TheDate HornyMatches

PerfectMatch.com uses a personality test very similar to the Myers Briggs Type tests you might have taken at work or college. Myers Briggs developed a set of tests to help them create seating charts of their big dinner parties. The results were dinner tables that had a great conversation and were well balanced.

I’m not totally sold on PerfectMatches’s system, but those of you who have read some of my other reviews know I don’t put a lot of stock in any of these matching systems. For me, it boils down to age, location, chemistry and communication. However, PerfectMatch.com system isn’t all that bad, it took me about 30 minutes to get through it all and complete my profile. I was a little concerned when I finished it took me to a subscription page $99 for 4 months, with no clear navigation to “skip it” for now. I finally clicked on the PerfectMatch logo and it took me to the home screen. $99 for 4 months is tough to caugh up before you look at their inventory.

I have to admit, I was very happy with the results I received. Perfectmatch has a very strong community of single women in the southern california area. I found the profiles to be completed, many had multiple pictures and the detail in their profile was better than most sites I’ve used.

The site has one of the strongest “ice breaker” systems I have ever used. With ice breakers you can send someone four (4) one line question with multiple choice answers. It really is a functional way to flirt!

MyCountryMatch.com is a niche online dating site. From the first time I looked at the home page, I realized, this is totally different from any site I had visited. What caught my attention first was “Nice people, fewer games”, then I read “This site is dedicated to down-to-earth singles with country values”. Clearly, the site was making a statement, that statement being “Players need not apply.”

After getting hit on by my share of married men on AmericanSingles.com, I was ready for a change. Would MyCountryMatch.com be any different? Lets find out.

I decided to click on their “Be our Guest” link and I was even more surprised to see I had to answer a few questions before I could even gain access to the site. “Why are they making it so hard to join” was my first thought. The first question, “Are You Married?” You’ve got to be joking, an online dating site that qualifies its members? I answered “No” then was asked to take a pledge to be truthful.

These qualifying questions remind me of “Gated Communities” which have become very popular here in southern California. MyCountryMatch.com actually sets a unique code of ethics for their dating site. It is clear, they’re catering to a different type of person.

As I filled out the standard profile questions, I was pleasantly surprised that they asked me to define the word “Gentleman”. I hadn’t been asked that question in years and I knew right away, men reading my profile are going to be in for some real insight if they happen accross my personal ad.

MyCountryMatch.com uses different software than I have experienced on any other site. They actually break the profiles essay questions into sections and each section is assigned a “Trust Level”. As you meet people online, you decide if you want to grant them additional trust: from none, to Basic, Mid-Level or High. The more trust, the more information they get to read.

What I found exceptionally cool is you can assign all of your photos to a Trust level, so men have to actually read a little before they get their feeding of visual stimulation. Yes baby, I want you to fall in love with my mind first, body second! MyCountryMatch.com allowed me to really crank up the volume on my essay answers, only the bravest men need reply. I really like this feature and wish more dating sites allowed you to decide who gets to view your picture.

MyCountryMatch.com gives you the chance to join for free, browse profiles and even flirt with members on the site by sending “canned” glances. If you find someone you want to actually exchange email or chat with - you need to join. As a girl, I actually prefer this versus some of the free systems I’ve tried, I tend to get a lot of crude messages from guys looking to score - since they didn’t have to take out their wallet. Free usually brings out the immature child I have found. MyCountryMatch.com was more serious - real people, looking for real connections.

As I read through Men’s profiles on MyCountryMatch.com I got to not only read about them and what they’re looking for - I also got to read each of their definitions on the word “Romance”. Yes, of all the questions to ask a guy - this one hits to the heart of the matter. I can tell you, I passed on some pretty nice looking photos because of some pretty lame written responses to that one.

MyCountryMatch.com has this really cool “Introduce Me” feature. Basically, as you’re viewing profiles if you find someone attractive you can select “YES” I’m interested. If the other person shows interest in you as well, you receive an email stating you matched. Very cool.

