Since 2006 a gay dating/hook-up website has been operating a little part of the internet. During it's peak thousands of members would flock to the website's forums and chatroom in a bid to make some friends or of course, find someone good enough to get into your pants.
This is a little look at the operations of the website, which has since fallen from it's peak at being worth £100k, to a measily $24,030.87 (although this is dated from 2011). In company cash they have 1,662 GBP according to their last company filing which is dated 20th December 2013. So, yeah, it's not going well.
So, who is behind fitlads?
Well, still to this day not many people are sure of how this "friendship" started, i mean, i've heard that oposite's attract, but the website's previous duo owners couldn't be more different. The site was owned until august 2012 by "David & Joe LTD". Now, while fitlads.net will still show the david&joe ltd logo's on their website, the site isn't owned by that company at all, infact on many website's we've checked, David &Joe LTD has stopped trading.
David i've spoken to a few times in the past, he always seemed to be technical minded, but not too geeky to stop him enjoying a good chat with people about a wide range of topics. I do actually like David and i've not found a person who could fault his charicter, despite one review of fitlads.net calling him ugly and saying about how he'd be found in one of Manchester's gay bar's sniffing coke of a weekend.
Joe on the other hand, well, where to begin.
Joe seems to have not masterd the art of anger management. He has been known in the history of the fitlads.net website to delete random members because they didn't agree with his sense of humor or stand up for him when he made it into the press over his comments about Jade Goody. But Joe seemed to set the ball rolling on what will eventually cost the fitlads.net business dearly. Getting rid of members that pay to use the website.
Ok so, in 2008, the website was taken over by another company called Scotial Limited, and remains so to this day... but who is Scotial limited?
You may well be suprised to know that yes, both Joe & David are still taking the money from the website (Although Joe claims to no longer have anything to do with the website) and another man....
Peter Mcdougall. We can only presume that this is the same peter who claims to be in charge of the website's admin. Peter is carrying on Joe's legacy of taking paying members off the website as and when he choses, while always giving a claim that it was the other persons fault. As we continue, you'll soon see the Peter and his admin pals are never put under question. They can do as they please and you can either pay for the pleasure of watching them do so, or you can have adverts on your account... in either case, they will still read through your private inbox messages, view your pictures where other users would have to ask you for your permission, oh no, not the fitlads admin. They are also free at anytime to download this content and pass it on freely to who they like.
So, who else helps to run the admin?
"Rob" - Little is known about rob, i don't know of any one person who has actually seen his face. I presume him to be a fake person, someone who the other's can hide behind when they're too afraid to make it look like fitlads is just run by some people who haven't much of a clue what they're doing.
Paul Lloyd - or "fuggers" as he is commonly known on the website is one of them people who has craved the admin powers for a long time and now he has them, he will abuse them as much as he can. See, Paul think's his actions are clever, where him and his right hand man will try to anger certain members, to the point that Paul will have an excuse to remove them either from the chatroom, or of course the website in itself. He is, in my experiance, a nasty, perverted, bitter old queen, who has some very serious mental issues that at one point will need to be delt with, but won't be, because i'm sure he's "happy" just the way he is.
Together, this team are set in their ways. Change never seems to happen on the website and when it does, it's often reversed back because some of the older members will not like it and complain to the admin team, and the admin team might have to actually do some work for once in their lives, so... no change happens.
So, what made fitlads work back in the day?
As i said before, Fitlads.net was for some time becoming one of the bigger gay website's, for a while, it was actually a competition to the likes of gaydar.net etc. It's downfall has been the way the site has been ran. Advertising of the website was stopped and some staff even lost their jobs because fitlads was draining more money than a tory government would. Fitlads itself used to actually have a head office to speak of, now if you look up the company address on google maps, you're taken to a house in a street, where presumably one of the owners lives.
It's popularity during the day saw fitlads have it's own nightclub nights, It's members were happy to use the website because people could post content that was entertaining, debateable and sometimes down-right offensive... but the attitude of the admin back then? "if you don't like it, don't use the website". These days, sneeze in the wrong direction and you will be suspended from the website.
Why avoid fitlads then?
The website team again are saying "change is coming, we've got a new look website being worked on", so you would presume it'd be ok to upgrade your account for the £5 a month it'd cost, or disscounted if it was for a longer-term membership, but be warned. The admin team on this website will delete your account over the slightest thing that they do not like. If you publically state on the website about the admin team being able to go through your personal content, such as messages, as i did, you will be deleted and then told "you were involving yourself in a situation that had nothing to do with you and causing a disruption", even though the only thing you said was that going through personal messages is an invasion of privacy.
Be warned also about investing your money in the website, with the state of finances at the company, it is literally about to drop out of the business world at a moments notice and take warning, these people will take your money with them and you'd never see it again.
So, to finish off?
Click here to see the latest on the Scotia Limited business affairs.
Click here to see a rather interesting and more personal, but old review of the fitlads website.
Thank you for reading.
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