Fridae

If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a ... well, fairly interesting at least ... surprise. That is, if you think of our Fridae Labs area as ... the woods.

Let's ignore my slightly-flawed metaphor for the moment. :)

New Stuff! Fridae Fresh

We know it can be hard to find the newest content on Fridae, so we've added a new section to the site recently, called Fridae Fresh. This is where you'll find all the freshest content users have posted to their profiles, showing the latest photos, the latest profile updates and the latest blog entries.

The pages are updated a few times an hour with the latest content.

Fridae Fresh is considered beta for now.

Fridae Tribes Update

So far the response to Tribes has been great! You've created lots of new Tribes and we've seen some surprising groups forming. (1JAPAN - we had no idea you guys would grow to become one of our biggest Tribes!)

Today we also added some new goodies to Tribes.

A new menu option - Subscriptions - is now available in each Tribe. This allows you to subscribe to various emails and notifications for the Tribe. At the moment you can opt to receive the daily email of all the Tribe's activity (who joined, new messages, new photos and photo albums), but in the future there'll be other options.

Tribes now display the identities of their Tribe Masters and Administrators in their pages, so you know who to contact if you have any problems.

Member profiles now display the Tribes that the member belongs to (only showing public, listed Tribes). This is a function we were putting off deploying, but with such a great response to Tribes, we felt it was important to start displaying them in your profiles.

Lastly, we've added some featured Tribes to the right hand side navigation of the Tribes pages. From time to time we'll update the featured Tribes list. There's no formula here, its just Tribes we find interesting. (Everyone should go join Gaymers now!)

Finally, on a personal note: thanks to everyone who listened in to Technogaze last week. :)

Just a quick heads-up for the Fridae community - I'll be co-hosting Technogaze on Joy 94.9 in Melbourne this Monday (November 9).

Joy is Melbourne's only LGBT-oriented community radio station:

JOY 94.9 is an independent voice for the diverse lesbian and gay communities. We enable freedom of expression. We break down isolation. We celebrate queer culture, achievements and pride.

Technogaze is all about gazing into the past, present and future of technology. We'll be talking about technology, gadgets and computing news and sharing our views and opinions on the week's happenings, and there's a feature discussion each week.

Want to listen in?

Joy is broadcast on 94.9 FM in the Melbourne metro area.

You don't need to be in Melbourne to listen in, though! You can listen live on Joy's website at any time no matter where you are around the world: http://joy.org.au/listenlive

7pm Melbourne time is:

4pm in Singapore and Hong Kong

5pm in Tokyo

8am in London

3am in the US (Eastern)

Midnight in the US (Pacific)

Podcasts of past episodes are also availlable! http://www.cpod.org.au/page.php?id=113 (you'll also hear me on the July 20 episode)

You can send us emails and tweets while we're on the air, too - I hope to hear from you all :)

It's been a while since a tech update found its way onto the blog. Rest assured we've been working hard on some new goodies! Today we've introduced a new feature called Fridae Labs.

Fridae Labs is where we experiment with some new features. We've been having fun playing with them in the office, and thought it would be nice to offer our users a way to play with these features too :)

Lab Experiments can be considered "beta" - they're very experimental, and there are likely to be bugs. We'd appreciate your feedback (and patience, while we fix bugs).

To access Labs and check out our current Experiments, click on Settings > Fridae Labs in your user console. The Labs page will tell you what's currently available and show you how to access it.

Our first Lab Experiment is "Tribes", a major new groupware feature for Fridae.

Tribes

A Tribe allows Fridae members to arrange themselves into a group around a common cause or interest.

You can use a Tribe to find other members who are into the same things as you, and if you can't find one you can create your own.

Each Tribe gets its own discussion board and photo galleries for members to interact with each other, and it can also have private Agenda items visible only to its members.

A Tribe can be public (anyone can join), or private (an invitation is required to join). You can hide the Tribe's contents or the Tribe itself from anyone who's not a member.

The Tribe page also has a distinctive new layout style which can be customised by the Tribe Master.

Fridae will maintain a public "Tribe Index" which will list all Tribes that have opted in to be shown to the public.

Anyone can create a Tribe, for any reason! Here's a few off the top of my head:

• Australians in Singapore (that's me)
• Transformers Fans (again, me)
• Hamish and Andy Fans (yeah, its me again)
• People who go to the same gym as you
• Fridae Members who attend the same college or university

and so on - the sky's the limit!

Joining or creating a Tribe is a great way to get involved with and get to know other Fridae members who might not necessarily be looking for Personals - give it a go today!

Today we've introduced a change to the Fridae user menu.

When we updated to our current site design, we used a 4x4 grid of icons to convey menu options and action information:

This presented us with a few problems:

• Adding new menu items was problematic - we could only add 4 buttons at a time!
• The graphics contained the text in whichever language is needed. For future translations, we need to create new graphics.
• Because of size restrictions in the design, the text in the graphics was quite small - almost too small to read.
• Users are often confused by the numbers added to the icons - we never really explained the difference between red and blue tabs very well.

