What's new?

New Features

1. Profile Names and URLs - each profiles has a unique name and an associated URL, making it easier to remember and to distribute! Your profile name is the same as your "nickname" under the old NetBears, unless there's a conflict, in which case it is set to "RfB" plus your old ID number (you can change this to something more interesting). Your profile's URL is just your profile name all lower case with all the punctuation (except for hyphens and underlines) and spaces removed. So, if your profile name is "Really Cute Bear", that profile's URL is:

http://bearprofiles.com/reallycutebear

2. Support for Couples - bears with partners can cross-link to each other's profile. If you have pictures uploaded to the Bear Profiles site, they will appear on both pages. On the list pages, you can indicate that you are in a long-term relationship, and whether it is monogamous or not. We will continue to add to the features available for couples. For right now, we're only assuming 2-person relationships, although we plan to expand this to bear "families" in a future version. Another planned feature enhancement is that you'll be able to change the label from "husbear" to whatever you feel is appropriate.

3. Location Support - profiles are now tied to their closest metropolitan area which permits us to significantly enhance our ability to perform location-based searching, and quick identification of where everyone is located. We have listings for every country, and for the US, Canada, and Australia, listings at the state/provencial level.

4. Language Support - users can now identify what languages they speak in their profiles, adding to the international support of the Resources for Bears. Find pen-pals, or someone to meet while traveling!

We are also trying to expand the scope of our listings so that the entire service is available in several languages. At present we have support for English and Spanish, but we are actively seeking translators to extend that.

5. Internet-Based Services - you can now link in your webcam, and information about AIM, ICUII, and iCQ.

6. The Bear Web Within the Web - we've introduced two new similar features: "Who I Know" and "Who I Like". Using these you can create clusters of links within links between you and your friends, and you and the bears you like (think of it as sort of a list of bookmarked bears). As this grows, and things begin to intersect, it will become a fun way to peruse the site.

7. Cross-referencing and Searching - we've added hundreds of list pages: by profile name, by location, by language, and by bearcode. In the case of location and bearcode, the option exist to showing all bears or only those with pics in their profile. Our new bear search system can handle geographic searching plus keyword searching.

8. Relationship Status and Types Wanted - our listings now contain information about the relationship status of our bears and bear lovers and what they're looking for to make it easier to find the ones who are most compatible with your needs and desires.

Old Features

1. We're non-commercial, 100% free, and bear owned/operated - we have no bottom line: our only goal is to provide services to the bear community. While we are happy to accept donations to defray the cost of keeping the site up, this will never be a pay site.

2. It's all about you! - our profile pages have no banner ads, no cookies sending information to some faceless organization.

3. We respect privacy - although providing your first and last name and a valid e-mail address are the two requirements to be registered with Bear Profiles, this information is never given out to ANYONE or displayed on the site. You can select to have your first name appear on your profile, but that is not the the default.

Our e-mail system is set up to never disclose the e-mail address of the bears in our profiles. This makes sending e-mail slightly cumbersome, but it provides some protection from abuse, and thwarts spammers from harvesting the site for e-mail addresses.

4. Fewer Moldy Links - profiles expire after one year. To renew a profile for one year, simply edit it, and the expiration date moves forward a year. So, if you keep things up to date, your profile will never expire. At the same time, the profiles on the current site are guaranteed not to be years old with people who haven't accessed them for years.