Important Announcement

Hello all,

Some of you may have heard of rumours of a change of owners in Swinging Heaven. I can confirm this is true, and as of the 16th Nov 05 we officially took over swinging heaven, and today is the first day that we are in full swing in handling the running of the site.

We are currently talking with the Mods, and the chatroom ops, who were alerted last night and earlier today.

About Us
We are a small company based of around 14 people. Our primary business is the sale of ringtones, and mobile related content. Out of the 14, there are going to be 2 admins so to speak, and another 2 people overseeing us (ie our boss’s!).

My name is Elliot, I am a web developer, and will be taking over the running of the site from Mark. Helping me is Nick (Nick_W) on the forum, who is also a web developer. You may also see around the site Steve (St3v3 on the forum), and Martin (the gaffers!).

What this means to you and your friends
Well, for the first couple of weeks, nothing will change. We will be busy behind the scenes putting together new features for the site. We will be improving usability, and speed. When we are ready to activate these features and upgrades, a new member system will be introduced.

The new features:
One unified login and members area for the whole site.
Unlimited pictures
Site messaging
Video chat room
User profiles
Distance displays
An ultra boost in speed.
And many more…

And the main question:

Do I have to pay?
No, the site will remain free for all existing members, and new members. However we will be introducing a premium membership, which will have advanced features at a cost. Now this is the important bit:

All existing members will be automatically upgraded to premium membership for at least 1 year, and more than likely - forever.

We have no intention of breaking up this community, and want to reward the current members as much as we can and push the site forward.

So what are we going to lose?
Nothing. We will not be making any feature of the site that is free to use now, premium. This means that you will not lose a single thing, you will actually gain features, because many of the new things we have planned will be open to free members.



I know this is going to go down like a lead balloon, but please realise what im saying above, you aren’t going to lose anything you have already, and you probably will hardly notice a change for the two weeks, and after that, changes for the better.

I know there are going to be a million and one questions flying about, please feel free to post below. However, please try to limit your post to one per person for the first day, I will answer as quickly and as clearly as I can, but as you can imagine this is going to get a bit busy.

Thanks for reading,

Elliot.

I just carnt help it till i understand more but

No, they will all stay exactly as they are, just when you log in, you will be logged in on everything, so when you move between them you won't have to re-login, and you will have an account user menu which lets you modify your ads, profile etc etc easily and quickly.

I don't want you to take over. This is a free site with Guidelines... have they now changed too?

I don't want to pay for something that I have used for the last two years FREE and I think you are very naive about thinking we are a group of people who can be stonewalled into paying for things we have found previously free.

We are a community of individuals and will never be 'Owned'

Last edited by on 18th Nov 2005 - 1:38pm; edited 1 time in total

They are saying it will remain free and the pay part will be for extra features not currently on here, BUT for how long is my question. I cannot see a commercial company doing anything for "free".
To the new owners : If it ain't bust, don't fix it....
Turn this into another commercial dating/wanna shag site and it'll destroy the community built up here.

Last edited by on 18th Nov 2005 - 1:46pm; edited 1 time in total

Over-dosing on chocolate at the moment.

Hi Elliott

Thanks for the update.

From my perspective, this is a first class site and, based on your post, it will only get better. Most importantly, I'm glad that there is recognition of the 'community' that exists here and that you have addressed the sensitive subject of payment etc.

As a gay man, I used Gay.com frequently many years back - it was about the best that there was at the time. Over night, I seem to remember that they introduced a paying member system without any recognition of the impact that this might have on their existing users... the net effect was that there membership and usage plummeted over a matter of just months and Gaydar (a relatively new site at the time) saw a massive increase in usage and is now the number 1 gay chat site/forum in the UK and is fast becoming global. A valuable lesson for Gay.com I think and hence why i think that your approach in sensible and also something to bare in mind.

Sorry for mentioning other sites but I couldn't think of a way around it and they ain't direct competitors... Mods, feel free to XXX them if you think it appropriate.

Paul

Last edited by on 18th Nov 2005 - 1:50pm; edited 3 times in total

If that turns out to be true in words and spirit - no lead balloon here.

It's going to be interesting (to say the least) to see if the commercialism can live happily along side the community - without those two "c" words being reversed


I hope so.

I don't think I like the sound of all this

I've got a horrible feeling its going to change everything.

Swinging Heaven will never be the same again

Fee
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