has been run badly by it’s own support team since the buy out by Various.Inc and has been in terminal decline which shows all the signs of speeding up in recent times, and doubtless will carry on spiralling out of control despite being sold on to Penthouse.
Bondage.com has become the domain of a woman called tre, who answers all mail sent to Support under the name of Dawn, a person of dubious ability for the role she occupies and in whom those experienced within Customer Service as well as those without have little faith.
She relies heavily on a small band of brown-nosed sycophants to do her biding, spying for her both on the site itself and wherever members congregate elsewhere, not so much looking for activity against site rules as for comments about herself and her abilities. The woman has become paranoid.
These brown-nosed sycophants are being rewarded for their efforts by being given positions of power on the site, some paid and some unpaid, all given premium membership, and all after agreeing to work within the new moderation rules she herself has put in place.
The site is a shadow of it’s former self and will never have the same success it once had, even if it does recover from the server problems that have made the site inaccessible for the last 36-48 hours.
Many of the longterm active members that have not already been banned from the site, no doubt perceived as threats to tre or Dawn’s position, have left or are thinking of doing so. Many have already cancelled their paying memberships, and the current thinking is that the site will soon divest itself of free access altogether.
Bondage.com is not what it was, and will not recover given the nature of moderation and support there. The erosion of trust between membership and management will likely never be regained given it’s present state.
RIP Bondage.com. It was nice knowing you.
I’ve been on b.com for just over six years. When I first started going there, what attracted me to the site, primarily, was its active politics forum – there was some insult-flinging, but, by and large, there was some interesting debate. Over the years, I’ve come to think of many of the politics posters as friends, who, although I’ve not met them offline, I am extremely grateful for, and proud to know.
Sadly, many of those posters are no longer there. As others have noted, people are leaving the site in droves – either having been banned (some for reasons as silly as having openly been critical of site administration), or having just become disheartenend by the poor choices made by the site administrators.
Moderators are being told to either agree to rules they have not seen, or leave their volunteer position. The AUP has been revised several times – recently, it was revised twice in as little as a week – and yet still makes no sense, has no guidelines for either users or moderators, and leaves administration able to act on a whim by stating that the rules may be changed at any time for any reason – yet questions about site policy are discouraged, and often threads with valid questions are locked after a single reply to the original post – from the administrator.
The administrator often states that she is posting while drunk. She makes excuses for inaction based on her own irresponsibility, such as “I was sleeping in” or “I had a hangover”. She says that it is her job only to enforce the rules, yet admits that she does not understand the rules. She blames others, higher up in the organization, for mistakes or moves that she makes that later prove to be unpopular. Any complaints about the administrator are to be directed to “support@bondage.com” – which emails are read by the administrator. She refuses to accept any criticism, continually passing the buck, but refuses also to give anyone any answers to questions about who might be in charge – there simply is no accountability.
When b.com was sold to Various, there was some shock, yes – simply because no one on the site was aware that the sale was in the works. People were willing to give Various the benefit of the doubt, especially after Andrew Conru made appearances in the fora and on AVChat and reassured the membership that no major changes would be made.
Well, no major changes were made. Just small changes that added up to an overall diminishment in the experience that used to be b.com, and the alienation of many long-time members who have added much value to the site with their wisdom and experience over the years.
When Various was acquired by (not merged with) Penthouse recently, there was no shock – just some murmers of “thank God”. Now there is a sense that once Penthouse starts looking into things, maybe the present administration will be removed, and maybe the site can start to creep slowly back to what it once was.
But no one’s counting on it. People who used to regularly post in the b.com fora have migrated to other sites, and now congregate there. Why go back? Unfortunately, b.com is but a sad remnant of what it once was. “Current B.com member”, you’re fooling no one – except perhaps yourself.
A small percentage of members on the excellent Bondage.com site are revolting.
They represent less than 6% of total membership, and yet have statistically caused the most damage to an open forum and once popular website.
New or existing members are insulted on a regular basis and accused of heinous crimes, such as having a suntan or a life.
One might expect a reasoned amount of conflict and debate on an adult site but unfortunately rather less intelligent members of society threathening to break someones fingers to stop them posting to Bondage.com is not quite normal.
Certain members being banned from Bondage.Com?
Not a bad thing at all.
Bondage.com was nothing but a viper pit for freeloaders and a 6% criminally insane membership before the banning took place.
Now they have gone it will be a decent place to visit once again.
Below, with the permission of the author, a seven-year member of b.com, is a post that lasted but five minutes in the forums:
___
Dear Mr. Penthouse…
When Mr. Andrew Conru and Various Inc. bought b.com almost a year ago, they “promised” not to lose the uniqueness of this site. They promised us that.
Well, they have broken that promise in spades.
The Forum Boards of b.com were the heart and soul of the site. The Forums used to be a wonderful collection of eclectic souls, who opined, pontificated and responded with various degrees of skill, knowledge and communicative skills. Members posted, knowing that the sum of the contributions provided a unique body of information, entertainment and fun.
That was a HUGE part of what made this such a unique site. It is what made b.com different and is exactly what brought people here from Alt.com and other sites. It was different. It was also profitable in that form.
