MrGay.com Minisite

Gay.com, one of PlanetOut’s leading digital media brands, wanted to bring more traffic to their site. So, they decided to run a contest that would culminate in the crowning of one lucky “Mr. Gay.com.”

At the time of the contest, Gay.com was in the midst of undergoing a complete overhaul. So the site’s management needed a team that could take the style of their old site and fuse it with the look and feel of their new (as yet unfinished) redesign. That, and create a new contest—the likes of which had never yet been done on any PlanetOut site.

At B’stro, we love a challenge almost as much as we love beauty pageants, so it was with great enthusiasm that we accepted the assignment to design and develop the MrGay.com contest site.

The contest began with a call for submissions, followed by a round of voting. Once the contestants were whittled down to the top 5 in each category (Boy Next Door, Jock, Silver Fox, Muscle Stud and Community Leader), a final round of voting would decide the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medalists in each category. Then, at a big celebratory blowout at one of San Francisco’s hottest clubs, the final winner would be announced.

For the MrGay.com contest, we built a custom CMS with specific tools built in both for PlanetOut and for their legal partners responsible for determining each candidate’s eligibility. As each phase of the contest began, we adjusted the CMS to fit the unique requirements of that stage.

Our MrGay.com site also featured a contest schedule that updated dynamically as the contest progressed. By telling them how much time was left in each stage of the contest, we created a sense of urgency and encouraged active participation. Another dynamic feature of the site was the voting results feature: as each voter clicked on their choice contestant, the live tally was automatically updated.

In the interest of fairness, we installed custom controls to eliminate illegal votes and other manipulations of the system. And to make sure no one got an unfair advantage in voting, we made sure to randomize the priority placements of individual contestants on each page for a balanced playing field. Finally, we built a “Nominate a Friend” function into the website so no one would be left out.

PlanetOut raved about our site from start to finish—but it was from one of their competitors that we received our greatest compliment. Shortly after our contest’s end, another, identical contest conspicuously cropped up elsewhere on the web. We tried not to let this blatant imitation get to us, but the truth is: we couldn’t be more flattered.