MyCountryMatch.com is well designed, easy to navigate. However, putting the technology aside for a minute, I want to talk about some of the guys I met.

MyCountryMatch.com has some of the nicest guys I have ever met online. I didn’t have any guys asking me if I put out on the first date. I didn’t have one guy tell me he was married or fail to volunteer where he worked or his home phone (which is always a tell tale sign they’re hiding something). Yes ladies, I ask and no, I won’t give them my home number or office information. I have to worry about security and the rules are different - any guy who doesn’t get that, doesn’t have a chance at a first date with me. I didn’t have any of the guys on MyCountryMatch.com even blink at my screening questions and most of them hadn’t even seen my photo yet. I hid it until we exchange 3 emails (using the built-in email system) or online chat. The men on MyCountryMatch.com are different and I think it is because of the screening process they use.

The site does have a country feel. They have a whole section dedicated to a “Country” theme. What type of country music you like, type of country dancing (I can two-step!), etc…

I did see a bit of a trend among some of the men I exchanged email messages with. All of them like NASCAR and all liked animals (dogs over cats).

Now - what I didn’t like about the site. First, they need to tell more people about the site. They simply didn’t have a lot of guys in my area. The site is new, but still I just wish more guys knew about it. Their chat system is a little on the slow side, it could have been my cable modem, but it seemed slow. Finally, a lot of their profiles are not filled out. I think they should require people to fill out more of their profile before they can join the site. I was turned off by the number of men who didn’t take the time to fill out their profiles.

Finally, I should disclose, I do know the owners of MyCountryMatch.com. I think if you try the site, you’ll agree with everything in this review. If you don’t, I know you’ll write and let me know.

Christian Cafe has become one of the more popular places for Christians to meet. Their detailed profile is pretty extensive with both multiple choice questions and 11 essay questions, which is more than most. It took be 45 minutes to complete my profile.

This is a great theme site and one I would recommend. However, there are several things I didn’t care for about the site, so let me get those out of the way:

1) You can’t search my zip code. Only state and regions. This is dumb. You should be able to search within 50 miles of where you live. It appears they have a lot of members outside of the United States which explains why they don’t do a zip code search. But in my opinion, they should have it for those of us in the United States and Canada.

2) You can’t search people with photos only. I only want to see profiles with pictures! I’m visual!

3) Search results aren’t saved. I have to click all those boxes each time. It’s a waste of time.

4) Their quickmatch feature is simply too limited to be useful in my honest opinion.

5) Site is slow.

6) When viewing search results, you should be able to return back to the search results page without needing to hit the back button a couple of times.

7) When viewing people online, by region, you should be able to select gender as well.

Ok, now that I got that out of my system, let’s talk about the things that really matter. I found the women on Christian Cafe to be great. More spiritual then religious if you know what I mean. I dated a couple of really great ladies who were a blast to spend time with. No, I didn’t find my match, but I’m just picky. I did fall head hard for a blonde in Australia!

They don’t offer online chat to trial users, but that doesn’t bother me a lot. I’m not a fan of online chat. When you purchase a membership you’ll gain access to the various chat rooms. You can send a wink, which is just that, a wink. Only one type of wink is offered.

They have a prayer message board which is a nice touch. It lets you know what is going on in some people’s lives. Also, they keep track of profiles you viewed and remind you which is a nice feature.

If you believe in a higher power and want to meet singles who are grounded and faith believers, then you should give Christian Cafe a try. Despite the technology shortcomings of the site, the people are real!

When I tried Christian Cafe they offered a full, no nonsense, 10 day free trial. I was able to use the site; send and read email messages and meet people without paying them a penny or giving them a credit card. It was a nice way to try the site and meet some nice people. If you do decide to purchase a membership after your trial period, expect to pay $50 for 3 months which I think is fair.

