Manjam was a social networking website that used

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

technology and

social discovery Social search is a behavior of retrieving and searching on a social searching engine that mainly searches user-generated content such as news, videos and images related search queries on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and ...

to connect mutually attracted gay and bisexual men. With a large proportion of Manjam users based in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, the website was translated into 28 different languages. In order to support users from these locations, Manjam had focused on translating the site into

right-to-left A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu. To date, Manjam is the first gay social

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

targeted exclusively for communities speaking these languages. The site was active from 2004 to 2016, when it shut down.

History

Manjam was founded in October 2004 and was headquartered in London, England. According to its founders, the primary aim of Manjam was to give people in countries where

same-sex relationships A same-sex relationship is a romantic or sexual relationship between people of the same sex. ''Same-sex marriage'' refers to the institutionalized recognition of such relationships in the form of a marriage; civil unions may exist in countries w ...

is criminalized the freedom to connect and express ideas openly without prejudice. According to the news website

Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

, Manjam offered listings for accommodation, business, and personal profiles. Free membership allowed users to access the listings, including IM, video, and audio messaging. In countries where many LGBT people experienced abuse, discrimination,

honor killings Honour (Commonwealth English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is a quality of a person that is of both social teaching and personal ethos, that manifests itself as a code of conduct, and has various elements such as valo ...

, and murder, a survey of gay Iraqis by Michael Luongo found that Manjam was one of the most frequently used websites to facilitate social interaction. In 2016, the website shut down and ended all operations.

Technology

Manjam was a cross-platform

, accessible via the mobile devices web browser. It did not require downloading onto the user's mobile device in order to be accessed. Built using open standards such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3, the Manjam web app was designed to work seamlessly across all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices. The web app drew on location-based technology that allowed users to set a specific location and search any other users within their local radius. Manjam used

responsive web design Responsive web design (RWD) or responsive design is an approach to web design that aims to make web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes from minimum to maximum display size to ensure usability and satisfactio ...

to adapt to different screen sizes automatically, thus enabled users to access data across all modern browsers such as

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

Apple Safari Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc., Apple. It is built into several of List of Apple operating systems, Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, and uses Apple's open-source software, open-source bro ...

Microsoft Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a retired series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were used in the Windows line of operating ...

, and was fully compatible with

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Google Android Android is an operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android has historically been developed b ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

and

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

Membership

Since launching in 2004, more than 2 million members had registered to use the service. 1 million of which were based in Europe. Membership access to Manjam was free, however the site also provided users with a premium subscription-based service called Manjam Gold. Upgrading to Gold granted users access to enhanced features and superpowers such as priority listing, unlimited chat, unlimited contacts, and unlimited views. As of the year 2017, the website is officially closed and is non-functional.

Visibility

According to web traffic data site

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other info ...

, Manjam achieved high online visibility in Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Qatar.

References

External links