Personal Sites I've tried and what I think of them...

I've probably tried most of the sites around, though I've yet to pay for any (update: I broke down and bought $10 worth of credits for Lavalife). I use my name here, trancejeremy, on pretty much all of them.

I think most sites are pricing themselves out of the market. $25 a month seems to be the going rate, which results in not many people becoming members. I bet they'd do better at only $5 a month or something.

Yahoo - They used to be pretty good when they were free. There was a huge problem with fake ads, and fake replies to your ads, since it was free. But it was nice because lots of people used it, lots of real people. And since Yahoo lets people who register fill out a little profile thingie (which is probably how you got to this site), you could generally tell who was real or not, and learn a bit more about them.

Alas, they went pay in January or so of 2002, and has been pretty much worthless since. I'm not sure anyone is a member at $20 a month. That's as much as I pay my ISP. For $40 a month, I could get DSL, and download so much pornography I wouldn't need a girlfriend (joke! joke! really! joke!)

Anyway, they have slowly added more and more features to the personal ads. But there's just no one on them, as far as I can tell. Even their success stories just about all date from when they were free. They also haven't weeded out their fake ads. The only reply I've gotten since they went pay, was from a Russian bridal broker. A dumb one, apparently, since my ad clearly says I don't have much money. And many ads there simply seem fake. Why? Well, they're short, fairly generic and flirty, and often make no sense with the statistical info placed in the ad. For instance, why would someone in Hillsboro "Be a NY City native, love it, and be able to show you around". I mean, yeah, maybe they are in Hillsboro, and would perhaps take you on a trip there. But it sounds misleading. I've noticed several phony looking ads, and they tend to have a common denominator of looking for a guy withint 500 miles or 1000 miles.

In the past, many other personal ad companies would simply copy ads from women on their site, and put them up on yahoo, and tell you to go to their site. I'm guessing most of the ones on Yahoo are like that now, though many are just scam sites (they pretend to be a real woman's site, but ask for an adult ID pass, which costs money and they get a cut of it).

So, to sum up, I might put an ad here, but would never join. It also seems to crash IE 6.0, so I have to use it in Mozilla.

Update:

They now want $25 a month! This has pretty much killed off any real people from using it. Where once there were dozens of real people (or rather, women) using their ads, by my estimation, there are perhaps 5. So, there is very little reason for men to subscribe to it, you're almost certainly going to end up answering a fake ad.

They also want to introduce this thing called "A Table For Six". Basically, it's a deal where you arrange with 3 members of the opposite sex, and 2 members of the same sex, to have dinner together at a restaurant that Yahoo has a deal with. This would cost an additional fee, too, to set up (plus the restaurant bill).

On paper, that seems like an okay idea. But even when they were free, and thousands of actual people used the service, there were not 3 women who would want to have dinner with me. Even with 2 other men. I mean, if I couldn't really find one person, would I really find 3? And quite honestly, I would be intimidated being compared with 2 other guys. I'm not the most extroverted person in the world. I would find dinner with 5 other people I didn't know to be quite painful. Even if I could find people that wanted me along, it wouldn't be much fun. I dunno. Maybe it's something New Yorkers or those in LA would like. But I can't imagine it would work in most places.

Lavalife - Nice pay structure. You buy credits, aand then you use the credits to pay for services like contacting people. They also have a feature that lets you know that you are interested in them that is free (called a smilie). And they seem to have a lot of women, though none I find particularly interesting (and vice-versa).

However! It's a bit tacky, because they have a section just for sex. While I have nothing against it, it's somewhat disconcerting to find out a woman you might be interested in is looking for casual sex with a couple, or a horse, or whatever.

Of course, I am not, well, a slut. And so I'm not looking for one, either. YMMV.

Still, that probably seems to be the best I've seen. Lots of users, sensible and affordable pay structure. They really need to give you more room and they need to let you say in an ad just what you are looking for statistically, not just in prose. And thus be able to come up with matches - Find people that you are looking for that you and are actually looking for someone like you. As it is now, it gives you a list of people that meet your criteria, but for all you know, might be looking for a lesbian or hispanic midget.

Another thing, many of the ads for women are, well, odd. There's an opening line for your ad, and many of them for women, I'd say around 50% or so, make absolutely no sense. Actually, there's like a block, of about 6-7 women in a row who seem to have really bizzare ads/opening lines. And in the "Have in Common Section", instead of picking out 3 different items for each line, they only pick 1. Seeing that a few times wouldn't be weird, but it's odd seeing it so many times in a row. And given that many of them have pictures that are impossibly, or at least impropably beautiful, it makes me suspicious that they are scammers.

So far, I've gotten smilies from a 34 year old woman in North Carolina. And a 33 year old woman from Jefferson city who seemed nice enough, but I can't really date someone in Jefferson City. I'm not entirely sure where that is, only it's about 100 miles away..

And that's it. <sniff>.

I actually bought credits here. Haven't gotten much use out of them, I just sent that woman from Jeff City a thank you. There were a few others I wanted to contact, but one disappeared and the others never sent me a smilie back.

