Update 11/11/11: Sadly, this site did not survive. I’ll leave the review up for comparison to other similar efforts.
Update 10/10/10: I am been talking with the site owners and I really am optimistic about the site. They are working hard to improve the site and the membership numbers are multiplying rapidly. There is still no cost in site and the features of the site will make it very useful in time. Also, contrary to the comment, they do have a privacy policy which says that you are not required to give any personal information, but if you do, they will not communicate it to any third party.
Rating so far: B- (If there were more members, I would bump it up to a B+)
I have been exploring a brand new website recently called FetConnect.
The site is designed to look like and operate similarly to facebook. I was the 216th person to sign up and only the 2nd from Colorado.
I have done everything I can think of, but so far, I haven’t come across any “sorry, you have to give us money if you want to do that” pages, the way you do on most other “free” sites. That alone makes FetConnect one of the best new sites in years.
The site will not really be useful until many more people join, but so far, I am very optimistic. It seems like it will end up being somewhere between Fetlife and CollarMe as far as design is concerned. There is the groups and networking functions of Fetlife, with the people search and dating functions of CollarMe. And in many ways, it does both better.
For instance, the groups on FetConnect allow you to upload group photos and set criteria for who can join. And you can filter which parts of your profile can be seen by non-friends or certain types of friends, unlike either of the existing sites.
This is a promising new resource for our community. For now, I am supporting it. If any of you wanna add me there, I am dscross.
|X|C|BDSM| 
Cross, the site opened with no privacy policy. I’m looking at their privacy page right now (Oct8) and it’s blank. Every time I’ve built a site, the privacy levels were one of the earliest things I considered and worked on. FetConnect has set up a site that asks for exact birthdate, city/state of residence, email address etc, and yet they’ve given no privacy promises whatsoever. The domain has been registered anonymously, the site doesn’t have a Mission Statement, and the site’s hosted by a company that does general email marketing. FetConnect needs to address all these issues immediately to get itself out of fail mode. – – Just my 2c
Thank you for this review, its very fair and we do have a privacy policy. We ask for age because this is an adult site and we dont allow minors. Below is a statement that explains what we are. We are not trying to be like any of the two sites you’ve listed and think they are both great sites. We were caught off guard by the overwhelming response to the site. SEE BELOW,
What is FetConnect? we would like to start out by saying thank you for joining our network. We wanted to give a little explanation of exactly what type of website we are. There are many websites on the net regarding fetish and bdsm lifestyle. We are much different than any other site in the aspect that we are not here to dictate what we feel a lifestyle, fetish or bdsm community should be.
What we are is a medium in which like-minded individuals can network with each other, upload pictures, share video, make groups, events and what ever else you would like to share short of advertising and offensive or illegal content. We are a growing network of many different types of people and as support we are here to provide the tools to make it necessary for our members to have a good experience.
You can think of us as sort of a digital contacts and meeting place for your friends and new friends that are alternative. In providing the tools for you to have this experience we also understand that we may need to add or change things along the way. An example might be choices and fields listed in your profile settings. We have made them very general at this point to make things easy.
The choices we’ve made for your profile fields were made in a certain way for certain reasons. Some of those reasons being, too many fields when a member is initially signing up and also too much confusion on the member browse page. We are working on these things to make them a better experience for you and in no way do they reflect our experience or any type of dictation of what we feel a bdsm/fetish site should be.
So please just keep in mind that we are here to support you and as a member of FetConnect, you will dictate what type of site this is not what the owners want it to be. If you have any suggestions we ask that you send a message to support as we are always willing to hear and implement new things that we can.
Thank you and please enjoy FetConnect,
Kind regards,
Just for the record, many people register their site anonymous,especially adult webmasters, this being one of the main reasons. We have what is written above,no mission statement as we dont need one. Its a member’s site and is what the member makes it.
We have a privacy statement that states we do not sell information and our hosting company being a mail marketing company is a false statement.
If anyone feels their information is being compromised they can contact support for any questions. Anyone that is unsure by what statements are said here can message us also and we will be glad to clear them up.
We now have some pretty big people backing us and will be doing some very big things coming. So stay tuned.
Kinds Regards,
Fetconnect.