History of Dirty David
I started creating the dirty-david family of swingers lifestyle websites in December 1998 as a way of getting back into the swinging scene after my divorce.
Through 1997 and 1998 I ran a exhibitionist site for my ex-wife (Fizziiii's adult playground) which had a small swingers ad section, after the divorce I dropped my old moniker (fizzysdave) and started using a nickname I had been given "dirty-david" (I am not however a dirty old man, it was just because I have a dirty mind!). Since I started running the sites I have had a lot of fun and met thousands of nice people.
Dirty-david was launched to the public on January 1st 1999 with some pictures of me with a couple I had had some fun with, and about a dozen ads. By the end of 1999 there were over 600 pictures in "My Darlings" and over 1000 swingers ads. What started out as a hobby was now almost a full time job.
I started the site as a free resource for swingers, most of it still is, and I intend to keep it that way. We charge for some premium services, but everything that you need to make and maintain contact with other people is free.
By June 2000 the site had grown to about 2000 ads and about 1000 pix for you to enjoy, all of them thumb-nailed so you can pick the ones you like the look of. By mid July 2000 I could no longer cope with spending 40+ hours a week editing adverts so I introduced a program which allowed users to post, edit and delete their own ads. this let to a surge in new ads being placed, and helped with clearing out dead ads, as they were deleted regularly unless the user requests their extension.
I finished 1999 with 5 sections on the site, and at the start of 2000 I launched 3 more.
By September 2000 there were more than 20 sections on the site.
By 2002 there were over 40 section on the site, almost 3000 pictures in David's darlings, and 1500 ads - all under 2 weeks old.
I also introduced several complimentary sites:
- SoftswingUK - for people only interested in Soft Swinging
- SwingingVirgins - for people new to the scene
- SwingingBritain - A membership site to cut out timewasters
- ScubaSwingers - For people who want to mix their 2 hobbies!
- CostaBlancaBDSM - For people into the BDSM & Fetish Scene in Spain
- BDSM Holiday Spain - Weekend breaks for people into BDSM 6 Fetish
- Swing Holiday Spain - Swingers breaks in Spain
I also produce a site to let people know how to report child abuse and child pornography.
- STOP-PED - Information on how to report and stop child pornography
I also ramped up production of sites for other people, and now my company produces between 2 and 5 sites for other people each month
- ddProductions deals with adult themed sites
- SpinneyWeb produces non adult sites
I moved the management and hosting of the site to America in early 2000 as I, like several other adult sites based in the UK came under threat from big names in the adult industry operating in the UK, and from the UK's notorious gutter press. Some of the images were also deemed a bit too strong by my police contacts to be safely managed from a UK base.
Between May 1st 1999 and August 26th 2002 we had just under 14,000,000 visitors, with daily traffic running at an average of 22,000 visitors a day, and a bandwidth usage of 3.5GB a day. there were between 100 and 150 ads posted every day, and over 1,000,000 ads read every day!
The site is still run as a hobby site by me, but in order to meet the ever changing requirements of the swinging community I have had to team up with another company (the Adult Hub) to produce an ad system that meets your needs.
The basic ads are still free to use, with free membership, free profiles and messaging. There are a few areas that have been made "premium" in order to cover the costs of ongoing development, hosting fees and bandwidth - (running at 2 TerraBytes 0r 2000 MegaBytes a month in Jan 2004) Sometimes people complain that the system run a bit slow, this is because we occasionally hit a bottleneck with all the traffic. the system handles an average of 20 searches a second, but this can shoot up to over 100 a second at busy times. If you are finding things a bit slow, wait a few minutes and try again.
- By Jan 1st 2004 10am, the Hub has just under 50,000 live profiles (37,000 created through dirty-david, the rest through various partner sites around the world).
- By December 1st 2004, the hub now has over 250,000 live profiles, (110,00 created through dirty-david, the rest through partners)
- By October 31st 2005, the hub now has over 550,000 live profiles.
- By October 2008, the hub now has over 1.8 million profiles.
- In December 2009 the hub launched a new version of the software, cleared out dead profiles we now have over 2.1 million active profiles.
- In Early 2011 a major upgrade took place on the system, the dead profiles were removed, a new design implemented. There are now over 2.5 million profiles.
In 2005 we launched sites in Spanish, French and German
In 2015 the site was redesigned to be fully responsive - that means it now displays perfectly on Computers, Laptops, Tablets and Mobile Phones.
In August 2006 Jo and David got married.
What next?
Since 2004 I have launched a whole range of niche sites for swingers in various cities, various countries and for gays, lesbians etc.
I have introduced information sites such as https://www.what-is-swinging.com/ and https://www.spanishsocials.com/ and now run very successful parties with between 60 and 80 guests each month, see www.casafiesta.party for details.
David