The forums, through contributions of the free and paying members, developed a sense of a BDSM community, whether good or bad, and offered an opportunity for the free thinking individuals that populate the kink arena a chance to interact globally. While it caused friction and got hot and vociferous at times, it was mostly in good spirit. It was that variety that made it fun and interesting, kept people around and brought new ones in.
Well no more. That is gone Mr. Penthouse.
Various, in less than a year since it purchased the site, mostly through its evolution of admins and their hatchet job on threads and profile memberships, have systematically quelled, stifled, banned and censored the forums to the point bondage.com has lost its vibrancy, and moreover has been changed, something Mr. Conru, the CEO openly promised not to do.
Mr. Conru came to the b.com forums in person with that promise. We didn’t know then, he is not a man of his word.
Mr. Penthouse, it is a shame. Either the members here at the time of the buyout were lied to, or the powers that be at Various don’t know what has happened at the hands of those they put in charge.
Regardless of how or why, many members, past and present, rightly feel betrayed. No longer can forumites post with the honesty they were accustomed to, that provided benefit to the site. Now they fear the wrath of the totalitarian and arbitrary admins. They fear being banned just to even suggest that the site could be improved in some way, which by the way, is how this site grew in the first place. They have forgotten the very nature of their customer base.
Kinky people by nature are intolerant of big brother. They want their say. Acting to stifle their voice is anathema to the very values they live by and thus doing so renders your site irrelevant. They will participate and pay your site, but only if they have the freedom to express themselves without the judgmental intolerance displayed in the last year by management.
Now, please don’t tell me major sites don’t allow criticism. Just do some research and you will know ESPN, TSN and CNNSI (to name a few) all allow surfers to post their comments about the site (unedited except for vulgarity), some often very critical. But management of those sites are adults, and understand their customers need to have a voice. They also believe in free speech and know their product is not only strong enough to endure criticism, but that they can improve by learning from it.
But here, the admins have acted with heavy handed tactics against the very audience that made this site what it is. They are leaving or have been banned.
Mr. Penthouse, many here feel Mr. Conru and the folks at Various betrayed us. Mr. Conru changed the site against his word.
Lately, the admins have justified their actions by saying “it’s a private site, we can do whatever we like”. That is lame and only played when Mr. Conru had credibility.
Various bought a unique product that catered to hundreds of thousands kink enthusiasts in a way they understood. They then took that and applied their dating site mentality to it and lost the unique thing they purchased.
Shame on Mr. Conru for allowing this site to become what he promised it would not, just another lame dating site in his collection of lame dating sites. He lied to hundreds of thousands of people.
Know that many here understand his lack of integrity. He is not a man of his word, not that I think he cares one iota.
Mr. Penthouse, I ask on behalf of the many who helped build this site by contribution over the previous decade to restore the forums to the benign anarchy they were, where moderators and adminstrators are not the dominant raison d’etre.
Oh and Mr. Penthouse… I suspect the Admins will delete this post, perhaps even ban me from your site. That would be a shame. Then the message didn’t get through. The kids still rule the asylum.
LT
60,000 user accounts gone at Bondage.com – my husband and I both lost our premium accounts. The forums are a wasteland with many posts missing. The administrator is telling people we should be grateful because they almost lost the whole site – this does not bring back my account. Who IN THIS DAY AND AGE does not do a backup of important data. Really. Can you hear the death knell sound for bondage.com..
total incompetence by their so called techie team has lost thousands of posts and blogs as well as personal histories, however in the middle of the melee they DID manage to get out emails (in triplicate) reminding their customers of the latest tightened up AUP regulations which will be enforced immediately and “SHOULD you break these rules (inadvertently or not) you will be banned from the site forthwith.”
Customer Service? It’s a joke beyond funny. And just like Various, PH seem to care not a jot. As long as some new mug turns up with the credit card.
so dire has the BDC site become that they are looking to offer amnesties to banned members in order for the customer service team to keep their jobs.
desperation has a nasty smell.
There is a certain group of bon.com members who are trying their hardest to get people to listen and change.
We will continue to try, it’s all we can do. While I am not an advocate for bon.com or the new management, I used to love the site, and the fora and would like to see it come back to it’s forumer glory.
As it stands currently, I’m not staying, but I am hoping that Ali has told us the honest truth now and things are changing.
Just wondering, to what site are all the former members going? I am new, been reading the history there, have already experienced some issues and do not consider that a good sign.
Thanks.
thats the point – they have broken up a fine site and scattered people off into fragmented groups.
I tend to get my “community” from real life, with not an inept administrator in sight.
I was once a paying member, but after various technical support issues, I would be damned if I would pay to use the site as it stands today. I first joined the site 9 years ago.
The forums, which were its strongest feature have turned into something out of Road Warrior. In some cases moderated by those claiming to have just got home from the bar. The site people also operate various sockpuppets to stir up interest in the place, and also have been known to create bogus user accounts.
And as some noted, don’t even think of posting something critical of the site or of any of the site crew, Don’t even send them an email critical of them.
What was once a nice site, is and has been slowing going to hell. I would guess the usage has declined by 50% in the last three months. I see upon looking some of the site statistical moitors like alexa say the about same thing.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/bondage.com
I cannot understand why they are letting the site fall apart. But if I can understand it or not, that appears to be what is happening.
At the rate they are going, they likely will not be able to afford to keep it up.