Trevvy

Trevvy, originally known as SgBoy, was an LGBT web portal based in Singapore. It was set up in a living room in Clementi on March 1999 by Dominic Yeo and his partner of the same age when they were both teenage National Servicemen. The site was originally Yeo's personal web page hosted on GeoCities and was known as Singapore Boy Homepage before it was renamed SgBoy. It was born out of the lack of Singapore-centric LGBT-related news sites. 

=Content=

Initially reporting just news, featuring an advice column called "Ask Dr Gene", a Singapore city guide, and daily Hotbods, the site grew to incorporate an active forum (sgboyX), classifieds (C.A.P, with a unique Missed Connections section), a blog (scoops), eventually user profiles and its very own sgboy chat on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) #sgboy channel. The online discussion forums, which dealt with a diverse array of topics and enjoyed a high degree of participation, were fully managed by volunteer moderators who oversaw discussions related to their personal interests like travel, entertainment news, hobbies and education.

SgBoy was one of the most popular LGBT portals in Singapore and managed to introduce a whole new perspective on Asian gay culture to the world at large. By the mid-2000s, it boasted some 30,000 personal profiles in Singapore and the region, and was visited by more than 108,000 Singaporean visitors in December 2005. Many LGBT people in Western countries were introduced to gay Asian and Singaporean culture by connecting to the portal even before they even visited the region.

The organisation's founder, Dominic Yeo, sporadically contributed articles to the site, writing under the name of Ted Young.

Trevvy.com had over 120,000 registered users. The organisation was grateful and humbled that the team behind it was an inclusive one from the LGBTQIA and straight communities alike.

=Events=

SgBoy also traditionally hosted a birthday bash every year to commemorate its founding. For its 7th anniversary, it held a "Prom King" contest and party on Saturday, 15 April 2006 at Why Not?, a gay club along Tras Street. The event included a "pageant" where one of ten contestants was crowned "Prom King."

The organising team remembers fondly its first road trip to Kuala Lumpur, the Love and Pride Film Festival, its numerous parties and art and community events.

=Rebranding=

In January 2006, director Salmon Lee announced that the site would be undergoing a makeover later that year. The portal rebranded itself as Trevvy.com in August 2006, shifting its focus to the more mature 25 to 40-year age group of the local gay market and expanding it user base regionally.

=Awards=

In February 2007, Trevvy.com was awarded the Hitwise Online Performance Award recognizing it as the most visited gay and lesbian website in Singapore.

In August 2007, Trevvy.com launched an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign called Evolve which was the first such campaign in Singapore to use digital animation.

Trevvy.com was awarded the Arts Supporter Award by Singapore's National Arts Council for its contributions towards the local arts scene.

=Closure=

Trevvy closed on 30 April 2021. It made the announcement on its Facebook page on Wednesday, 21 April 2021. The Trevvy team was thankful for the support of many community volunteers, corporate partners and friends who believed in its cause.

At the time of its closure, the organisers were of the opinion that the LGBT scene in Singapore had changed - meeting and finding one's own community was no longer a mammoth task. That said, they felt there was still a lot to be done. For one, Section 377A remained on the statute books like the Sword of Damocles. At times, it seemed that Singapore was taking three steps forwards and two steps back.

Moving forward, users could still stay connected on its Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/trevvydotcom

Enquiries could be sent to: teamtrevvy@gmail.com

For those who grew up with SgBoy and Trevvy, the team was humbled to be a part of their lives and thanked them once again for walking this journey together.

=See also=


 * Singapore LGBT organisations

=References=
 * Trevvy's website:.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.