Christian Cafe is a site worth the time to try out. It’s free trial offer is a win-win for everyone.

SilverSingles.com markets itself as a dating site for single mature adults. Yes, they have one of the largest community of singles aged 55 and over, however we were pleasantly surprised to find this site has expanded it’s community to 40 to 85 years of age.

After a few minutes online, SilverSingles.com feels like your favorite warm blanket on a cold winter day. It is comfortable, cozy and feels right at home.

SilverSingles.com is free to join. You can post your personal ad, including a photo for free. You only need to become a subscriber when you decide you want to exchange email or chat with someone online. So you basically don’t have to shell out a dime until you find someone you would like to get to know better.

The site questionnaire is longer than most, five (5) screens of questions, each including an essay question covering all the normal questions, “About Me”, “What You’re Looking For” , “What I’ve Learned from Past Experiences”, etc.. The questions also do a nice job of identifying your interests, likes and dislikes. Questions range from religious beliefs, smoking and drinking, to favorite cuisines, music and activities both doing and watching. I found their questionnaire complete without going overboard like eHarmony.com. My only complaint is, the essay questions should allow people to write more than 200 characters. I think the “About Me” section should allow 800 or 1000 characters. Woman love to write and I like to read what they have to say about themselves. Still, SilverSingles.com does get the basics across and you can ask for more info when you contact with them via email.

So, free membership allows you to post a free personal ad, including a picture and then sit back and see what happens. You only need to pay to become a subscriber if you meet someone. Subscription fees cost $24.95 per month, which is about average when it comes to dating sites.

Now, the cool thing about SilverSingles.com is the fact you can send up to 30 “Teases” a day to other people for no charge. In fact, you don’t need to be a subscriber to send a “Tease”. A “Tease” is a canned one line message. SilverSingles.com does a very nice job of organizing these “Teases” into categories such as: Sincere, Romantic, Poems, Movie Lines, etc… It is a neat way to get someone’s attention. We suggest you join SilverSingles.com, browse people in your area, then send out “Teases”, up-to 30 a day!. Then sit back and see what happens. If you’ve created a good profile and have a decent photo, you should get some contact, and then you can decide if it is worth the $25.00 to join.

In the end, dating sites are about the community of singles who make up the site. SilverSingles.com is a winner when it comes to creating a site for singles 40 and over.

I think Date.com was one of the first internet dating sites - it started in 1997 on Valentines Day of all days. It has a lot of people, around 2 million or so - if you believe what you read on their sites.

The membership fee is $24.95 for a month or $50 bucks for 3 months, pretty much the norm. The site also offers a webzine called Date. Info has articles, member spotlights, romance, dating and relationship advise, horoscopes etc. The site offers no tour to experiences the features but the sign up is quick as well as creation of a profile in less than 10 minutes with rather simplistic search capabilities. The site offers no animated tour prior to sign-up other than some text in the about date.com section.

I don’t know if it was just me, but I posted the exact same profile I used on Match.com, same photo, same headline, etc…. I never got 1 email, on Match.com I got 6 emails. I guess the women on Date.com are just more picky!

Date.com does have a couple of cool features I find fun to use. They show you who’s birthday it is just in case you want to say “I have a BIG present waiting for you!” Just kidding!!! You can also see who’s new - another good way to check out the latest babes to join the site. I especially like the women from the Ukraine! My point is, Date.com seems to get a lot of International traffic. Finding a Russian bride would be no problem on this site.

Their “Who’s Online” screen sucks in the fact you have to click on a little camera to see their picture. Too much work for the visually focused male if you ask me.

It’s also cool to show people’s Horoscope (I’m a Virgo BTW), but I don’t get the Chinese Horoscope thing - which states I’m a RABBIT. I’ve been called a DOG before, but never a RABBIT. What does this have to do with anything? Can someone explain it to me?

