What are the largest online communities that are SPECIFIC to the San
Francisco Bay Area?
That is, the online community has as its main goal to serve the San
Francisco Bay Area.

With an online community I generally mean:
Web site where you submit your personal profile with your interests,
your picture etc., you can chat or message people, you can start and
join discussion groups.

Hello omnitemm,

Specifically for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area I found these
sites where you can submit your personal profile, photo, etc.

Udate
"Udate is a fun, friendly and active site. There are always thousands
of people online, making new friends. Have no doubt that udate works.
In no time at all you will have access to a whole world of
possibilities.

You can register free without any obligation. Our free trial lets you
search our database using our powerful matchmaking facilities enabling
you to see how easy it will be to identify and make new friends."
Udate - Personals, Dating, Singles, Love and Romance site for folks 25
or over.
http://www.udate.com/bayarea

and this: Romantic Planet
"Our mission is to give our customers a deeper sense of community and
belonging by helping them to realize meaningful relationships in their
personal lives while at the same time enabling them to contribute in a
meaningful way to the world around them.

We do this by offering a private, fun and effective way to meet
partners online, with unprecedented control of personal information
and advanced matching technologies. We also offer a unique
patent-pending method for facilitating double dating. In addition, we
work hand-in-hand with charitable organizations, sponsor fundraisers,
and donate profits to support humanitarian causes."
Romantic Planet Online Matchmaking and Dating
http://www.romanticplanet.com/RP/welcome/SignOn.cfm/78772512?linkID=182&rel=4

Google search terms used:
"San Francisco Bay Area online communities"
"personals San Francisco Bay Area"
"Bay Area residents"

I hope this information is helpful to you.  (If you would like me to
narrow the search to the gay/lesbian, or Asian community I can also do
that.)

tlspiegel-ga

Hi omnitemm,

One more site you might want to investigate is <a
href="http://www.craigslist.org">craigslist</a>. Craiglist has tens of
thousands of active members from the SF bay area. They let you start
and post messages to Bay Area specific forums. Although this site does
not let you post your picture, I thought I would mention it because
its readership is quite large.

Another site that meet your interest is <a
href="http://www.sfgirl.com">sfGirl</a> (they point out that its "not
just for girls").  This site also seems to have everything you are
looking for, expect the option to post a picture of yourself.

I must concur with the comment above.

http://www.Craigslist.org is the main and perhaps the only web site
most people in San Francisco go to. Craigslist has now spread its
wings to other cities, but it first started in San Francisco.
Personally, I've never even heard of udate.com and romanticplanet, and
I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for about 15 years.

I wouldn't discount http://www.Yahoo.com either, even if Yahoo is
international now, it was a native of the South Bay Area, and it does
allow you to narrow some of your browsing by region.

For romance, aside from Craigslist, there is also
http://www.match.com/
It's the largest online dating database but it has a very good by
region/by zip code searching capability.

Steph
Across the Bay from San Francisco