GLEE.com

» see glee.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

glee.com was for us lgbt users between february 2007 and somewhere around 2011. that demographic was not my crowd and the english-language identity-network web was not where i did my social networking anyway. the site surfaced for me only when i opened the community connect portfolio file for this run's research.

the launch was a february 2007 release out of community connect inc., the new york holding company that already ran blackplanet for african-american users since 1999 and asianavenue for asian-american users since 1997. migente had been added in 2000 for the latino diaspora. glee.com was the fourth and last property in the same architecture: a myspace-style social network keyed to a specific identity, ad supported, english only, north american audience by design. about 86 percent of registered users were in the united states.

the corporate sale came one year in. in april 2008 radio one (later renamed urban one in 2017) bought all of community connect for thirty-eight million dollars in cash. the strategic pitch from the urban-radio broadcaster was cross-promotion between its on-air audience and the online communities aimed at the same demographics. glee.com sat as the lgbt slot in that portfolio.

two trivia entries from the brief life are worth noting. in october 2007 the us military's recruitment ads ended up running on the site, an awkward placement during the "don't ask, don't tell" era that the recruiters had not intended. and during the 2008 democratic primary, barack obama's campaign created a profile on glee.com as part of its early lgbt outreach. neither anecdote changed the trajectory. the site shut down quietly somewhere in 2010 to 2011, with no recorded last-day post.

~ the chronicle ~

~ how it landed ~

the strategic logic was the community connect template. take the social-network format already proven on myspace and friendster, narrow the audience to a specific identity group the open web had been underserving, and sell ads against the resulting concentration. it had worked for blackplanet in 1999, and asianavenue had been demonstrating the same model since 1997. glee.com was the lgbt application of the same playbook, ten years into the experiment.

the product feature set was conventional for 2007. customizable profiles with photo albums and music players. friend lists and instant messaging sat alongside a video hosting tier and group forums. a job search board running through a monster.com partnership rounded the property out. nothing here was a category innovation. the whole bet was on community concentration, not on novel mechanics.

~ the decline ~

the timing was the problem. february 2007 was the same window facebook opened up beyond the college network and started absorbing every other social-network audience on the open web. the identity-network thesis that had worked in 1997 and 1999 stopped working in 2008. casual users went where their non-niche friends were. niche networks held an active core but could not grow.

the radio one acquisition closed in april 2008, only six months before that pattern became obvious. by 2009 and 2010 the new parent was visibly cutting investment in the community connect properties. glee.com received the smallest share of attention because it was the youngest property without an established user base to defend.

~ what got buried with it ~

glee.com is the cleanest example of the community connect thesis arriving one cycle too late. its sister sites lasted longer because they had built their audiences in the pre-facebook window, but glee.com was launched the year facebook started winning, which gave it no runway. an lgbt social network from 1999 might have built a durable base. one from 2007 ran straight into the wall every identity-keyed property hit at the end of the decade. by 2026 the glee.com domain is gone, redirected away with no memorial page, with the brand name now firmly attached to the fox musical instead.

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