I think it's safe to say that we were really going for a menu design reminiscent of an iPhone home screen, but we didn't quite achieve what we wanted.

With today's updated menu, we hope to address these issues.

Our new menu is simpler and easier on the eye - it's a better match for the site's color palette, and as a straight top-down vertical layout it's simpler to comprehend.

We grouped menu options into functional areas, many of which expand to provide additional options when clicked:

• Actionable items (ones that require an action or response from you) - messages, hearts and requests - remain at the top.
• Lists of users - friends, favourites, tracks, blacklist, etc - follow, with a separate section for your friends and favourites currently online.
• Tools for modifying your profile and related data are next (Add/Edit) - you can find options to jump directly to new Travel Plans and Blogs, and finally an option to manage Directory listings.
• Next you'll find Settings - preferences related to your account and how you use Fridae. You no longer need to click through to an interim page to see all the options in this area.
• Finally, we've added a link to our new Referral System - we'd like you to invite your friends to come and join you on Fridae! (if you didn't already know)

We'd like your feedback on the new menu design and layout - did we do something wrong? Did we do something right? Click here to contact us and let us know what you think, or add a comment below!

PS: If the new menu's a bit confusing, you can click on the  icon below the menu to switch back to the original menu. You should let us know your thoughts, though - we don't plan to keep the old menu around for long. :)

About Fridae

Fridae is a social enterprise serving the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (“gay”) communities in Asia.  

Since 2001, Fridae.com’s innovative social networking platform has enabled over 500,000 registered members to meet, interact and form lasting relationships that cross borders and cultures. In May 2009, we launched “Version 6”, our most comprehensive technology and design update in over 4 years, making the site easier, faster and a joy to use. A quarter of our members use Fridae.com in Chinese (Simplified, Taiwan Traditional and Hong Kong Traditional).

As Asia’s gay media, Fridae is one of the few independent media sources reporting on gay news in the region, providing a channel for the marginalized and invisible to speak and be heard. Comprising 3 full time editors and over 50 contributors, Fridae’s editorial team publishes over 100 articles each month in English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, having built a strong reputation for fair and objective reportage, while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity.

To the business community, Fridae is the primary conduit through which to reach the lucrative “pink dollar” in Asia. Fridae’s site is unbelievably sticky (more than 14 minutes per session), and our members loyal (81% visit the site daily). They are also well educated (65% with a university degree or higher), well paid (50% have an annual income of at least US$45,000), and well traveled (65% have traveled in the past 6 months).

To public health professionals, Fridae is an invaluable partner in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and playing a leadership role in the region. Fridae has been a pioneer in the online response to HIV prevention, treatment and care, with campaigns that have garnered international recognition for their innovation and effectiveness, with campaigns such as Think Again and Know Your Status. More recently, Fridae has been pioneering online HIV social and behavioral research on an unprecedented large scale, leveraging our unique connection with the community.

Just like man-Friday was to Robinson Crusoe, Friday's role in the gay community has been multi-faceted and many. We strive to be much more than "just a website", and these are just some of the ways that we support you, our community:

Since 2005, Fridae has raised over S$60,000 in benefit of a variety of gay NGOs and community groups including Action for AIDS, AWARE, Cat Welfare Society; independent filmmakers; Indignation, and PinkDot. Furthermore, Fridae has been a media sponsor of LGBT Pride and Film Festivals throughout Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Japan. Fridae has also been supporter of international sporting events such as the World Outgames (Melbourne, Copenhagen, Wellington), the Straits Games (Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore), and the International Lesbian Gay Football Association.

In 2009, Fridae was conferred the Friend of the Arts Award – the highest level of recognition awarded to a gay company - for its support and contribution to Singapore's arts scene by the National Arts Council. This is the fourth consecutive year Fridae has been recognized, having received the lower-tiered Arts Supporter Award in previous years.

From 2001 to 2006, Fridae was also a promoter of unforgettable dance parties such as Snowball and Nation, which attracted 8000 at its peak, and landed Fridae on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for it’s influence and impact. These events were held in Singapore, Bangkok, Phuket and Taipei.

As a spokesperson and advocate, Fridae has played a lead role in such watershed events as the campaign to repeal 377A in Singapore in 2007.

For  almost 10 years (we turn 10 in 2010), Fridae has been a visible and active partner in almost every major gay and lesbian event across Asia. Regardless of our role, whether as a principal organizer, supporting media, or financial sponsor, Fridae strives to achieve its mission to “Empower Gay Asia” and live up to our namesake as “Friday” to the gay Asian community. And as social enterprise – a business with a social mission, we strive towards sustainability and growth that makes carrying out our mission possible.