The
History of Fusion101 Christian Singles
How
& Why Fusion 101 Christian websites & Services started
Here’s a bit about Fusion101, how and why it was started.
It’s been no easy ride but we feel it’s been worth every
friendship and marriage, and we’d like you to know about our
journey. I’ve kept a diary so far.
1990-97
To give you some background I became a Christian around 1990 when
I was 20. You can read how I became one here.
At 19 I left home and got a job with an advertising agency as a
junior designer/ illustrator. Between 90 and 97 I lived in various
flats around south London and working for agencies and doing some
freelance work. I attended a large evangelical church in Leatherhead.
Music and art have always been what I’m good at and my passion.
At 28, I went back to live with my parents so I could fulfill a
long time ambition of recording a CD of my own music. Their house
was in the surrey countryside and offered seclusion and silence
needed for recording. During summer I rearranged his garage and
built a studio. - Thanks Dad!:)
I drew it on paper, got some builders and in a two months it was
done. It had a sound booth for vocals, main recording room for instruments
and a mixing room – all divided by glass. See some photos
here. I spent most days and evenings writing and recording and worked
part time as a designer / illustrator and later, full time for a
local design agency. The CD was finished in 8 months taking twice
as long as it should have as I had endless problems with the recording
hardware. I lost around 30 songs and dozens of ideas I’d recorded
onto hard disc due to data and backups getting constantly corrupted.
I remember trying to get each song mastered onto tape before I lost
it! Between time I must have spent months installing and reinstalling
software until I traced it to a faulty cable. I didn’t have
the time or money to re-record anything so I put all the in-tact
songs onto one disc – hence it’s rather long and contains
a few duds!! But I was happy with the result. Making that CD was
like having a baby!:) You can hear it here.
Church
For about 2 years, sometime around 97, I attended a small local
church in the surrey country side that had great teaching where
I made many friends. It was made up of families, people in their
30’s-40’s and beyond, and a small number of people in
their 20’s. The 20-somethings had a house group which I attended.
Interestingly but not surprisingly, the conversations often ended
up on singleness and It was around the end of 98 I first considered
how one could help Christians meet people outside their usual social
circle.
Meeting People - or non as the case was
I realised that in the seven years of being Christian, In both the
large charismatic church and the small local one I'd attended, I’d
never met anyone I felt drawn to in terms of a relationship. I’d
noticed my group of friends hardly ever changed, bar one or two
new faces. I’m sure I was unusual in having NEVER met anyone,
but I could tell from lsitening to my friends, they too could use
some help. We were all pretty resigned! I assumed it was just God’s
timing - which I still believe incidentally.
We all need to interact with people. Apart from church it gives
us a healthy drive and focus. But I'll confess at the risk of embarassment,
so long single was beginning to affect my self esteem and I’ve
no doubt my friends. There was nothing done to get people from different
churches mixing, as I guessed since most who ran it were married!?
Meanwhile my non-Christian friends were always out on the town,
in bars and clubs, surrounded by different groups of male and female
friends. I sometimes felt like I’d backed the wrong horse
becoming a Christian!
I didn’t mind being single, but it concerned me that in all
those years I’d only run into a handful of new faces at church.
Were we supposed to forget it?... that’s easy enough –
but then what about the God that doesn’t like inactivity and
laziness – In that case we may never meet anyone!... therfore
should we seek a partner? Confusing - after all, isn’t arranging
a dinner party doing just that – God’s not stupid! And
we all know the Bible says a rudder can only stear a ship that’s
moving! Did this apply to all areas of life except finding a partner?
I had no idea what the church felt as it was never discussed.
Perhaps we should move to the city or a bigger church. Both were
surely unecessary. I kept gtting this daft picture of someone sitting
in a box with the lid shut – with the words “what do
yo reckon his chances of meeting someone are?” underneath!
- the meaning I guess was that if you don't get out there - you're
not going to meet anyone.
Church Hopping
One Sunday I got in my car and headed to a large church. I felt
positively guilty about my intentions. “I must be the only
person doing this” (later I found out different). After the
third trip, I realised I was going to have to push my way into a
social group - if I could find one. I went to churches in Aldershot,
Guildford, Woking, and others, sometimes with a friend - usually
on my own. How many weeks should I do this? It might be months before
I get to know people and what made it worse, was knowing full well
that church wasn’t all about finding a partner. It’s
was a place to worship and help others. In leaving my church, not
only was I missing the great teaching and intimacy exclusive to
small churches and deserting my friends - but none of my hopping
about had made the slightest bit of difference. I was also still
looking at my my non-Christian friends – the secular lifestyle
seemed far easier. There were loads of people at work and non-Christians
I knew. I wasn't about to give up my faith but I could see why so
many did.
