You never know, you might even meet your Prince Charming! *

Walk For Life, Terrence Higgins Trust’s annual 10K  sponsored walk is back for it’s 23^rd outing and this year there’s a very regal feel in the air with a right royal Kings and Queens theme.

Register to join us now at www.walkforlife.co.uk and help to support some of the most vulnerable people living with HIV.

Lookout for the hot Gaydar promo team who will be handing out lots of goodies to keep you entertained while you walk. They’re a strong bunch too, in case you happen to faint into one of their biceps…

The 10K walk is manageable for even the highest heels, and only requires enthusiasm, the breakfast of a King and a desire to do some good with little more than your fabulous feet!

We can’t wait to see you in all your royal glory on 20 May!

*If you don’t meet him there you can always check in to Gaydar!

The envelope please…

The Winner of the Dean Stockings competition is…

Closely followed by:

The following Gaydar members have won a one week Gaydar upgrade:

• thisiskit
• Joe-en-stgo
• A1978
• Robman1
• Felixng
• oursoncal1
• akuk29
• somewhatlost
• vvtonyvv
• lukpez
• vdg81
• akira82

And then Gaydar launched in 1999.
For once, there was an online network for gay men where everything was instant – with features such as “who’s online?” and “instant messaging”.

Since then there have been 6 million registered users, many hookups and many heart warming stories of those who found love in this space.

Take Dave and Llewellyn as an example.
Llewellyn was wanting to learn how to kite-surf and had clearly stated so on his Gaydar profile. Dave had recently taken up kite-surfing and was keen to meet another person to share his interest… for kite-surfing.

After sending a few messages back and forth they met up for breakfast and a kite-surfing lesson.
Llewellyn managed to drag his kite right over cactus bushes (ouch!) on the beach in Durban and instead of a trip to the hospital, they went home together.

That first date was nearly 8 years ago. Since then they’ve purchased their own aeroplane, Dave has his license and Llewellyn is in training to get his too.

They’ve recently completed a 10 day tour of South Africa and have plenty of stories and happy snaps on their blog.

Still active on Gaydar they give the following advice for those looking to find love on Gaydar:

Don’t under-sell yourself. There are million of guys out there looking for someone like you and an enormous number have Gaydar profiles.

Thanks for sharing your story Dave and Llewellyn, good luck with the flying.

Stay out of cactuses won’t you Llewellyn?

If you found love on Gaydar, share your story with us here.

It’s time for a new showcase by another photographer, who has done shoots with Boy George, Toyah Willcox and most recently a promo video for Samantha Fox. Introducing Dean Stockings – photographer to the stars!

We want to know what you think. Here’s how it works:

• Vote for your favourite using the number listed below the picture.
  The voting form is at the bottom of the page.
• If you’re one of the lucky guys who votes for the winning image, you win yourself (apart from a good perv) a FREE one week Gaydar upgrade!

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Voting has now closed. 

To apply to be a featured artist, submit a work sample or link to your online portfolio to exposure@gaydar.co.uk.

On Friday the 13th (of all days) Gaydar’s primary server suffered a hardware failure. As a result the site automatically shut down to allow our engineers time to restore Gaydar from a recent back up, but due to the size of Gaydar this took a number of hours to complete.

Service was restored late Friday afternoon and continued through to Saturday morning when essential and necessary maintenance took place until lunchtime. Sadly Gaydar suffered a similar issue on Tuesday evening until the early hours of Wednesday morning. In total Gaydar was unavailable for approximately 15 hours.

Our engineers are still onsite replacing hardware and restoring Gaydar to its full capacity and as Gaydar is running from an earlier back up you may notice messages that you previously read now being marked unread, or recently added Friends and Favourites not appearing. If you recently uploaded photos these may take a couple of days to be reviewed and approved – if you notice photos missing from your profile please upload them again.

During the outage we regularly updated the official GaydarBlog.com and Gaydar’s Facebook and Twitter pages. You can always find out the latest news and information on these pages so I recommend adding them to your favourite sites.

At all times the integrity of Gaydar’s security has been paramount and yours and our six million member profiles are safe and secure.

As promised, we are in the process of upgrading accounts. As a gesture of goodwill and to thank our loyal customers for their patience during the recent outages all Members and Commercial Members will receive three extra days on their membership – additional days will automatically be added in the next 24 hours. As Guest membership is free, these accounts will not receive an upgrade.

Please accept our apologies and we promise we are working around the clock to resume the high level of service that you and we demand. Look out for further news in your Gaydar inbox later today.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Johnson

Product Manager – Gaydar

Download iStayHealth

Q. What inspired you to create the iStayHealthy app?

I was diagnosed HIV positive early 2009 and like most people when they’re diagnosed I went through a lot of tests (and stress) and had to digest and keep track of a lot of information. When the time came to start treatment I had to make sure I took my medication on time every time.

