This past summer, enduringly popular gay site Badpuppy.com achieved an industry milestone: The pioneering site turned 10 years old. (With all the sites that have come and gone in that time, that’s at least 35 in webmaster years!)
Formed in 1995, the site – which has become a mainstay for thrill-seeking Web surfers wagging their tails for the hottest in gay content – had its official birthday on May 17 and spent an entire weekend celebrating with a slew of events at Orlando’s infamous Parliament House.
“Badpuppy turning 10 was a very wonderful feeling,” says Badpuppy president Bill Pinyon. “This is the longest I have ever been on the same job. I cannot imagine a world without Badpuppy, my partner Steve, and our entire staff. Some of them have given me as much as nine years of their lives, and most have been there more than six years. We owe a lot to them.”
Pinyon, a computer science specialist who was working as a network administrator at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral when his boss asked him to participate in a project built around a new technology called the Internet, already had been using single-line dial-up BBS software and jumped at the chance to get involved with an international network that connected people from all over the world.
Taking the knowledge he learned on the job, Pinyon started his own site on the side, a resource site for gays and lesbians living in Florida. When someone suggested offering adult content on the site, Pinyon initially balked at the idea. “I thought if anyone found out I was doing anything related to pornography that they would not want to do business with me,” Pinyon says. But, after thinking it over a little bit more, Pinyon relented and posted a set of 30 pictures, then watched as people began clamoring to get a look at them. “Within one hour there were 35 people trying to get to the pictures one at a time,” he recalls.
Demand was so high for the adult content that several servers crashed in those early days, and Pinyon realized he had something big on his hands. In fact, the site (soon renamed Badpuppy) grew to such large proportions that Pinyon realized he needed to hire a staff of employees to support him. Along with his partner, vice president Steven Wojcik, Pinyon turned Badpuppy into such a successful enterprise that both men were forced to choose between their day jobs and their supposed “side project.” They chose Badpuppy. “Steven and I both quit our jobs the same day, and we have never looked back,” Pinyon says.
Today, Pinyon boasts, the site has grown exponentially to include the use of 34 servers running a multitude of different applications to support the Badpuppy system and the more than 600 sites it hosts. Although originally tagged as a “twink” site, Badpuppy now hosts pics and content of men of a wide range of types. According to Pinyon’s administrative assistant (and advertising guru) Lisa “Bulldog” Turner, “We quickly expanded, realizing that expansion in the market would broaden our horizons and therefore our member base.”
Faithful “puppy lovers” already know that frequenting the site is a perfect way to give any dog a “bone.” For the uninitiated, however, Badpuppy offers a plethora of content from not only its own extensive library of content (the last time they did the math in 2003, Turner reports, Badpuppy offered more than 500,000 pages of content), but a membership to the site will grant users access to more than 100 additional sites (such as GayJerking.com, DreamStuds.com, and MattSterling.com) as well.
Purveyors of real-time sex will enjoy the live sex streams, while fans of more traditional stills will find a host of pics to keep them happy. “We offer a huge amount of diverse content,” Turner promises. “There’s something for everyone.” What’s more, the daily announcements of content updates are sure to keep randy Web surfers busy. Says Turner, “Let’s just say that there is so much content and updates that no one will ever be able to see it all.”
Allowing that today’s Web surfers are much choosier than they once were, Turner adds, “In order to retain today’s new members, one must give them countless reasons to come back time and time again. With Badpuppy, there is always something new at just about any given time. Not only does Badpuppy update itself around the clock, but the sites that are hosted as part of the network are updated often as well. Quality content is as important as quality traffic, and when that quality content can be delivered to the member in quantity, it will retain that member for months and years to come! Because Badpuppy provides itself a wide variety of content, there should be no reason for the Badpuppy member to go anywhere else.”
Though the site has gone through several design revamps and content obviously has grown since its inception, Pinyon has seen to keeping the tone fairly consistent over the years. “The overall premise for Badpuppy has remained the same,” he offers. “Provide the user with a quality experience, product, and customer service. [However], being that most of the staff at Badpuppy are very technically oriented, we strive to always make Badpuppy bigger, better, and faster than anything else on the market. I can safely say that there is not a day that has gone by in the last 10 years where we have not thought about ways to improve our site.”
In addition, Badpuppy’s customer service department is on call around the clock to assist webmasters with potential problems and questions. As Turner says, “We staff people [in] three shifts to assist with anything from simple access such as ‘I forgot my user ID’ to problems with the website itself. Our dedication to the customer, the webmasters, and our other business associates is truly unsurpassed in the industry.”
Turner acknowledges that the field is incredibly competitive, but says that she prefers not to think of other sites as competitors. “There are really only a couple of websites out there that I’m aware of that are truly mega sites,” she says. “And we work closely with them and are not just business associates, but think of them as friends as well.” As far as feeling the pressure to stay ahead of the pack, Turner says, “I would not call it pressure. We simply do what we do to the best of our ability and generally find ourselves in the forefront.”
All bragging excused, many webmasters admit to being influenced by Badpuppy’s formula for success. “Badpuppy was the first porn site I ever paid for when I went online,” says porn model/director-cum-webmaster Andy Dill, who founded and runs gay redhead fetish site RedHeadGuys.com. “I spent many hours with one hand on the mouse and one hand, well, somewhere else. I thought it had an amazing amount of content of some of the hottest guys in the world, and, as a webmaster today, I still do. The site converts great for me, and I’m even moving RedHeadGuys.com over there in the next week or so. Their team is amazing!”
Both Pinyon and Turner hint that bigger things are on the way for Badpuppy and its sister site, the more recently launched Video-on-Demand company Dog Gone Video. “Let’s just say that we are working with technology that will broaden the ability for our audience to view Badpuppy.com from anywhere they are in the world,” Pinyon says. “Our in-house mobile technology is new and state of the art. The day is coming very shortly where you can sit in the airport and watch Badpuppy, and if you see something you like, then when you get home [you can watch] the same movie in high definition on your home television.” Meanwhile, Turner is even more cryptic when she offers, “Without getting too terribly specific, we are going to be expanding in the technology area, which will benefit both Badpuppy and Dog Gone Video.”
Veiled though they are, those kinds of promises are what keep fans of the site coming back, and Pinyon, who now laughs when he recalls that there was a time when he thought such a venture was a bad idea, says he couldn’t be happier with Badpuppy’s success and longevity. “Every single day I remember where I came from and am thankful for everything that I have,” he enthuses. “It has taken a lot of work and patience, but if I had to do it over again, I would. Here’s to 10 more years!”
Ruff! Ruff! indeed. Let’s give these guys a loud round of our paws.