One evening my parents asked why I didn’t get a girlfriend.
“there must be lots of girls at church”. I replied,
“it’s really tough meeting people – if I knew
someone I’d ask her out straight away, my friends have the
same problem”. My father not a Christian said, “you’re
dogmatic, why would she have to be Christian?.. convert her…
are all non-Christians bad?” His last piece of advice was
the only sensible option left to a non-christian and what made me
decide I had to do something for Christians. He said (trying to
help), “If it’s that difficult, forget church, go to
some fashionable bars or clubs in London” - Great I thought!!
Enough was Enough
leaving church (which I felt like doing) would confirm to family
and non-Christian friends what they always suggested. “Church
was out of touch with modern life - a crutch for people who can’t
do normal life”. Once full of fire - I was now reserved in
telling people about church because I couldn’t convince myself
it looked after people in this basic need (of course it tries–
but I was struggling to see it). I could see though clearly why
the city churhes were growing leaving the small ones dwindling.
People were hungry for relationships! - I'm not talking girlfriends
and boyfriends - I'm talking interaction - that's enough with people
on your wavelength!
Things are not the same as they were 20-30-40 years ago. Communitiy
really has broken down. Young people really do leave to go to the
cities and those that can't are isolated. Since a demotivated Christian
is not a very useful one I always felt it should be the churches
first port of call - or second after good teaching - cos belive
me I know for a fact that many of us were struggling as my braver
friends confessed to me. So we sound like wimps but in reality the
world makes it difficult for Christians – so – why not
sort it out? Probably cos most churches don’t see it affecting
their attendance levels;) - wrong! To me it was clear why young
people abandoned church – I was 27 and felt pressured too,
and I knew it wouldn't solve the issue. All that was needed was
more mixing and more fellowship between different groups and churches
– easy peazy!
Time to Do Something
It’s interesting to note that in the next 2-3 years, nearly
all of us moved to the city- me included – for work reasons
of course. Riiiight!;) So finally I decided to do something about
it.
Fusion101
Fusion101 – Timeline / Diary - Vision - mid 98
The secular scene often gets the better deal - not just with socialising.
There's more money in secular markets which gives you the ability
to create bigger and better services. The church however always
seems on the back foot trying to please everybody and not surprisingly
sometimes failingI So, towards the end of mastering my CD late 98,
and not really knowing how to do it as I knew nothing about the
Internet, I began designing something I thought would encourage
single Christians – something to help them mix - the only
way I knew - with pencil and paper. Somewhere along the line I came
up with ‘Fusion101’. I wanted it to be more than just
singles service, I wanted social events that I would call 101cafe
and 101events etc. I also wanted the name to be easy to remember
– everybody knows 101.
Fusion Designed - sept 98
I drew out the front end and stuck it in photoshop. All the wrong
dimentions of course. No web safe colours or anything. Only just
figured that one out. I then worked out the functionality of all
the different pages. I remember having a discussion with a mate
– telling him what I was doing (most people seemed to think
it was a bit of a whim) He obviously told this company as a few
weeks later they approached me and offered to build database /host
site for 60% ownership of my designs and research into building
a singles website. A miracle? – seemed like it.
Fusion Teamed with TheWay.co.uk - Dec 2000
I remember stepping into TheWay’s (a new Christian Portal)
posh office and handing them a disc with my designs (due to time
/money constraints the site never really looked looked how it should
– it was basic). Before I could open my mouth they were coming
out of the printer. I asked if they could hold on – since
we hadn’t discussed anything, to which they obliged! We quickly
got onto the subject of the database – who would own it. “the
database isn’t important” they said – “er
but we want to own it”. “Right” I thought –
pigs fly? Anyway, for building the database and linking it to my
designs (by this time in html) there would be a 60/40 revenue split
in their favour, and they would own the databse and site. A few
days later I called them to ask if they would register the domains
for me which they said they would. They had done so the day after
we met - in their name. I wasn’t over the moon after spending
weeks researching and now not owning domains for my own brand but
it was too late. This was the first time I experienced manouvering
of this sort. I found it difficult to swallow – especially
from a Christian company, but luckily I found out this was normal
lol;)
- A side note - you may wonder why my design was black? 1st, in
99 there was a big stigma with singles and every site I looked at
was pink or covered in hearts and flowers - I wanted something more
stylish. I agonised for weeks over using black since Christians
might associate it with a secular outfit but in the end just went
for it as I knew my intentions were to help not hinder. The other
reason was I had no money to advertise. I reasoned that whilst people
were flicking through different sites and they came across ours
which was the only free one, the white ‘101’ on black
might stick in the memory should they wish to find it again -
Fusion Started - Jan 2000
TheWay.co.uk built the back end and the site wnet live. I wanted
to keep the site free and charge people a minimal fee once we had
a database and service worth paying for – and then grow the
service. They wanted to charge members almost straight away (£20
pm) to recoup programing investment. I had quite a few disagreements
saying their marketing wouldn't work - even for their own site.
