Then join the Facebook group

Top Posts from “Full List of Stuff White People Like”
#96 New Balance Shoes
White People in the News: Education Special
#11 Asian Girls
#1 Coffee
#9 Making you feel bad about not going outside
#4 Assists
#88 Having Gay Friends
#2 Religions that their parents don’t belong to
#81 Graduate School

Of course there is already a Stuff Queer People Like in nascent stages, an offshoot of a blog to watch.

Newsweek has named Towleroad one of its 5 “It” Blogs in the July 9, 2007 issue. The whole package is great, “What You Need To Know Now”.

Wow, great company to be in. Congrats, to all. We learn tons from these guys — especially the cat pics on Cuteoverload – all the time.

If you don’t know these other blog, please check them out. Now. And since Newsweek doesn’t actually link to its It Blogs on the site it has with MSNBC, here are some links. Don’t want you to mess up your wrist.

I’m not usually one to be there with an over the top rave, but you have to check this thing out…
Musicovery

I was really beginning to wonder if it would ever come back. I was even starting to think i had been mistaken about how great it was. And more than one friend who didn’t see it has challenged me on my effusions.

Well, I still like it. Even more than before. Sure there’s an Amazon banner and ads, but they go away with the new option to pay for CD-quality sound.

Shouldn’t there be a way to hook this up with the new super-fast Apple home wireless and get this through the house? (Well, it’s not Itunes, so not likely to have a solution from them.) It’s amazingly beautiful, useable, friendly (courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave and clean.) “Reverent” is is not. and that’s all that remains of my brief stint as a boyscout as well (see an upcoming post for further revelations as i endeavor to become the very last person in the world to address the 5 things you once were meme that i was tagged with months ago)…

Short List: Discover Music, Share With Friends

There is at least one really special thing about each of these, and one might be best for you. I have use for a few depending on where i’m listening, and who i’m sharing with. Every one has redeeming qualities.

• LastFM (Trusty. Reliable. Easy to explain. would have been it if all the rest hadn’t happened.
• Pandora (Bionics. I’ve enjoyed my Massive Erotic City Attack mix, with hours of music that i can’t put my finger on how, but just does sound like Madonna and Prince fronting UK electronica)
• Imeem (Sharing music on playlists with your friends. A whole Social Network.)
• Webjay (which truly changed everything)
• Faces (upload playlist and embed player somewhere likeMultiply)
• Qnext (looks great. Just started trying out the just-available version 3.0 which allows you to “webcast” your stuff, allows peer-to-peer music sharing among friends combined with a or Meebo type multi-instant-messenger capability that bring Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, ICQ and AOL/AIM into a single instant message window. The styling’s nice too.
• FIQL (amps it up and take it out all dressed nice, but somehow doesn’t have the energy of W’Jay.)
• Beatport (though doesn’e necessarily fit with the others but is as beautiful as any and a great place to buy electronic and dance music)

After two warm up issues, the new editor, Aaron Hicklin, is breathing life into the old guy. Though it’s stayed the most read gay magazine for 13 years, it’s had a tough time staying “must read.”***

Hicklin started nicely and from a tough position. I’ll reserve real judgment until i see the whole issue. The Planet out gay industrial complex PR team pumped out something more than standard launch hyperbole promising the redesign will bring a new day for all gays. Also,

“Out is repositioning itself in the hierarchy of sophisticated fashion magazines.”

…which is as unparseable as the non-sequitorial, sartorial equating of “more fashion”

with maturity in the quotable release quote, “gay grows up.”First media notices were generous and open. Not so the blog commenters, real readers outside the media game. Punches were not pulled and they trashed the magazine from concept to logo kerning.Towleroad’s were super snarky, lashing out with a frustration that clearly went beyond not liking the cover design and to the intense desire to see themselves as they are (or perhaps as they would like to be).

I never had to deal with that kind of immediacy in print…before the issue hit subscribers…but i have dealt with flames since. Hinklin did good. He posted a note through Andy, “We invite readers of Towleroad to put their brains where their mouths are, and spend time with the magazine over the next six months.” and offered a bunch of free 6 month subscriptions.

Nice. Not a page from the more traditional, unwritten, old-school editor’s book, WWAD (“What Would Anna Do“) Much more Cluetrain Manifesto. They got 50 addresses in less than 15 minutes. And comments–at least about the editor–got a lot nicer.

In addition, accept my congrats on the launch with my best wishes for success in forging the right magazine for this moment and having a good time doing it.

(But, since you’re asking for insights…and i don’t have a magazine…First, those commenters are not agitating for more fashion, and can make your mag work if they like it. Second, retool your press released vision of making the mag “more reflective of modern gay culture: more celebratory and less political.” Never before have so many people had such a good time talking about gay marriage, being out at work, living where they want, openly celebrating their relationships, and not taking shit for living their lives as they see fit. They may call it other things, but every bit of it is political in its impact. It’s all good material.

