Total Members: 12 million (with over one million of them paying subscribers).
Prospects online at review time: Not available.
Cost
1 mo./$24.95 3 mos./$44.85 6 mos./$65.70.
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Match.com is a big fricking site, with numerous prospects of all ages, sizes, personalities, and body types. This site does not allow you to state the orientation of the people you are looking for, only the gender, although it does allow you to specify more than one gender, if desired. They have a fairly thorough questionnaire (insofar as that's helpful); the site is colorful without falling into the graphics pit, and uses tasteful graphics when needed.
Wired magazine says "[Match.com pitches] tes ... Full Review
Like others in the Lavalife network, this site is split into three sections: Friends, Relationships, and Intimate Encounters. There are separate profiles for each section, which can include photos and video clips. Photos and video clips can be public or by invitation only. One-on-one chatting is permitted via on-site chat window. Searches can be created and saved based on geographic location, physical qualities, and/or interests.
Each email sent costs 6 credits (replies are free). A 20-minute chat sessi ... Full Review
Total Members: 2 million in the Spring Street network.
Prospects online at review time: 956.
Cost
Credits: 25/$24.95 50/$39.95 100/$69.95.
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Nerve.com is a trendy sex-slanted webzine which offers photos, articles, fiction, essays and funky-sexy products like sex-position calendars, sex etiquette books and hip T-shirts. Their personals database stems out of the Spring Street Network, of which more below.
On Nerve, you pay for what you use. Other services bill monthly, but Nerve works on credits. It takes a credit to contact someone, but you can reply to a message received for free. Chatting also burns credits--fairly quickly, I might add--at ... Full Review
“A community with millions of beautiful singles,” Date.com was launched on Valentine’s Day, 1997. It is the largest privately-held site. They are adding new members at a rate of approximately 250,000 per month.
It's free to create a profile and receive mail, but only members can send mail or even respond to emails received. I noted that you can’t turn off the auto-renew feature. I was pleased that they had “Pagan and Earth-Based” religion in the questionnaire, but you can’t search for that in a partner, ... Full Review
This is (so far anyway) my personal favorite dating site. It's free, relatively easy to use, and has matched me up with the most intriguing people. I plan to use it to make friends as well as find romantic/sex partners. I'm not sure if it would work as well for someone who is, well, less of a weirdo than me. Both subjects I interviewed are my weirdo peers, so I'd be interested in hear from someone in a more conventional crowd.
The site uses only one, really long, test, consisting of multiple-choice quest ... Full Review
Eight-minute Dating isn't really about the site, it's about the parties, or "meets." One of many Speed Dating companies, 8-Minute Dating puts a bunch of men and a bunch of women* in a room and gives every man and every woman a chance to speak to each other--briefly. The theory is that you should be able to tell within the first few minutes whether or not someone is going to be right for you. Why commit yourself to an entire evening with someone when you know you're not into him or her from the get-go? Part ... Full Review
This site, one of the largest and most popular, is about comparable to other plans - free to browse, and you can email those who write to you - but you cannot respond to ads without purchasing a membership.
My interviewees called the interface "simple and idiot-resistant," but not without the occasional bug. Features include a link to Yahoo chat, and to record a voice message. It will also display profiles similar to a particular one that you like.
In terms of prospects, my female interviewees found t ... Full Review
Members receive a "guaranteed monthly renewal rate," which is lower depending on how many months are purchased at once. For instance, if you purchase one month at $24.95, you get no discount on your next month--it's still $24.95. But if you purchase three months at once ($59.95), every month after that period is only $19.99.
Signup is lightning-fast. All they need is a username, password, email address, birthdate, and you’re good to go. Then you can write a ... Full Review
Free three-day trial; 1 mo./$21.95 6 mos./$99.95 12 mos./$139.95. Payment by check or money order costs slightly more.
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Eroticy is a unique personals site that combines sex/swinger personals and escort services with hardcore pornography. This way, if you can’t find a playmate, at least you can play with yourself. According to our friend Sir Rodney, best known as “the Roger Ebert of porn,” the porn is just okay, but there is also a vibrant, open community here.
Users can use the personals AND the porn in a three-day free, no-credit-card trial. People can join as a female, a male, or a (presumably heterosexual) couple. If t ... Full Review
"The first man I shared three minutes with is now my fiancé. I am very thankful to HurryDate for providing the venue, giving us the opportunity to meet and fall in love. My life changed because I went to that party!" --S.V., 33, AZ
HurryDate is a speed dating company. They organize real-life parties in popular bars all over the country. Local singles can have up to 25 three-minute dates in the course of the evening. (They also have a standard personals site, where you can create a profile for free, and meet people there.) Of course they don’t expect you to make major life decisions concerning a person you’ve only interacted with for the length of the average commercial break. The idea is to see if there’s chemistry. This can be more e ... Full Review
Imatchup is your standard dating site. Some unique facets include the ability to rate people's appearance by their photos, and then to search only the top-rated photos, plus video chat. So this site is well-suited to those among us who are really appearance-oriented.
