PlanetOut
From 1997 to 2005, I worked at PlanetOut, a groundbreaking start-up that created an online home for the world's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer communities.
I was lucky enough to cut my teeth working on a radically inclusive product that was powered by an incredibly intelligent and extensible custom platform. As part of a small, bootstrapped team, I was able to learn very quickly about the fundamentals of scalable systems and digital frameworks, and how they can be integrated and used to build vital things for real people on a large scale. I was hooked.
PlanetOut was built on proprietary automation technologies integrated with off-the-shelf software, and we were able to run a much larger site with a much smaller staff than comparably sized sites. PlanetOut's tools had unconventional names. FABIO (Fully Automated Backend Integration Orchestrator) was the name of the entire platform. Rotisserie Gold, its engine for rotating banner ads and promotions in and out of ad spots, was named in refernce to KFC. The direct mail engine was called Majorhomo. Our servers were named after the Brady Bunch children (Jan was our dev server). Some of this technology was licensed to America Online, and all of it was used to power multiple sites well into 2010.
It wasn't just the frameworks that were forward-looking. It was an extraordinary opportunity to help lead the work on scaling our systems to meet the breadth of our vision for building a world-class media and community product.
This is a quote from a 1999 business plan, basically envisioning a queer Netflix:
Broadband & Post-PC Platforms: The market is moving towards a post-PC phase where new Internet devices will proliferate. A major opportunity exists to create the first international gay radio and television channels, delivered via broadband digital networks. As the radio spectrum goes digital, and as the lines between the Internet and digital television start to blur, PlanetOut will create inexpensive digital TV and radio. We will scale production values as revenues permit, much as CNN did in the early days of television news. In addition, PlanetOut will extend existing interactive channels for delivery over broadband networks.
We partnered with a visionary Canadian Public Television network to serve streaming gay television and movie programming that was viewable even over a modem connection. We evolved our systems, platforms and programming frameworks to support the exponential growth of our member base and daily active users (DAU). For my last few years at the company, I led the Media product as Editor in Chief and Senior Director of Platforms and Programming.
I still consider my education and tenure there, building and optimizing frameworks and content management systems, as equivalent to apprenticing with a master mechanic, disassembling and reassembling engines to maximize performance. I got to work with our CEO Megan Smith, who went on to lead business development at Google, and later, to serve as Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration. I got a laser focus on the fundamental principles, a clear view of which parts are interchangeable, which levers make the most impact, and how to recognize which emerging technologies can change the whole game.
PlanetOut went public the same day Google did, in 2005. The stock symbol was LGBT.
PlanetOut's proprietary tools were designed for integration, scale, and automation. They worked together seamlessly, and allowed us to operate with a fraction of the staff employed by comparable companies.
AutoPup automated the simultaneous publishing of our news and other content to multiple platforms and syndication partners. Rotisserie Gold automated the placement and rotation of content and promotions to both AOL and the web.
A view of how AutoPup enabled multiplatform publishing.
PlanetOut powered the overwhelming majority of queer content on the AOL service via multiplatform publishing.
MajorHomo, our email client, autonated list management and direct emailing in several formats.
E-commerce was built into our tech stack, and seamlessly connected to our member base and profile system.
In 2000, we merged with our biggest competitior, Gay.com. We were able to quickly deploy that site on our own platforms, greatly increasing the scale, reach, and efficiency of our network.
Cartoonist Alison Bechdel created a series of queer comic characters just for PlanetOut! We used them to help tell the story of the business when we were raising a third round of funding in 1999.
PlanetOut's original business model was based on the three pillars of content, community, and commerce. We made money through a combination of advertising, sponsorship, e-commerce and premium subscriptions.
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© 2023, Beth Callaghan