Adam4Adam is an online dating website designed for men to meet other men "for friendship, romance, or a hot hookup".
Ranking
As of September 2005, San Jose Mercury News ranked Adam4Adam as the second most popular online gay personals site in the United States (being ranked behind Gay.com). As of March 2007, Hitwise ranked it number one (the number two and three position being occupied by Manhunt and Gay.com).
Characteristics
Adam4Adam was launched in 2003 by a company called "Convergent Ideas, LLC" and is now operated by "A4A Network Inc.". Adam4Adam's members are mostly in the United States.
Unlike similar competitors, Adam4Adam does not charge members to use its full range of services. Instead, Adam4Adam receives revenue from advertising, particularly from pay-per-view pornographic websites and companies offering erection enhancement drugs like sildenafil, vardenafil, tadalafil and their generic drug equivalents through mail order.
The site offers a "plan-a-trip feature" to locate potential friends or dates where one is headed. It also has a specific way of posting party invitations.
Although Adam4Adam has members of all ethnic groups, the percentage of non-White men represented in member profiles is higher than the percentage of non-White people in the United States population, though the degree to which this is true varies by city/region. For instance, research into demographic representation in Atlanta, San Francisco, and New York City profiles evidences a trend of higher representations of men of color among younger age cohorts, with decreasing diversity in profiles as age increase. This is also true of Adam4Adam membership in the United Kingdom.
Unlike Manhunt and some other sites, Adam4Adam does not prohibit escort ads, however such ads are placed in a category separated from the mainstream personal ads. As with most sites of this type, members are allowed to post nude photos and many choose to do so.
Adam4Adam provides a "Health Resource" page as well as a page devoted to "Online Safety Tips". The site encourages health organizations to create "Health Counselor" accounts. All these measures encourage good health practices such as safe sex, getting tested for sexually transmitted infections and avoiding methamphetamine addiction. The counselors also discourage the party and play phenomenon.
The site also maintains an interactive blog. Posts are organized into several categories, ranging from sex to lifestyle to news.
Crime
In October 2006, New York City-area media including The New York Times and WCBS-TV reported that Adam4Adam was the focus of a conspiracy to find gay men online to rob. A number of men in New York City used the site to lure a Brooklyn man to a remote area where he was robbed and murdered. The men were found when one user was identified via his screenname.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070928011847/http://washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=9751 Washington Blade October 26, 2007]</ref>
Many news sources reported similar occurrences in the Washington Metropolitan Area. In discussing the case of a perpetrator of multiple robberies in that region, a Washington, D.C. police officer from that police force's Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit said "We've definitely seen an increase in online dating crimes in the past five years" and added that victims of internet dating crimes are "overwhelmingly men cruising for sex."
The same police officer also noted that these criminals are often technologically savvy and create profiles using fake information and other people's photos from cyber cafés or public libraries, making them difficult to trace.
A high-profile April 2010 murder investigation in the Washington, D.C., area revealed that the victim, a high school principal, met his assailants through adam4adam.com.
In reporting on the murder of a 39-year-old San Diego man by a 19-year-old U.S. Marine, an editorial in the Gay and Lesbian Times said that the victim: was an avid user of adam4adam.com, a popular gay chat and hook-up Web site. Instincts told us that the victim may have met his killer online and invited him into his Little Italy apartment, where he ultimately met his fate.
Outing
Adam4Adam has also been used to "out" people who have otherwise kept their sexual orientation somewhat secret.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network warned United States military personnel in 2004 that online profiles on Adam4Adam and similar sites were a violation of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and that in some cases online profiles were being used as evidence in outing service members to military command.