They have a flirting tool called “Show Interest” which was pretty dissapointing because no one showed any interest in me. Oh well, maybe I should NOT have said I made $25k or less a year in my profile - I didn’t think money mattered ladies!

You can post up to 5 pictures but they make it hard for you to look at all of them. No Next/Prev button on the photo viewer.

They do support local events with their Date Events. From the pictures of the Caribbean Cruise last June, looks like I missed a good time. If you attended, write me and tell me how it was! The only thing about their event system is it does appear to link back to my profile. When I click on a couple of the links, it asked me to log into Date,com, which I was already logged in.

Date.com has a really cool COMMUNITIES area. They have message boards and articles on dating. I love the “Dates From Hell” section. I especailly enjoyed the Chinese take-out story - Barbie we need to add some Communities to our site, some of these stories cracked me up!

All-in-all, Date.com is a cool site. But guys, I think it will be necessary to work your mogo on this site if you expect anyone to notice.

Over this past weekend I had a chance to spend the afternoon with the developers of a new social networking site called EventMingle. I was blown away so I thought I would write a review to tell you about it. I think I’m the first to write about it!

This isn’t a dating site per say, so don’t expect to find your soul mate on this site, though I guess it could happen. This is a very cool new social networking site based on one commonality, “you’re going to the same event”.

These events can be large corporate events, like company meetings to trade shows and conferences. Here is how it works. EventMingle teams up with the company putting on the event. When you, as an attendee or exhibitor sign up to attend an event, you’re sent an invitation to join a specific site on EventMingle for your event. Remember, everyone from the event is opting-in, attendees, exhibitors, speakers, editors, analysts, job recruiters, investors and other participants. You get to meet people who are planning to travel to the event, before you actually arrive! This is pretty damn neat!

I was invited to log in as an attendee on their testing event, TechDemo 2006. As an attendee I was able to meet other attendees who planned to attend the event and lived near me. It was cool to meet other people from my city who had the same interests as I did. I could easily see how valuable of a networking tool this could be! I was able to see who was planning to attend the same technical sessions and could participate in a message forum regarding these technical sessions by exchanging messages with the speakers on the panel. With a click of a mouse, I could add people to my personal contact list and request to exchange business cards. EventMingle makes it possible for me to actually look for these new online friends when I actually show up for the real session. I think this is going to improve the dynamics of these sessions a great deal!

There are so many features on EventMingle I don’t know how to cover it all. For example, you can keep up-to-date on all the exhibitor news in one section where exhibitors post their press releases. Exhibitors also post special event times, like keynote addresses, booth demos and even VIP parties. If you want to make note of any of these items you simply click the mouse and the activity is added to your daily planner which you can later have emailed to you. Speaking about exhibitors, you know how exhibitors like to give stuff away to get us to come in their booth to watch a presentation? EventMingle allows exhibitors to post their giveaway items (called Treasures) so you can plan some of your booth attendance around items you want to take home. One can never have too many of those stress balls!

EventMingle keeps your true identity, like your full name, company, phone and email address a secret until you give someone access to it. So you don’t have to worry about being contacted by a telemarketer. And there is no spam because EventMingle has it’s own Email system, so all your messages regarding the event, people and exhibitors is all maintained on the system. It ever touches your external email address.

EventMingle also has a full JOB BOARD on the site. Companies can post their job openings and individuals can post resumes. The more I played around with the Job Board the more I really understood how logical it was to have a job board around an event. I think this is going to be a big hit!

I got to peek at the Exhibitor Tools available to exhibitors; they have the ability to create a full Exhibitor guide that includes their company description, product descriptions, booth activities, giveaway (treasures) items and job openings. Pretty extensive, but the neatest thing they can do (in my opinion) is also list their booth staff so you know who is going to be in the booth and you can make appointments with them!

