Charles Winters Information Management has been in development for much longer than the company has actually existed. Both GaySocialites.com and queerplanet.net have been around for several years despite the fact that Charles Winters Information Management didn’t exist until mid-2011. Here’s how the story goes.
In 2003, Charles Winters decided to make the move from work in television news to reporting for an online media outlet. That company was queerplanet! Winters took his first online reporting position for the Australian-based company and worked on its United States portal (queerplanet.us). His first position was working as an entertainment reporter and posted a bi-weekly piece on celebrity gossip and entertainment news. With less than a year under his belt at queerplanet, then-CEO Andrew Stopps promoted Winters to become the Regional Producer for United States In that position he supervised all aspects of the team working for queerplanet.us. Shortly after that initial promotion, queerplanet underwent a format change to become GenerationQ.net and Winters was once again promoted to Regional Director for North America. There he supervised bureau in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Trinidad-Tobago. In 2005, Winters announced he would be leaving GenerationQ to start his own website, GaySocialites.com. Shortly after his departure, GenerationQ changed its name back to queerplanet taking up the domain queerplanet.net.
Bringing his dream to light, Charles Winters founded GaySocialites.comin October 2005. The website went online as a New York nightlife news and gossip site which listed gay-theme nightlife parties and reported about the happenings in that scene in New York. By the end of 2005, GaySocialites.com started covering national events and before 2006 had ended, the site acquired GossipParty.com and merged the two sites. This expanded GaySocialites.com‘s coverage to include celebrity news and gossip. The next year, GaySocialites.com also acquired and merged with The Socialite Report, a website that could be called nothing more than its straight counterpart. Also in 2007, Winters started adding his first contributors recruiting fellow writers to help cover celebrity gossip, entertainment news and nightlife affairs. In 2010, GaySocialites officially declared the format of the website as an online magazine celebrating five years on the web.
In June 2011, Winters announced that he had acquired queerplanet.net as Andrew Stopps announced he was stepping down as CEO. The new queerplanet.net was to be “powered by GaySocialites.com” and at first nothing changed. In July of that same year, Winters announced the formation of a media group to be run he and partner, Joshua Sean. Later that month, the two of them launched a partnership with Donna Winters, Charles’ sister, called CouponAngel.us. That site offers coupon links for those caught up in the craze of saving money or needing to pinch pennies.
Winters stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of GaySocialites.com in October 2011 passing the torch to the first person, other than himself, to lead the site. Thomas Bistrtitz hit the ground running at GaySocialites.com (indirectly inheriting queerplanet.net). In November, queerplanet.net was reformatted as a site to cover “abnormal news and odd information” redefining queer as different rather than as gay. At the same time, Charles Winters Information Management launched their fourth site, FiDiNYC.info. That site is dedicated to providing news and information about New York City’s Financial District.
While Winters runs the company as President and Editorial Director, Joshua Sean is currently developing several other websites set to launch over the next year. Some of those include a gay business directory, a website of resources for website designers and developers as well as several sites focused on launching mobile applications for use on smart phones and portable tablets.