After 3-4 months of disagreeing on what we could charge and how
to market (they were throwing money at paper advertising) TheWay
shortly after wound up (although the site is still online and now
a Charity). When I say it was no easy ride – you can see from
this excerpt from the notes I made for our last meeting –
the sort of problems I mean:
Things to question:
Site never designed as I originally designed it
1 Month to get finished?
Tried to convince me Database not valuable then decided they needed
to own it?
”No competition” – now springing up everywhere?
Users treated like numbers
“The ISP doesn’t know who owns domains??!!!” -
domains registered to them after me asking them to be registered
to me and them agreeing – twice told they’ll be transferred.
Word of mouth is unimportant?!! Expensive paper ads bombed after
we said don’t run them.
Payments sent out after we categorically told you not to charge
£20 producing exact results we predicted.
No money paid to me from subscribers
The way give us no feedback, doesn’t phone, kept in dark.
Meetings are few and far between
TheWay say its best site yet it doesn’t function half as well
as competition.
Photos scanned poorly
Search still doesn’t work. See ed’s original design
– it uses method used by search engines and other sites –
easier to implement.
Fusion101 Bought back + new partners - April 2000
In the end TheWay were doing their best to make Fusion financially
viable – but it was all too rushed, and they didn’t
listen to me and it started to faulter. They weren’t dealing
with emails or queries and I wanted to look after every member.
I quickly bought back site for 5K with 2 friends (who paid 1K eack)
Ownership was 60 / 20/ 20 in my favour. One was to do our accounts
– the other look after the server.
Fusion – late 2000
With the site back, I kept Fusion free and began using somewhat
hit and miss tactics started my own online marketing learning a
lot about search engines and actually getting v. good rankings for
fusion (making site appear high in search engines without paying).
I made sure every email was answered and sat long hour into the
night doing all the admin and designing other sites and features.
I built a several sites over the next year or so to add to and support
Fusion and send it traffic. This seemed like it. We were higher
than virtually all the other singles sites across the board for
ranking.
Fusion – 2001
Fusion works! - we'd had loads of marriages and friendships formed.
Running Fusion is however was beginning to take its toll on me as
I had a full time day job and working on fusion often till 2am for
the previous 3 years which meant I was often knackered during the
day. I managed to keep it all going but later on ended up in hospital!
Fusion101 – mid 2002
Fusion now had 250 joiners per week. The search functionality was
really basic but did the job. There were hardly any features and
no chat room (occassionaly I used to turn a freeware chatroom on
but have to remove it soon after due to abuse). Most of our joiners
were from UK and USA but also some Ca and Au joiners. My partners
were helpful in sorting photos and bits and pieces but a year into
the partnership after a friendly discussion, it was clear these
guys wouldn’t have enough time for Fusion due to work commitments.
I bought them both out paying back what they’d invested over
a year.
Fusion – end 2002
By now Fusion had become so busy (about 300 people joining a week
and 1000 logins per day) that the whole thing began to slow up.
I wasn’t sure what the problem was but searches could take
15-30 seconds or more to execute. Also hosting fees were going up
and up. The host company wanted 3K to keep fusion going - It turns
out they were overcharging 5-6 times over the amount I needed to
pay! Another problem was that the database had been written badly
and was slow full stop. The admin was becoming too much and I couldn’t
find a programmer available that knew Cold Fusion Fusion (the code
my site was written in) so I couldn’t add any back end features
to allow anyone to help me.
Fusion101 – mid 2003
By now, after my basic but determined optimisation attempts we were
up to 300 joiners per week but the site was falling apart. The server
unknown to me wasn’t going to cope much longer. It suddenly
became. As a result it kept going ‘over bandwidth allowance'.
