Dudesnude.com is one of the earliest cam sites still around. Its 20+ years sometimes show, but there are many reasons the site has kept (and keeps attracting!) a surprisingly sexy and diverse user base.

I have spent over 3,000 hours in its camchat over the last 15 years and always have a blast in there. It is like going to my local bar and running into friends and the occasional new hottie. That warm feeling is made possible by their verification system, which keeps the camchat safe and cozy. 

The site has managed to remain free (and ad-free!) all these years, running exclusively on an optional and quite affordable supporter system. 

I had to find out their story so I reached out to them and was put in contact with Robert, who has been working with them on the tech side of things for over 20 years. We talked about what makes Dudesnude different, their origins, what has made them last, and more excitingly, their upcoming complete site relaunch scheduled in the next couple months!

So, Robert, you’ve told me you’ve been working with Dudesnude for a long time.

Yeah, I checked. I created my profile in 2003! Phil put up an ad, I responded and got the job. Phil was the original site creator. The site had been running for about a year then, and we’ve just hit 22 years.

Wow, that’s crazy long! Do you know the story behind him starting the site?

If I remember rightly, he’d been working on a big job for years and he wanted to do something for himself. And he just had this idea and he built it himself, working all the hours, and built it completely on his own.

He coded the whole thing? Oh, my God.

Yeah. I think the forums were added after a couple of years. But again, he built all bespoke. The cams were added pretty quickly. There was [Adobe] Flash. But everything else using Flash technology he built.

And then, people just ran to it! It is quite impressive you’ve been around for this long.

Yeah, a lot of similar sites have come and gone. I don’t know whether you remember Gaydar. It was the huge, huge site, back in the late 90s. And, you know, it’s fallen by the wayside, just died. There’s been a few sites come and gone since we’ve been on. Some apps came on the market and just didn’t get traction. Whereas, you know, people like us.

Why do you think Dudesnude has endured all this time?

Well, we fill a niche, you know. The fact that you have to be at least this naked. (He frames his torso with his hands.) And the verification system, I think people really like. I think that’s one of our Unique Selling Points.

We were getting a bit worried recently with AI, that the verification system was just going to die, but we’ve found something that seems to be working.

I’m glad to hear that. I do think Dudesnude has fostered and maintained this more community vibe because the verification system that you’ve put in place makes people feel more safe.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do a lot more than most sites to keep scammers and things like that off the site. Yeah.

I think you’ve touched on a great idea. While the complete anonymity on some parts of the Internet may attract a lot of people, it can also mean some things can get out of control. This is a bit of a sweet spot.

[Also] one of the things that makes Dudesnude work for so many people is our communities based system. You can say who you are, who you’re into and anyone who doesn’t fit those criteria that you set in advance, you just don’t see them. So it gives the impression that everyone is your type. I think that that’s a big part of why we’re still around. 

That makes sense. It’s like pre-curation. 

And, have you seen changes over time? From when it started until now?

Well, we’re just about to undergo our biggest change. Huge. We’re finally completely rebuilding the site from the ground up because it’s never had a proper rebuild. 

The site has been around for 20 years. Some of the code had gotten so fragile, you would try and fix something, you know, there’d be a change in the technology, some upgrade in a browser, and something else would break. So we had to bite the bullet. 

It’s taken us about three years because we work on a tiny budget since we carry no advertising. We work purely on the freemium model. We give away so much more than any other similar site. And the people we do charge, we don’t charge very much money by comparison.

Right, people just become supporters if they want to.

Yeah. And it’s those people who pay for the entire site.

So, we started biting the bullet about three years ago and that’s finally coming to fruition now. We’re calling it Dudesnude 2.0. Everything has been written with modern code. A lot of stuff will just be a rebuild at first, but then we will start making improvements.

There’s already stuff that is queued up. So, all of those things that members have been asking for for years, we will finally be able to do. 

We did have to rebuild the camera [before that] because it was using Flash originally. Oh, my God. For a while when Flash ended, we were having to redirect people to this browser you could use. Puffin.

Hahaha, yeah. I remember the Puffin times!

We had to force people to use Puffin to be able to use the camera. At the time, HTML just wasn’t good enough. So we had no choice. We had to tell people to use Puffin for quite a long time until HTML caught up with what people needed after Flash died.