An anything goes, political, fashionable, and self-ridiculing mag is a whole lot more fun to make and read.
**Disclosures: I’m helping Andy with Towleroad.com, and I was the founder and editor-in-chief of Out magazine way back when I could register out.com. Funny to check in and see the “Hunk of the day” and the early-morning-rewrite of the gay items from gossip columns we launched with, using Mosaic (later Netscape). The technology has come a long way, and there are ads on the net now, but some base editorial things just work for the audience. Wish I’d registered more domains, and wish i didn’t sound like some really old guy talking about the 60s or something. ….just let me tell you about ACTUP…
**ASIDE: Others without certain post-engagement contractual clauses might put it differently.

Levels of job engagement, job satisfaction and workplace morale among employees reporting to white-collar gay men to be upwards of 35% higher than nationally reported statistics.
–Kirk Snyder in Huff Post on his new book The G Quotient (Goffspot affiliate link)

And when more CEOs and senior execs come out, they’ll be more powerful, not less.

Being in the closet is like wearing a tupee, a powerful friend in a high-level corporate job pointed years ago. Everyone knows, you waste time worrying, and others think they have something on you from the get go. Being out and matter-of-fact and confident distracts them and for a bit longer can even throw them off their game giving you an advantage beyond The G Quotient.

Unless of course you’d rather sell books detailing your sexual exploits which might have some negative ramifications. At least McGreevy recognizes that just coming out isn’t that interesting in 2006.(Mcgreevey book, Goffspot affiliate link)

Technorati Tags: snyder, huffpost, gquotient, gay, corporate, mcgreevey

(Warning: zombie writing ahead. Poker. A search engine optimizing test. Just testing techniques in a story I read. Viagra. One-time only. Cheap mortgage. Promise. Gambling.) For research purposes i made an internet dating profile a few months ago, but never paid or used the service. I mean, when i made a Match.com Profile a few months ago, I didn’t pay Match.com to Join Match.com though i heard about the Best Dating Site Match.com. And, I assume that’s why i got the email from Match.com this afternoon with the Match.com discount, Subject: Someone Wants to See Your Profile!

While there was no potential date in the message, there was a Match.com promo discount with legs: “Just For You…Find love this Memorial Day with a 72-hour FREE trial!”

Cancel Match.com? I’d remember to cancel Match.com. I’m not doing much this weekend, and like many others, i would like to find love. (Again.) And of course, there’s always more research. I clicked through the forms as I ran a few calls. I put “cancel Match.com” on my calendar, and was about to hit “send,” with my credit card number as required, when something in the back of my head said to be sure i knew how to cancel Match.com. The notice was on the last sign-up page, in the middle of 4 paragraphs of small type.

“…mail or deliver a signed and dated notice, or send a telegram” to an address in Plano Texas.

No email. No phone calls, toll free or other. No forms on the site, or the internet for that matter. And, not a single acceptable reason for this. (The phone rep acknowledged it and then went into lilting infinite scripted loop of, “The terms are there and you can decide not to take this promotion, but you sound like you are interested…”)

As with rebates, Match.com wants unearned, undeserved revenue.

Match.com wants handouts for being sneaky. It’s arguably something akin to a corporate welfare cheat.

And like other corporate cheats, they’ll keep cheating. (Many learned from their parents. And as a percent of GNP, this welfare cheating dwarfs the one you hear more bitching about.)

But back to Match.com cynicism. Match.com’s lame business model is based on entrapping people, technicalities rather than value, and forcing us to pay when they are basically letting on that they know they’re over charging for what they’ve got.

(I don’t know if info on how to cancel appears on the site. I might sign up just for the novelty of sending a a telegram. Actually, could this be a fiendishly brilliant service of the telegram industry?)

I think things are changing

I think i’ll see if Consumerist is interested. The site mixes shopping with the reality that shopping sucks, and it works. Business people of the future will have no part of this kind of thing. And, again

the San Francisco crowd is again crying “All the rules are off. The world is changing.” (See: Summer of Love; Gold Rush; Internet.)

But, even if Pinko Marketing ends up not quite a fist-raising revolution and what we get is a little more courtesy as consumers, well uh, the others didn’t exactly ignite glabal overthrow, though each had impact on the evolution of gender relations, western migration, and the modern economy.

Match.com is the best dating site? Match.com, the safest dating site? Match.com, the not free hottest babes dating sex site? (More of the zombie talk. I’ll be sure to report on the results.)

Playing these games puts Match.com in the gutter with sleazier sites. It makes me mistrust Match.com and suspect Match.com’s treatment of my personal information. (While I could still be fired in much of the country simply for being gay, their “privacy” policy reads like just about anyone can have access to my non-anonymous information.) There’s a lot of damage to be done by a company bent on exploiting technicalities for profits when users trust them with their private hopes, dreams and pecadillos.

“Bless her heart” paragraph: this is a bit unfair, this picking on match.com. A lot of companies do a lot of these things. They’ve been around a while and i worked with and have respect for a bunch of folks who work there. But this is messed up, and they hit me on a rare blog day.

Bottom line, I’d never date someone who treated me or anyone else like this. It’s manipulative, passive aggressive, and speaks to a deep inner trauma. I suggest therapy.