Gay.com now owned by LA LGBT community center
by Fred Kuhr
The Los Angeles LGBT Center has acquired the popular website domain Gay.com as a donation from its current owners, VS Media, and its flagship live cam site Flirt4Free. VS Media estimates the value of the domain to be $6.9 million.
The Gay.com URL now redirects to the Center’s newly launched blog, Vanguard (VanguardNow.org). Vanguard shares stories related to the people who are helped by the Center and the organization’s programs and services.
“We’ve only just begun to think about future possibilities for the domain,” said Jim Key, the Center’s chief marketing officer. “But for now, the traffic from Gay.com to our new blog will help even more people learn how we’re building a world where LGBT people thrive as healthy, equal, and complete members of society.”After acquiring the Gay.com domain last year and transforming it into an online hub for LGBT individuals looking for a community, VS Media and Flirt4Free executives hatched a concept to transform the domain into something that would provide the maximum amount of support for the LGBT community, thus creating the “Gay.com Charity Challenge.” The company invited five of the top LGBT charities and asked them to provide a proposal by July 1 detailing how the organization planned to use the site in order to further the organization’s mission while supporting the LGBT community as a whole.
“We were thrilled to see the enthusiasm and ideas the challenge brought forth by the various charities,” said Flirt4Free president Gregory Clayman. “We believe that if the Los Angeles LGBT Center follows its plans as outlined, its efforts with the domain will have a massive impact on the organization’s charity and the LGBT community not only in Los Angeles but everywhere.”
Gay.com debuted in 1997 and has been previously owned by PlanetOut and Here Media.
IN THE NEWS
Volume 19
Issue 5