My hosting company Stez Media were a great but middle men to the
actual host who tripled my costs without telling me. They wanted
3K for next years hosting and tried to put me on package that meant
I kept going over bandwidth! Me being green to Intenet and server
issues was about to pay up.
Fusion101 – end 2003
The site was still usable for small sectors of its database but
basicly unusable. Once people couldn’t search, they couldn’t
send email. With no email, people stopped login in and stoped joining.
I remember watching the number drop each day after all my hard work.
To make things worse I still couldn’t get hold of my programmer
who was becoming more and more illusive. “you see, Cold is
quite expensive” – “now you tell me!” I
was to learn a lot later that the database had been written so badly
it couldn’t cope with all the messy queries. A simple search
would in many cases lock up the site completely. After what I imagine
to be word of mouth getting round that the site was useless, joiners
were now down to 150 from 300 a week – leveled off around
there. I guess people were still finding the site and expecting
it to work. But with it being unusable, the usage (logins) continued
to drop as you’d expect.
Fusion 101 Oct 2003 - Shut site down
Something was not quite right with the fees I was being asked for.
My hosting middle men (who to date had been very helpful) were uncharacteristicly
cagey about why my costs were so high and the hosts themselves were
asking for 3 grand a year to continue. So I closed the site down
there and then. I put the required fees and some stats on the front
page of the site for members to see not really knowing what to do
next. Within minutes I was receiving emails from members offering
help, donations and making suggestions.
Fusion101 Fleeced!!!!!!!!!!
The most prized emails came from members who were IT techies –
who’d seen my hosting costs and bandwidth and felt had to
inform me I was being ripped off. I had three separate offers from
members to rebuild the site for free in php (a free coding language
that turns out to be far superior to Cold Fusion – every change
I made to the site cost an arm and a leg). I and dozens of suggestions
as to how the site could be made to run for a fraction of the price
on PHP and linux.
Donations!
In 2 weeks I received 2K in donations from members. Turns out Fusion
was built in the most expensive language there is and Im being shafted
by hosting co and totally dependant on the few people that can code
the language! I now know half the IT industry survives by taking
advantage of what people DON’T know - far and beyond what’s
reasonable! The donations and info handed to me by members was greatly
encouraging and made me realise that people were actually getting
a lot out of Fusion. It gave me the will to live at this point.
I was in fact preparing to get a 3K loan to carry on. Several people
offered to buy fusion from me. Christian Connection offered to 'see
if they could find ways to continue offering a service to our members"
- never been sure what that meant!!;)
Oct 2003 - New Team Member Joins Fusion
Tau, a member of Fusion – had been thinking about building
a singles site for ages suddenly appeared and notified me like the
other IT savy members the host company was ripping me off. He offered
to rewrite/ host the site for a better fee. After a bit of poking
(I was still realing from the fact that I’d been taken to
cleaners) I agreed and used the donations to pay for it.
Fusion was rewriten and re-hosted in 3 weeks - 2k for the rewrite
/ £300 for hosting as opposed to 3K py. Very thankful indeed.
After a database regig, the site could now handle traffic and quickly
revived. Once I’d got my self together (I felt like I’d
been beaten up) I started optimising again to get more hits. Tau
asked for half of Fusion in order to 'take it to the next level'.
I agreed – 50%!!! I had no option as I was frequently ill
by this point.
Dec 2003 - Fusion Chat added to 101
Tau adds chat room to Fusion. In 1 year Tau and moderators (members)
created a bustling chat room. Most chats are full of spammers and
abuse but Fusion’s is reported to be one of the best Christian
Chat rooms.
2005 - Fusion raplidly increases in membership and usage
Since the rewrite, the site is much much faster and can cope with
increased membership. As a result of this and more free marketing
the membership is rising exponentially and we now have around 950
new joiners per week. Due to Tau’s committment to improve
the service I have agreed that as soon as we can sort out the lagalities
Tau will become part owner of Fusion singles services.
Fusion – to date
So far it’s been 5 years of hard graft and 15K but thankfully
we’ve had lots of marriages and relationships and I do belive
we have given a lot of Christians a more positive outlook and hope.
Havn’t had time to list the marriages but will get round to
it. I have to be careful now though as so many hours infront of
a screen I am susceptible to health problems - I do wonder sometimes
if it’s been worth it but I keep a folder full of testimonials
next to me and read them when I’m in doubt. I might sue the
company!;)
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