Atlanta-based Carma Productions is hoping to help connect Nashville’s gay community with area businesses and vendors through a new office on West End and its Gayborhood smart phone app.

Carma has been serving the LGBTQ community for the last 22 years, focusing on print directories. The company’s Gay Community Yellow Pages published in 17 markets including, for a time, Nashville. Most of the books were sold to regional representatives in 1997, with the company maintaining its Atlanta and South Florida editions.

The Gayborhood app was launched in May 2010.

“We started looking at a way to give our advertisers a little extra benefit for their marketing dollar, and that is when we first started looking at the app,” says Thomas Ryan, chief financial officer and publisher of Carma Productions, Inc. “We realized the other nationwide apps are very limited in their focus. They really only focus on restaurants, bars, shopping, community resources, which are all fantastic. But our community does more than eat, drink and shop.”

So he and business partner Marci Alt came up with the concept of Gayborhood, an app for Droids and iPhones that serves as a resource guide connecting people in the LGBTQ community with resources that would not discriminate. Each business featured on Gayborhood makes a commitment to treat members of the LGBTQ community the same as they would any other customer, with respect.

“We are very focused on integrity,” Ryan says. “I would rather make sure that nobody has a bad experience using my application and web site than have an extra $500 in my pocket. The integrity of the application is more important.”

The app launched nationally a year ago and is currently in 41 markets. In the last few months, Gayborhood has opened five satellite offices, including the Nashville location on West End, which has two employees. One is an outside sales rep and the other is the social media manager for the entire company.

“And we’re scheduled to open at least 10 more satellite offices in 2011,” Ryan says.

For advertisers who find it difficult to find a mainstream, direct marketing piece to the LGBTQ community can be listed in Gayborhood with a yearly package that ranges $350-$850.

“All we ask of our advertisers is that if Thomas and Chris walk in, they are going to treat me the same as they would Bill and Susie,” Ryan says. “We are not asking for special treatment, just the same treatment they would give anyone else.”

And unlike similar apps, they have more than 1,500 business categories, with listings for lawyers and home services among the most popular for advertisers and users.

“Any kind of remodeling and construction does really well, and it is because you are inviting that potential vendor into your home,” Ryan says. “It is one thing if I go to a restaurant and get discriminated against. It is easy for me to simply walk out and never go back. But inviting a contractor into my home to give me a bid who will see pictures of my fiancé and myself on the wall, I am not going to be disrespected in my own home.”

Moving forward, Ryan expects massive growth for the Gayborhood app and website that currently gets nearly 60,000 hits a month.

“We just partnered with a nationwide liquor distributor, and we are going to start doing community events and parties in each market,” he says.

They also continue to upgrade the app based on reader reviews.

“In the last year we have launched five major updates to the app,” Ryan says. “Our tagline is ‘Your life. Your journey. Your Gayborhood.’ And we really want to live true to that and make the app specifically for the people who are using it.”