Lot of women, though. Probably around 200 women who are frequent users (in my area), which blows away most other sites. I'm probably undercounting them.

MatchDoctor - Completely free, apparently. They alsoo give you tons and tons of room to write about yourself and what you're looking for.

I don't like it because no one has ever looked at my profile there. (They have a feature that tells you how many time the page has been viewed - a counter). Well, maybe they have. I noticed my page has gone from 5 to 12 in the last two weeks. Though I noticed I accidently put my height at 6' 2". (Women like tall men...).

Hmmm. Since correcting my height, I haven't gotten any more looks. Guess women do like tall men. And now the counter seems to have disappeared.

But it does appear to be 100% free. And it seems like a fair number of women use it.

And pretty funny, I noticed that someone took advantage of their listing "Anartica" as a selection in your home country list, and uploaded a profile for a polar bear. So while it has a lot of members, many are fake. However, it's relatively easy to tell which are fake, since real people tend to fill out the essay questions and have more than one photo.

DreamMates - I don't like this site, because they sspam the hell out of me. Presumably via buying email lists.

It's annoying, they keep telling me to join when I'm a member. Maybe 2-3 times a month.

Anyway, it's a buy credits sort of thing.

I quit this place, so as a note to myself (I use this page to visit the sites), don't visit there in the future.

Romance Network - Don't remember anything about it. Supposedly free. Looks like a porno site, almost. Not that I know anything about porno sites, but it looks like my idea of a bad one. Also doesn't have that many members. Seems about 10-20 women a day, total, log onto the site. Ick.

Friend Finder - Ditto that I don't remember it. Though now that I look, I must have visited it fairly recently because it has my recent (August 2002) driver's license photo.

Has fairly detailed profile for you, including an optional 'personality' profile, which is pretty short. But you can't search unless you are a 'gold' member, nor can you look at photos (though you can see them in a little tiny preview when you browse), and you can only look at only 3 profiles per 24 hours.

Now, this sort of thing sucks for the average person, but is good either for the power dater (ie, a guy with lots of gold chains), or an attractive woman. But the latter would be best served elsewhere.

Why, well, because if you're in demand, you still have to pay money to figure out who you are talking with. And people like me are probably mostly attractive to the somewhat casual user. Someone who pays $20-30 a month to date online is not going to reply to someone like me.

Has lots of women who are silver members, though.

They also have an affiliation with a site that lets you rate people's pictures. I put mine up. I would guess I get a 3.5 or so out of 10. Maybe 4. But in a week, I haven't received any votes. Hrrrmph.

Actually, now that I look a couple months later, I do have a rating. My first guess is correct. 5 votes, score of 3.6! I then voted myself a 10, which gave me a 4.67. The realization that you're ugly is never much fun. But ultimately you realize that it doesn't make much difference. I actually like the way I look.

As of Jan 2003, I'm up to a 5.16.

It's weird. I have something like 7 1s, a couple 2s, a 3 and a 4, about 4 5s, an 8, and 3 10s. I know at least 2 of those 10s are my votes. But the eight is definitely not me, and I think I only voted for myself twice. Okay, while most people think I'm a 1 out of 10, 2 people might actually have thought I was attractive.

Metrodate - This might have been the one that gave you a free credit or two for a picture. Eh. Not that great, really, though it seems to be unique in being city based, as opposed to worldwide. Still, they don't seem to have many members. I get a whopping 12 matches total, though those might be just ones who have logged in recently. Nope! Some of my 'matches' haven't logged in 5 months or more. Sheesh.

Just looked in January 2003. No new members. Whee!

Brainappeal - Supposed for smart people. Lots of geeky women, some of them surprisingly attractive, though nothing I really found interesting. When I saw it though, it really sucked. No sorting at all, not even by region.

At first it seemed to be free. But ah-ha, it's not. In order to read messages sent to you, you have to pay $4.95 a month. And you have to pay by credit card. ( I actually got a message there. But I don't really have a credit card, so I can't pay. And I don't know if the message I got is legit. 999% of all the replies I've gotten elsewhere were scams of some sort)

AmericanSingles - Dunno much about it, though I have an ad there and a photo (all these places, actually). Ack - reading what I wrote there I must have been depressed when I singed up. Kinda like now.

Sucks because they ask your what your favorite music is, and has all sorts of crappy choices. Actually the profile questions seem like they were written by a European, or Asian, or someone not from America. I mean, for favorite sports it lists American Football as a choice. WTF? And under music, it has things like 'Classic Rock and Roll'. That sounds like 50s stuff.

Still, they're pretty comprehensive.

Interesting feature in that it tracks who has viewed your profile. However, the only person who has viewed my profile is a 50 year old man. Jesus. And you can't seem to search for people who match your criteria beyond a few general questions, and those questions omit some really important things - like whether or not someone has kids.<

A bit on the expensive side - $24.95 for a single month, $60 for 3 months, then $20 a month afterwards. So not one I'd join.