I thought it would be really useful to have an app that allows me to track and review my test results and remind me when to take my medication. I couldn’t find anything in the App Stores that fulfilled my needs so I built one!

Mobile technology has huge potential to empower patients and put them in charge over their own health. Particularly, for people living with HIV and other chronic illnesses who want a safe and secure record of their current state of health. iStayHealthy is that app.

Q. What has been packed into the app?

iStayHealthy is packed full of features and help those who are newly diagnosed keep up with what can be an overload of information. And for those on treatment plans the app will help monitor effectiveness and side effects. Here are the top four features:

• Store and review your essential blood results (CD4, Viral Load, CD4 %). Charts show the progression of CD4 and Viral Load over time. You can even rotate the phone to see a combined CD4 and Viral Load chart.
• Build your treatment plan, record side effects and log dates when you missed a dose. The start of your treatment and any dates you missed to take your meds will be shown in the charts, which can be cross referenced against your results.
• Set handy reminders to stick to your treatment plan – it’s very important to always take your medication on time every time. There can be consequences such as drug resistance meaning your treatment plan becomes less effective and could mean your Doctor needs to prescribe a new line of defence for you. Always speak to your Doctor if you find it difficult to stick to your plan.
• Store supplementary medication – very handy, as your Doctor might want to understand if any non/prescribed supplements you take interact with your HIV medication.

Q. Is iStayHealthy safe and secure?

Yes!  iStayHealthy does not share data with other apps or third parties. The data you tap into the app is yours and yours only. iStayHealthy is password protected and the app icon is very discreet. For extra peace of mind make sure to set a device pin or password – you can usually set this in the phones or device settings.

Q. Why did you partner with Gaydar.co.uk?

Gaydar sets the standard for dating sites around the world and truly supports the gay community through their initiatives and vast community profile network. Through our partnership I hope the iStayHealthy app not only supports those living with HIV and help them get on with their lives but raises awareness of HIV.

Q. Do you think the Coalition Government is doing enough to raise awareness of HIV?

The UK has one of the best HIV services in the world and it is encouraging to see the government extend free HIV treatment to non-UK citizens living here. Treating those with HIV helps prevent further transmission and while it means the NHS and the tax payer fund the treatment the benefits will hopefully outweigh the additional costs in ensuring treatment is offered early to prevent further complications and costs down the line.

HIV is more than a medical issue – it has strong social, economic, and legal aspects. The most vulnerable need the attention of the Government and I don’t see the Coalition Government tackling these issues or engaging in public awareness of HIV enough. There is still wide spread stigma and misunderstanding – I dedicated time to the Terrence Higgins Trust helpline and listened to stories of people loosing their jobs and becoming estranged from friends and family – I’m confident this could be avoided if HIV awareness was higher on the political agenda.  We are in a global epidemic – now is not the time to be complacent and rely on expensive drugs.

Q. What could they be doing better?

Community projects, charities and the initiatives from private individuals and businesses will continue to play an important role in supporting people living with HIV and raising awareness to empower everybody to be responsible and limit the risk of transmission.

But they cannot run on autopilot – a lot of these projects have been under immense pressure, particularly since the financial crisis in 2008. As a result of Government funding cuts and a decrease in charitable donations some charities have closed and front line services have been cut.

Dealing with HIV effectively involves medical services and communities working together. And I believe this is the area the Coalition Government should continue to invest in, not cut back.

My wish is that we will see the end to HIV. Maybe – and I sincerely hope so – this will happen during our lifetime. Recent reports suggest that experts are seriously talking about eradicating HIV. With a combination of preventive medicine, effective and improved HIV treatment and close collaboration between medical, public services and communities: Yes I think it is possible.

Q. What are your top tips for staying healthy?

We all lead very busy lives but it’s important to remember that a positive result is the beginning not the end. Particularly, if you continue to lead a healthy lifestyle. Eating sensibly and exercising is crucial to anybody’s health, not just those living with HIV.

Here are a few top tips to make the most of iStayHealthy:

• After every appointment where you find our your latest ‘counts’ enter them into iStayHealthy. Always make sure you have an appointment to go back to – so book your next one before you leave the clinic. And don’t be afraid to ask any questions about what the results mean – the more you know about your health and HIV the more empowered you will feel to make decisions with guidance from your Doctor. iStayHealthy gives you an overview over your entire result history and therefore helps you and your Doctor to understand how things are progressing.
• If you are on a treatment plan take some time out to create your treatment plan and set alerts with iStayHealthy. Most HIV medication must be taken daily at regular times – so always remember to take your meds with you if there is any chance you won’t be at home when iStayHealthy reminds you it’s that time of the day (or night).
• You back up your contacts, photos and other important data so back up your medical history! iStayHealthy has a feature to backup and restore data via Dropbox. Dropbox is a secure and safe to store data in the ‘cloud’, membership is free and you can sign up from the app. Dropbox is private and secured with a password of your choice.