EventMingle.com is truly a unique experience that I think is going to change the way people network at events. Though the developers created it for trade show and conferences I told them that I think they could easily adapt it to other events. For example, Cruise Ship operators could use EventMingle to allow people to meet prior to taking the cruise. How cool would that be! Sporting Events and Concerts could be another use for this technology.

If you attend trade show or conferences you should check out the demo on EventMingle. You should tell the trade show administrator about this new technology. It is truly cutting edge and in a couple years, EventMingle.com may very well be a name many of us trade show junkies know by heart. Just remember, I wrote about it first!

AmericanSingles.com has been on the scene since Internet dating began. The parent company Matchnet PLC, manages several sites around the world with the two biggest being AmericanSingles (North America) and jdate, a Jewish ethnic site with combined paid subscribers over 170,000.

AmericanSingles.com has members from 230 countries, in fact they own several Matchnet sites in UK, AU, DE as well as a gay site Glimpse and adolescent site called College luv. so if you live outside of the us, you can still use AmericanSingles.com - which seems a little strange to me, but hey, if it works for you!

It’s free to create your profile, post photos and search for members. You can create a profile, search and flirt all at no charge allowing the user to compile limited interest from potential matches.

If you want to email or chat with someone you have to pay, just like on the other sites, there is no free lunch here, not even for women. To get full access to all of the AmericanSingles.com communication tools, you can upgrade to an AmericanSingles Premium package. Creating a profile is easy with the questions centered on typical issues of age, location, interests and qualities desired in a match. The whole process takes initially about 12 minutes and can constantly be refined and updated. The profile can have up to 4 photos.

They also offer access to articles on dating and romance.

I knew I was in for a treat when I decided to give Yahoo! Personals a run, I did a search for guys in my age group, within 50 miles of my southern california zip code and it returned 1,000 guys! Can you believe it, 1,000 guys - oh, be still my heart, let the fun begin.

Yahoo personals is a pure dating site in the mode of Match.com however they leverage their position as one of the leading portals for the web. The real appeal of this site is the convenience of being a subscriber to the Yahoo portal as well as the ease of use and extremely well done Flash video Tour Take the Plunge to the site which combines both graphics and voice to alleviate any in trepidation one may have about the complexity and safety of On-line dating. I don’t understand why more sites don’t have tutorials like this - hey Ken, grab the camera!

The site boasts vast numbers of subscribers and allows one to create a profile, search and flirting, voice and video greetings all at no charge allowing the user to compile some interest from potential matches. Once they see or are seen then one needs to subscribe in order to IM or e-mail their potential matches.

The site offers cute greetings as pre-selected teasers and offers a Yahoo subscriber an alternate user name for the personals e-mail. Creating a profile is easy with the questions centered on age, location, interests and qualities desired in a match. The whole process takes initially about 15 minutes and can constantly be refined and updated. The profile can have up to 5 photos which can be displayed or hidden and only shown when comfortable.

As I was viewing profiles I came across this fit, blue eye, brown hair hunk of a man. I noticed a link called “View Similar Profiles” which is suppose to be like, if you like this guy, you’ll probably like these other guys too! My heart pounded as I pressed the button, I’m going to find my Brad Pitt, I just know it! WRONG! These guys were NOTHING like the hunk I found - why place features on a dating site that simply don’t work, I don’t get it?

Subscription prices are: 1-month, $19.95 to 12 months for $89.95, but I would say if you plan to pay for 12 months at one wack, you’re just a serial dater or under the age of 25. I can’t see being on any one dating site for a year!

eHarmony has been all over the television for a while now, we’ve all heard of it. I saw the ads on tv and decided maybe this cat really knows where its at. 29 proven dimensions of compatibility. This must be a good thing.

It’s the most comprehensive approach to the matching game I’ve seen. Initial contacts come from a pool of matches they provide you - you pick from a list of initial questions to ask to which they respond with answers and five questions of their own. Then 10 ‘Must-haves’ and 10 ‘Cant stands’ and so forth and so on until contact through their internal email is reached. The problem with this of course is the matching engine is so consistent you end up having the same questions and preferences exchanged with virtually every match. It becomes more of a process rather than an adventure. Which brings us to the downside.