But the main site, it’s looking just like something out of The Ark, you know, because it is. We were there long before the likes of WhatsApp and Grindr. So we had to invent things. Everyone else has gone down the line of chat, whereas we emulated email. So the new system will be a chat based system.  

I like the email style messages. I mean, I’ll get used to it. But I do like them. 

Yeah, but we’re optimistic that a new member coming to the site once the upgrade has gone live will automatically get what’s going on, understand it, because it will look like what they’re used to from everywhere else.

That tracks. And have you seen any changes after the pandemic, after Zoom bating just skyrocketed.

Yeah. There were a lot of people redirecting people in the camera room to Zoom rooms. Because we don’t do that, but we will be doing that. We’ve got some improvements lined up for the camera. But all those resources have been concentrated on the new site for the last three years.

People had been doing that before the pandemic but there was a big uptick in that during the pandemic.

Can you talk about geography? Where is [the site] more heavily used? 

It is more heavily used in [North] America. But, you know, it was created by a guy in the UK, Phil was in London. [He] sold the site, must have been about six years ago. The current owner lives in Switzerland. 

I didn’t know it was a European site. And yet it still catered more to the US.

Yeah. Yeah. That was just where we got our foothold. We did have once upon a time we had a sister site called Guys for Men that got a real foothold in Asia. Especially the Philippines, for some reason, for whatever reason.

And that site eventually got sold to Romeo, they were Planet Romeo at the time, they didn’t have such a big presence in Asia, which they wanted to improve. They made Phil an offer that he couldn’t resist, basically. 

They didn’t keep the site going, they basically just imported the members, so I don’t know how good an investment on their part. I think they’re still quite big in the Philippines. So, they’ve maintained their foothold.

And Dudesnude mostly caught up in [North] America. 

I think probably about half of our members are in [North] America, maybe not even that much now. But, we are definitely a worldwide site. We’ve even got people in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, places you really wouldn’t expect. A lot of them have to use VPNs.

I also wanted to ask you about if you have stats on, if you attract more of a younger or older demographic?

At the moment, you know, the site is old, so we are leaning more towards an older demographic, but we’re really hoping to turn that around once Dudesnude 2.0 goes live and we look like a modern site. I mean, the look of the site is very simple, so it’s not sort of obviously dated.

Yeah, despite the age, it doesn’t look so dated. Some sites look like they came out of 1996.

Yeah, and yet it’s 20 years old and has looked pretty much the same for 20 years. It’s a real shock when you see sites like that now, like, wow, this is still around. 

It is quite surprising, right? Because sites are going under all the time. But sites like Dudesnude and BateWorld, because of the niche I guess, have kept afloat.

I wanted to talk about, because we are a Bator zine, about the way the Bator identity has grown a lot after the pandemic. A lot of us used to cam online and socialise through masturbation before, but we didn’t have this word, right?

As you say, different people use the site for different things. But when I think about Bator sites, especially BateWorld, I think a lot of the subculture kind of started there. 

Anyway, I went a bit off the rails but my question is, do you consider Dudesnude a Bator site?

It’s definitely a big part of what we do. I mean, let’s have a look at how many people there are in the room at the moment. Hang on. It’s 3.00 PM. It’s early morning in the US at the moment, where most of our members are. And there are currently one hundred and five people in the room.

That’s impressive. And there are one, two, three, four… about 20 people with their cams on, and it usually goes up.

Yeah, definitely. And the fact that it’s always open.  Because with Zoom rooms, someone has host them and then it ends and it’s done. But this is open all the time. People just go into the chat anytime. And still there’s usually a lot of activity in the room almost all day.

We are planning to have side rooms. But the trouble is, if you have too many, it just becomes diluted and then the main room doesn’t look as interesting. So you have to be careful, you know? But we are bearing that in mind. But at the moment, it’s a busy room, there’s always at least 10 people with their cams on, and it usually goes up.

It does get quite lively in there! 

Let me see… I think that’s all the questions I had for you!

OK, well, our next big story will be the release of the DN 2.0. I might be being a bit optimistic, but maybe we’ll launch it by the end of [September]. That will come with a number of revelations. 

Yeah, I’m really excited about it. I really love the site. I’ve met so many people through there, had such great times.

And it feels great to be a part of that, to be providing that service.

Yeah. Well, thank you for your service, very much, and thank you so much for your time. Keep fighting the good fight. I’m very excited to see a new site and everything that’s going to come after it.

Thank you so much. Nice to speak to you.