TheDate HornyMatches

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!