Under The Gaydar

GUARDIAN.CO.UK -- June 28 -- Ten years ago, Henry Badenhorst and his partner Gary Frish helped a friend find a date online. They put him on Excite, a search engine, which had a dating section. But it took two weeks for him to get a response. The idea for Gaydar was born. "Gaydar started as something we did on the side," says Badenhorst. "I placed some ads in Boyz, which drew in a few people, and slowly it grew. The 1st year we had several thousand, the 2nd year was 75k and then suddenly, in the third year, in 2001-02, there were ~220k." 5 million people around the world subscribe, spending on average more than an hour on the site with each visit, and pay £5/month subscription, with the rest of the company's revenue coming from advertising. By 2004 the website had a new sibling: GaydarRadio which now has 1.6m listeners. Badenhorst met fellow South African Gary Frisch in 1991. "I always make jokes that he was the one-night stand that never went away." On Feb 10th, 2007, Frisch did finally go away. He jumped off the 8th-floor balcony of his Battersea home. Badenhorst says he wants to cut down his hours, and admits that now, with Frisch gone, his passion isn't what it was. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

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