Q. What’s next for iStayHealthy?

Having a full-time day job it’s sometimes difficult to squeeze new features into the app – but I’m determined to keep going and make iStayHealthy an even better and richer user experience! Coming up in 2012 you can expect a refreshed Android version that includes all the features you can find on the iPhone version.

The iPad will be my next project – it’s quite exciting to be able to reimagine the app for a much larger screen, the possibilities are endless.

I’m also working towards connecting iStayHealthy with clinical services. At the moment we all have to enter our results manually into the app. Wouldn’t it be great to get your results sent to you direct from your clinic into iStayHealthy secure environment? I’m currently in talks with a number of clinics in London and Gaydar members will be the first to know of any further developments – so stay connected!

Q. And finally…

I’m incredibly grateful to everybody who has downloaded and supported the app. The feedback is very supportive and many of the features you see in iStayHealthy today are a direct result of requests and ideas. I can’t always promise a feature will make it into iStayHealthy but I love hearing from anybody who has found iStayHealthy useful and would like to get in touch – you can do this through Gaydar messaging me at the iStayHealthy Community Profile.

This is an exciting and unique opportunity to contribute to Gaydar’s continued growth. This role will be responsible for creating, planning and delivering social media campaigns that will drive interest, engagement and conversation. The aim is to increase visibility, membership and traffic across all Gaydar brands – whilst bringing fun, personality and wit to our communications channels.

The candidate must be able to demonstrate extensive social media experience, actively participating in a wide variety of social media activities and being well-connected with the broader social media world.

The candidate must be able to think strategically, but be willing and able to roll up their sleeves to help implement the programs. You’ll work with individuals across the whole organization to empower us to embed social media appropriately, as well as carrying out hands on delivery personally.

Reporting Lines: The Social Media and eCRM Executive will report to the Digital Marketing Manager.

Key Responsibilities and Tasks

The Social Media and eCRM Executive will have responsibility of:

• Supporting social media strategy design and implementation

• Blogging and tweeting on behalf of Gaydar and associate brands (including GaydarRadio, GaydarGirls)

• Write, publish and maintain content on Facebook and Google+

• Watermark and publish images from events

• Publish video content to YouTube channel

• Conduct mini-surveys and interviews, and source human-interest case studies to generate new content

• Multi-lingual content management – coordination and loading of translations

• Drive competitions to boost engagement and virally increase audience size and buzz

• Influencer monitoring and engagement

• Work directly with marketing, product and radio departments on effective use of social tools to promote our products, content and services

• Maintain social media content calendar. Meet with various stakeholders to collect content for calendar.

• Respond to comments and replies quickly and tactfully, whilst staying on-brand

• Translate marketing and PR content into highly engaging, social-friendly content

• Online reputation monitoring and reporting

• Track effectiveness of individual posts and tweets

• Interpret insights and community conversations into actionable recommendations

• Email Marketing – build within templates monthly and weekly mailouts

• Monitor competitor social media activity

COMPETENCY REQUIREMENTS

a) Essential:

• Proven marketing experience with internet marketing

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, including copywriting/editorial ability

• An understanding of the LGBT community

• Proven ability to create and execute online social media campaigns

• A strong personal online reputation

• Good time and project management skills

• Highly organized and efficient, able to handle multiple projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines

• Pro-active collaboration skills

• Must be reliable, outgoing and professional

• Ability to work independently

• Ability to analyse how audiences interact with different social channels and support the development of new strategies

• Thorough understanding of the internet is required

• Knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel

• Working knowledge of Dreamweaver (or HTML), Photoshop or similar

• iOS knowledge and a passion for mobile technology

• Have experience with Hootsuite or equivalent

b) Desirable:

• Preferably a marketing, communications or new media qualification

• Easy access to Twickenham

Closing date: ongoing

To apply for this opportunity, please send an email to: employment@qsoft.co.uk

If you’re clutching an iPhone or you’ve put one on your Christmas wish list, download the latest version of the Gaydar App and start sharing your home made movies with your friends and favourites in Chat. Point and shoot something xxxtra special! DOWNLOAD NOW

Meet your friends and favourites at Profile Venues in the heart of Soho or find new ones with the Gaydar App and G-SPOT! On arrival sign in to the Gaydar app and if you’re a Guest you’ll enjoy a complimentary upgrade during your stay. Play nice! FIND OUT MORE 

 Gaydar Members get exclusive access to daily video clips and pics. Cute twinks to sleazy daddies – take your pick. PLUS they are yours to download and own, and play on your desktop or take them somewhere private on your iPhone and iPad. SLICK IT UP

Are you a student? Under the age of 24? If you answer yes to both questions, enrol at Gaydar University for unlimited access to Gaydar! No need to dip into your student loan or overdraft. Our way of making living away from home that little bit easier. ENROL TODAY