(Note to self - I quit this, so don't go there)

I just signed up for the one on the St. Louis PD's web site, which seems to be affiliated with person to person.

Interesting, except it had a dearth of women on it. A whopping 3 that fit my basic criteria that have used the system within the last month. And one is apparently a lesbian. (Her ad says "outgoing gal looking for outgoing gal").

Though a 46 year old woman from Santa Rose California just said she was interested in me. Oooh, that's appealing. (I shouldn't be sarcastic, she might actually be nice, but damn, that's pretty old, and it's pretty far away.).

This one you can either buy tokens, $25 for 10, I think, or subscribe monthly for $20. Not bad, but just no one on it.

They like to send you spam though the service itself. Ie, you get an email saying "We're pleased to tell you that you've gotten a message", then when you go in look, you see that it's them trying to get money out of you.

I got fed up with that, so cancelled even though I had a credit for some reason..

Also, the servers are very, very, very slow.

I know I've tried more, like person2person, and few others with cutsey names, but I can't find them in my email folder.

Turns out I've also been on Match.com for almost 2 years now. According to that, in the last year, 2 people have viewed my profile. And at least one was me. A week later, that's now jumped to 10. You also have to be a subscriber to send or reply to mail.

I'm not sure how much it costs. When I went to the signup area, I got some spiel about subscribing to magazines. Well, after going through that, it's pretty expensive: 1 month $25, 3 months $50, 6 months, $75, 1 year, $100.

I would never get a reply on a place like that. Again, that sort of price structure would appeal to those who date a lot.

Friend Search - This is a somewhat sleazy site that just spammed me.

Sleazy because it lets you search for people between 15 and whatever. (15! Jesus Christ...)

It also tries to imply it's free, although in fact it's only free to put an ad up, like every other place. Just like most other places, you have to pay money to join. Again, about $20 a month.

Doesn't have much in the way of people on it, nor much in the way of search facilities. You can only browse by state.

On the plus side, they actually have "Gnosticism" as a choice for a religion. And they let you include a link to a web site, which could let you dodge having to pay to contact a person.

On the sleazy side (again), they just emailed me saying

"First, the GOOD news.

A total of 16 members have shown great interest in your FriendSearch
profile. Congratulations on that -- You must have included some pretty
interesting information and possibly a cute photo to attract such attention!


Now, comes the BAD news. Uh-oh.

Every single one of these members -- YES, that means EACH and EVERY
one of those 16 members -- FAILED to contact you because you are
not a FriendSearch Platinum member. Oh, dear... what a pity that is."

While in reality, all that means is that 16 people viewed my page. Is just viewing my page showing 'great interest'? Uhm, no. Especially since they could just have visited my web page (it lets you include a link to one. Well, it used to, they've realized that is perhaps a bad thing and removed that, and found my email address there).

This place also has a thing that lets you vote on photos. Haven't gotten any votes, though it says my profile has been looked at 250 times.

This is probably the sleaziest name for a site. "MeSoSingle.com". They also apparently have created some fake women to spam people into joining their site. Very very slimey.

Kiss.com - "The Picture Personals". I'm not sure of the address of this place, I went there from an advertisement on Matchdoctor.

Despite the slogan, very few people have pictures. Seems like a decent amount of members, though only a few gold members.

Trial members can send 3 emails, but they have to join/pay to read the reply. Costs $25 for 1 more, $75 for 6 months. Have to pay by credit card. I'm not sure if trial members can read an email a trial member sends.

Has extremely detailed matching system, with lots of things to fill in (drop down boxes). However, there's little room to write about yourself (and you only get to do that if you pay them for a gold membership).

Seems pretty slick. On your main page, it has:

Members looking to meet someone like you
TRANCEJEREMY, you are very high in their match list.

I suppose in theory it lists several, but in my case, just one (whose only requirement is a single male. Heh)

Also has an "Encounters" page which sounds sleazy, but actually lists those whose profiles you've encountered, and those who have encountered yours. Whether they've browsed your profile, how you match on their page (ranking), you they match on your page (ranking)

But the price is pretty high, as is the credit card requirement.

Date.com - Apparently, I joined this in Dec of 20002. I don't remember it, to be honest, but when I just went to try it (saw an ad on Matchdoctor), it said I was a member. D'oh.

Heh, when I looked to see if anyone is interesting in me, it says "Add a photo and increase your response 10 times". Well, yeah, ten times zero is still zero.

Anyway, seems like an okay amount of members. Like most sites, you can only send emails if you're a member, but anyone can read them.

One month is $25, 3 months is $50

uDate.com - Apparently the owner of "Kiss.comm". (That's how I learned about it). Upon first loading it, it's quite apparent that they are phony, because one of the women on the ad banner is apparently a model, because she was used on ads for Yahoo not once, but twice. Sort of a goofy looking asian woman with a bandanna on her head.

Actually, it's an identical clone to Kiss.com, even down to the "Romance Coach".

Seems to have different members, though.

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