Review of SilverSingles.com

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.

No Comments »admin on March 8th 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating, Other Dating Resources, Travel

Review of Date.com

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.

No Comments »admin on March 7th 2007 in Uncategorized

Review of EventMingle

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!

No Comments »admin on March 6th 2007 in Bachelorettes, Bars & Clubs, Dating, Hotels & Resorts

Review of American Singles

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.

No Comments »admin on March 5th 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating, Swingers

Review of Yahoo! Personals

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!

No Comments »admin on March 4th 2007 in Dating, Other Dating Resources

Review of eHarmony.com

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.

No Comments »admin on March 3rd 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating

Review of FriendFinder.com

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.

2 Comments »admin on March 2nd 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating

Review of JDate.com

After being convinced that all women in South Florida look at men as if they are walking wallets I gave up looking in person, scanned the women on JDate (for Jewish professionals) and joined.

The ability to review the women on JDate without even joining was instrumental in my signing up with them.I made sure to be 100% truthful answering their general profile questions and sent them a very recent picture. Within one week of getting on their site I had more than twenty women contact me. Of course I looked at their picture and profile to see if there was potential.

I ended up contacting six women, and dated only two of them. Only two because two years later I am engaged to the second woman I dated. After my second date with her I stopped answering e-mails.

Jdate and probably other internet dating sites does work as long as you’re 100% truthful and submit a recent picture.

Ken added:

This is truly a niche online site (don’t log in unless your Jewish or want to date Jewish people) that caters to Jewish singles worldwide.

No Comments »admin on March 1st 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating, Jewish Dating

Review of Coolintros.com

Coolintros.com is a new online dating site that features less questions and more pictures. You can literally have your complete profile up and online in less than 10 minutes, which is a 180 degree change from eHarmoney.com, Match.com and many other sites that drag you through long essay questions and 100+ questions.

Coolintros.com is a new site which is quickly gaining popularity across north America. Because the site is new, the folks are offering new members a full six month for a low $9.95. You can’t even go to the movies with a large popcorn and coke for that! Six months of unlimited email, chat, etc… for $9.95. The best online dating deal on the net!

Ok, so what makes this site even worth reviewing, since it is so new? Easy, they got my attention with the concept “Chemistry Counts”. This site believes in physical chemistry first and they make it easy to meet someone with their “Introduce Me” feature. In our dating forums, one of the biggest complaints focus around eHarmony.com system where you don’t actually see the picture of the person you’re matched up with until later in the matchmaking process. As one member put it, “I don’t think I’m shallow because I value the way someone looks, I just know there are certain guys I know I’m attracted to on a physical level”.

Coolintros.com does have a matching system, but it’s based on about 20 questions. These 20 questions cover most of the “Deal Breakers” when considering if you want to date someone. You know, do they smoke, have any kids, views on religion, etc… You still have the benefit of reading their essay answers, which I prefer anyway.

Now, just because Coolintros.com is about physical chemistry, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have total control of your photo. One cool feature on Coolintros.com is the fact you can restrict who gets to see your photo. You control it on your friends list. Pretty cool.

We really like their unique “Introduce Me” feature. Here is now it works, when you fill out your free online dating profile you’re given the option to be introduced to other people who live in your area and are in the same age bracket. If you say yes, Coolintros.com emails these new friends part of your profile as an electronic introduction. It works great, try it!

Coolintros.com has built-in email and built-in chat. You can also send pre-canned messages known as glances. This site is really designed well, is easy to navigate and is clean, not cluttered. You can’t go wrong, if you believe Chemistry Counts!

No Comments »admin on February 28th 2007 in Adult Dating, Dating

Review of True.com

True.com is truly is a lightweight eHarmony site with their patented TRUE Compatibility Testâ„¢, which provides members insight into their own personalities by assessing the 99 factors of personality that their relationship experts have determined to be the best predictors of compatibility. The TRUE Compatibility Index (TCI) is a scientific measure of how your own individual attitudinal, behavioral, and personality elements correlate to other members and what degree of long-term relationship satisfaction you can expect based on that correlation. That is, when you view your matches, the TCI will tell you how well the overall qualities of the other members match the correlation of compatibility between you and that person.

TRUE then goes a step further than ordinary online dating services by raising the bar for safety and security. The TRUE Security program uses screening technology, marriage certification, advanced blocking, and virtual dates to give you peace of mind as you search for your perfect partner. They have their own magazine PIVA (Print, Interactive, Video and Audio) called True.

The personality test is complete, it took me 30 minutes to fill out. However it was more like an interactive slide show. Once I completed that step, the balance of the profile only took 10 minutes for a total time investment of under 40 minutes.

It is the typical free to post a profile, pay to communicate. This is free with limitations as to types of communication that can transpire such as a wink, viewing profiles etc.

I didn’t have any luck communicating with any of the women on the site because they had not been cleared through “rapsheets”, a 3rd party background checker. Nice idea, but I should have the right to make a decision to chat with whoever I want, the rapsheet stuff should be an “informational” item only. After all the work on my profile, this site turned out to be a failure.

No Comments »admin on February 27th 2007 in Dating, Other Dating Resources