The idea for EAM4M evolved over a number of years. I thought I’d write this out for anyone who’s interested to know why it turned out the way it is. [日本語版をお読みになりたい方はこちらをご覧ください。]

Page 1 -1997-2003: Formative Years
Page 2 - 2004-2008: Very Active Years
Page 3 - 2009-2011: Established Community, Lower Activity
And… - EAM4M Is Born (See some cool photo morphs)

1997-2003:
Formative Years

My partner and I moved in together 14 years ago here in Western Japan. We started our own little website on Geocities in 1997. I’m American. He’s Japanese. So our login name as a couple was JguyUSguy.

We put up a guestbook. (Remember those?) And, to our surprise, people actually posted in it. That’s where it all began.

What propels us
Pattern #1: Follow usage
What happened in those first months set a pattern for the way we’d go on developing the site over the next 14 years, all the way up to EAM4M. Repeat guestbook users appeared and began to seek each other out. We hadn’t expected that, but it led us to create a couple of boards for personal ads – the “Getting Together” and the “Staying Together” boards.

The same pattern of development-following-usage occurred again and again. The way that users used the site would give us ideas for making it even more useful and entertaining for them, and we’d implement these ideas wherever we could. When some guys started posting opinions about current events and gay life, we decided to create a third board, called “My two cents.”

The site at the time was like three tiny sites in one: a common “JguyUSguy” area, Jguy’s corner, and USguy’s corner. The common area was bilingual, but not the other two. We soon found that users needed language help, so we created a form where they could request that we translate their personal ads. That’s how JguyUSguy first grew popular. We’d invest all of our weekends into meeting ever increasing demands for free language assistance. And without a doubt, it made for some interesting reading.

Gay Asia on the web
First of all, what is Asia, anyway? Well, Hong Kong, Taiwan and north from there (Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia) is often called “East Asia.” And south from Hong Kong is usually called Southeast Asia. So let’s talk about gay web content from the (north) east and compare it with gay web content from the south (Thailand, Singapore, etc.).

North of Hong Kong, it seems that gay web producers have never been interested in putting together a full-on English-language portal to serve a wide part of Asia. (And EAM4M won’t – I repeat: will not – fill that void. EAM4M’s a private social network, not a portal. It’s not even accessible publicly. We’re very exclusive.) Gay websites created by people in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei or anywhere in East Asia, all seem to serve only local audiences in their local languages (Japanese, Korean, or Chinese).

But, south of East Asia it’s a different story. Emanating from Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong are some very comprehensive English portals that serve gay Asia in the broadest sense. Utopia and Fridae aim to serve not only Thailand or Singapore but the gay planet’s entire eastern hemisphere. Utopia (1995 – present), originally based in Thailand, has always been a comprehensive resource for bars and websites. Fridae (2001 – present), based in Singapore and Hong Kong, is also a full-on, non-porn portal that includes news, personals and much more. It’s always been a businesslike venture that appears focused on making money from advertising and events.

By contrast, JguyUSguy has never been an especially professional project, has always lost money, and hasn’t aimed to serve all of Asia. Our site has always been more of an underground resource, like… gay punk webmaking with a reckless mix of porn and non-porn content, and a perspective that’s been at once both Japan-focused and completely global. And even as we’ve spread our local focus to Korea and Taiwan, we’ve always been about East Asia (and global). You’ve never seen much on JguyUSguy about Southeast Asia, have you? You think JguyUSguy and you think Japan, right? And then maybe Korea and Taiwan. You don’t think of Southeast Asia. I’m not saying that either region is better. I’m just saying that we’ve never been all about “Asia” as a big, wide, hemispheric area. In a way, our focus is more global. World, yes. Asia, not so much.

How JguyUSguy grew
Pattern #2: When we’re forced to switch web application providers
When we were on Geocities, we rented our web location. We didn’t own it. When they cancelled our account, we were gone. The same thing happened with the provider of our original message boards. When they went out of business, we lost all the content on the boards. But we grew by recovering from these kinds of losses. In November 1999, we purchased our own domain name, jguyusguy.org. And when our message boards were suddenly gone, we hunted and found a new provider, Eve-Groupee-Infopop-SocialStrata. This was a pattern that would keep repeating itself.

In 2000, we added iMode message boards that were really popular with young Japanese guys.

In 2001 we opened our first chat room. (It was text only, remember?) Guys loved it.

In 2002 my friend designed the JguyUSguy logo that became the permanent logo, the one you’ve come to know. And the site got its white background and brown link color. It was also a time when we expanded our personals boards and discussion forums. The Eve-Groupee-Infopop-SocialStrata platform allowed us to create as many boards as we needed, so we opened geographical ones for Japan’s six regions and for many parts of North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. We also expanded the discussion boards to include sex advice, relationship advice, politics and so on. 

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