It was a long time ago. Trannyweb was what this online community was originally called. We had to change the name because the word ‘tranny’ became increasingly toxic and we had to change our rickety old software because the developers would no longer support it.
I vaguely remember we had asked the existing members to come up with a new name and Gender Society won. I think a lot of our members at the time wanted us to distance our community from the other cattle market sites out there so we needed to sound more respectable.
Trannyweb was a busy and vibrant community though (started in 1999) with lots of people online at any one time. The forums were the jewel in the crown as you can see from the huge number of threads and forum posts (which by the way, are still available today).
The transition to The Gender Society took place in 2011. Unfortunately, a lot of the long-time regulars who used to be permanently logged in, didn’t like the change and/or couldn’t find their way round the new site and they left us, just when we really needed them.
Some stalwarts did stay though and some are still here today.
However, I have to admit that I took my eye off the ball too and I was not around much for a few years after I took a pretty demanding job. I am in the process of leaving that job now so I hope to get back to normal here soon.
We also need to start doing all the marketing stuff we used to do in the old days, to get more new members in the door and make this place busy again, like it used to be. That’s my next project!
Hugs,
Katie x
Great to hear from you Nicole. Glad to hear that all is well with you. Please do visit us regularly and bring all your friends too.
I’m going to search through some old disk drives and see if I can find more of those screenshots from the old days.
Hugs,
Katie x
I miss the old days of carefree chat and helpful conversations.
Hope everyone is doing well!
Love,
Traci xoxo
Great to hear from some of our old members from way back. We still have the potential for carefree chat now. It never went away. We just need some carefree chatters to actually chat.
And yes, Frock Magazine was ours. I was the editor for almost ten years. In that time we published well over forty issues. Even if I say so myself, Frock was innovative and fresh and from the outset we tried to make each month's new issue completely free - no strings. It was paid for by advertising.
However, our niche was very small and we only had a very finite number of advertisers. They too tended to be small businesses which could not really afford long term magazine advertising and eventually they started to dry up.
Try as we might, we just could not attract any big advertisers and the little ones dropped off, one by one, even though we had a far greater circulation around the world than any other Trans or drag magazine.
In the end, I was running on fumes and had to take the painful but necessary decision to put Frock on hold while I went away and got a proper job to pay my household bills, which were stacking up.
Frock is still on hold today - not gone forever, just on hold until the day comes when I can devote time and effort to it once again.
To that end, we are looking at opening up the Frock Archive which was available once before and also closed around the same time as Frock went on pause.
We previously charged $29.99 per year for unlimited access to the archive which contained over forty back issues and a few 'specials'.
I wonder if anyone would be interested today? It would cost quite a lot to get it all back up and running again, in terms of both money and time. If there's an interest, the Archive could be reopened by next week but if not, perhaps we should just leave it as a nice memory from our past.
Let me know your thoughts girls.
Hugs,
Katie :)
Lovely to hear from you Rachel. We've missed you. Please do spend some more time here.
I'm really keen to get this community moving once again. There are some lovely people here now so there's no reason why we can't make it busy and vibrant like it was before.
Hugs,
Katie :)