GayCities iPhone app
GayCities, an LGBT on-line city guide and travel review community, has found another way to reach out to … and connect … the LGBT community. Their LGBT-targeted iPhone app with “check in” functionality helps users see where the action is in their location.
“GayCities has been around for about a year and a half now,” explains co-founder Scott Gatz, who developed the site along with Chris Bull, a former Time Magazine reporter and LGBT political author. “We started as a city guide to help you find where to go, stay and eat in cities all over the world. We are in over 150 cities …” He believes that GayCities is the first site of this magnitude to offer the check-in option , their term for identifying where people are located, for the LGBT community.
“A year ago we launched the iPhone app, which is the idea that wherever you are going you can find nearby hot spots … bars, restaurants, shops… right in your pocket wherever you go in any of those cities that we cover. About 150,000 people use the iPhone app and about 375,000 people use the web site.
“We have just launched a complete rework of the iPhone app to make it much more social so people can still find all of that stuff that we have but now they can say where they are going and share with their friends and with others. It takes the idea of a social network and city guide and makes it real time in your pocket wherever you go.”
In its first week more than 1,000 people checked in from 98 cites and 18 countries. “It’s been terrific… We have had people check in from Tel Aviv, Osaka, Japan, Copenhagen, New York and San Francisco, too, all the big cites that you would expect. You begin to start seeing trends at interesting places… people share little tips… Tuesday is not as good for comedy here or you’ve got to check this place out… “
GayCities was designed to have universal appeal. “When we founded GayCities we really set out to make a site where everyone could find people like them -- that’s a phrase we use often. What a 20-year-old man is interested in will be different than a 30-year-old woman, will be different from a 50-year-old man. The whole idea is that we build a social network where people can connect and find people like them and discover where to go, stay and eat and where those hotspots are among their crowd. We have quite a few women on the site, a very healthy percentage.”
Site users suggest new cities and businesses to add. “People write in all the time … Once we have a city there is a button inside the app and on the web pages where people can suggest a business…
“What starts to happen is that you notice where people are checking in at one particular point in time… it’s important… They are raising their hand and saying here I am and sharing that with the world and they can share it on their Facebook and their Twitter as well and on GayCities, all through the app. You are creating a heat map with ‘digital gaydar.’ Where people are right now may be different than next week or even tomorrow … it’s really fascinating to watch.”
To help kick off the new app, GayCities will reward the Overall Top Fan with the most check in points during March with a four-day, three-night trip for two to West Hollywood, CA. Users earn check in points by using the GayCities iPhone app to check in from wherever they are, by becoming a “Regular” or becoming “Top Fan” of a venue (the person who has checked in the most). Users who recommend the app get their friends’ point totals added to their own. The contest winner will receive two free airline tickets, a free hotel stay, dinner for two at O-Bar and other perks, courtesy of a partnership with the West Hollywood Marketing & Visitors Bureau. The winner will be notified in early April.
For more information about GayCities, go to: http://www.gaycities.com/ . For more information about the updated iPhone app, go to: http://www.gaycities.com/iphone/
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