It’s the most expensive of the sites I looked at. The interface is completely inane, and was obviously never tested with large amounts of information or limited bandwidth. Once you get some data in there to manipulate, it becomes cumbersome in every sense of the word.

You can never see more than 5 new matches at any one time. If you have 10 new matches, you only see the first five. Click on one and it moves into the ‘current’ list, and its place is taken by your number 6 match which you didn’t even know existed. So you must deal with your matches in the order they come to you. Once in your ‘current’ list, you can still only see five at a time and must scroll through page after page. And if you decided to delete the ones off the bottom for whatever reason, get ready for navigation hell. The list resets to the top with every operation so you will spend some time just clicking on the ‘next page’ button. If you’re on dialup, forget about it.

Now let’s suppose you or someone you’ve been in contact with decides to let their subscription lapse. There are no notifications sent out and if someone tries to contact you from their list, all they get is a black hole for a response. No ‘this member canceled their membership’ or anything, you are just left to assume you are being ignored. In other words, if you get 5 matches and all 5 cancel tomorrow, you’ll never know. You’ll just never get a response from your contact. I might add that of the list of reasons for closing contact with someone, none of the exhaustive list of items is “I am canceling my subscription”. You must always say they aren’t good enough for you in some way or another or you are just disinterested in the entire scenario.

The test you take upon signup looks a lot like an MMPI-type test. For the uninitiated, MMPI is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, pretty much the standard of inventories from a couple of decades back. It’s an annoying test to take - there are probably 25 unique questions but they’re phrased 5 different ways over the course of the test to weed out false responses. All fine and good, at least it’s not a free-form essay written by the user; but, it does take an hour to complete. An annoying after effect of this is that EVERY match will be the same type of person. Out of 50-something matches I received over a month’s period, all but one were divorced with children at home. Apparently my personality meshes well with divorcee mom’s. This is an assumption since not one of the matches I received had their actual test results public.

Bottom line, you can get too technical with this stuff and I think eHarmony.com did just that. Sometimes, you just can’t screen human response.

I had to shell out $35 bucks to get access of all of their features read the profiles of some of the women on this site. If you’re on a budget, you can purchased their lessor package for $19 something, but you won’t be able to access all the members on the site - seems pretty dumb to me. Once I got over being a bit pissed off about that, the site started to grow on me…

FriendFinder is more of a community site that claims to have over 20 million registered users and 15 different sites which range from adult, adolescent, ethnic, sexual escapades, religion and consumer interest. They offer more than a static directory of people looking to connect with others. The sense of community offers the ability to be amongst other people with similar mindsets and desires as opposed to a broader base site.

Without the limitations of geography, members can develop relationships and enjoy all types of encounters with members from around the world both in dating, pen pal and community.

Friend Finder enhances the member experience with daily horoscopes, photo ratings, free e-greeting cards, and the interactive FriendFinder Magazine written by and for our members. The Magazine includes member-submitted articles and poetry, as well as a question and answer advice forum. FriendFinder offers extended profile questions that delve further into personalities, likes and dislikes as well as lifestyles. They also added a personalized, interactive Workshop to help members hone their skills most relevant to the relationships they’re seeking. Although they have sites broken into distinct communities, the predominate traffic generation comes from the adult sites with adult friendfinder and passion. both of which target the more risqué side of the adult dating scene.

I do think it is a bit odd to see people paying $9.90 to have their profile highlighted. Reminded me of eBay, I felt like I should “bid” on some of these women!

In all fairness to the site, this isn’t just a dating site, it is a friends site - though I don’t think I want my single buddies reviewing these women before I do and I don’t think my married buddies’s wife would be too happy if I invited them to join my “friends” network. Way too much eye candy walking around.