In filling out my profile, I noticed that there was no Pagan option in "religion," just “other.” I love that they have “celebrity” as an occupation option. You can list your most-used IM program and username in your profile, and include your ... Full Review
This is a pretty impressive site, considering that it's basically free. Basic members can do just about everything. With a featured listing you get no pop-up ads, you can view more photos, and your ad comes before the basic listings.
When you create a profile, you choose either M or F, seeking M or F or BOTH! Yay, bisexual awareness! You say whether you're in the U.S., Canada, or other country, include your zip code, and how you heard about them.
Then you give them your and your preferred mate's sexu ... Full Review
Love By Net is a pretty basic dating site, low on the bells and whistles. Free members can only see one photo, not an entire photo album. Free members cannot initiate or read emails. Premium members can send all the emails they want, receive messages from other members, use their Express Match feature, and see members’ photo galleries. The chatroom is available to basic members, but that means the people you meet in there are not going to be very serious about looking for a partner.
This is another one of those gigantic sites, the general version of a template that has been used for a Jewish FriendFinder, Amigos.com (a Latino FriendFinder), Asian FriendFinder, and so forth.
I interviewed C.M.D., a 27-year-old hetero man in TX, who has been a member for six weeks. He says, “I met a couple of the girls: one pretty, one ugly, one inexperienced and young, one very experienced and freaky. I’ve had some good conversations.” I asked him if he’d been using the site primarily to meet people ... Full Review
"I’ve made some really nice friends here who I wouldn’t trade for anything." --R.W., 37, NY
This is a rather unusual dating site. It’s owned by the same folks who run RoommateAccess.com and ApartmentAccess.com. The design is flashy and fun, with sound effects and Flash animations. There’s censorship here: the chatroom *BLEEPS* out what it defines as “profanity,” and profiles can’t contain what they declare obscene or profane. But the chatroom talk is about as raunchy as it gets. Even I was rather put off, and I pride myself on my urbanity.
When you fill out your profile, you can be a M or F see ... Full Review
Free trial $1 per match (usually 4 matches per week)
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This dating site takes a more "scientific" approach than most others. When you join, you fill out a questionnaire with many types of preferences, rating each one in terms of importance in a love relationship. For instance, you may prefer tall people, but it's not terribly important to you; you may absolutely require your partners to be animal lovers, and so forth. In the profile, there are only three lines total allotted for your personal "essay," which in my opinion is way too little. But the idea here is ... Full Review
E-Harmony is one of those "scientific" dating sites, promising results based on research. Signing up involves filling out a lengthy questionnaire. Once you've filled out the form, you get a personality profile. You're not allowed to go back and change the answers, since they don't want you to tweak the results. Interspersed within the personality questions are short-answer questions about your values and what you’re looking for in a mate. It can take up to 45 minutes to fill the whole thing out.
In some ways, this site is pretty standard. You fill out a profile; you search for interesting matches; you email back and forth.
But this site also has several chatrooms, enabled with video and audio. That means, if you have a webcam with a microphone (mine cost $70; there are more and less expensive ones), you can sit back and have a perfectly ordinary conversation with another person, no typing required. Just click on a user's name in the list, and you can see his or her cam.
Coupleme.com is a general dating site and a member of the Relationship Exchange. It has some nice features and seems pretty easy to use.
The profile is fairly standard. You can choose male or female for yourself, and state whether you’re seeking male or female. Late on, you have the opportunity to say whether you’re bisexual, so I guess here you just have to choose which gender you like more. Not very PC, but okay. You choose what age range you want, and put in your birthdate and zip code. A drop-down me ... Full Review
This is another one of those big fricking sites. But it works like a whole mess of smaller regional ones. When you join, you automatically get placed in the virtual "community" that's local to you. This is good, but they should give you a choice to search for others nationally based on interests; as it is, you have to search one locality at a time.
Except for that criticism, their search mechanisms are excellent – you can create a narrow to wide search and everything in between. Though, some of the crit ... Full Review
Dating Direct is the UK's largest dating service, established in 1999 (ages ago, in Internet terms). They say, “as a place for singles serious about finding a partner, DatingDirect.com does away with gimmicks such as free trials, nicknames and un-moderated chat rooms.” I don’t know; I think all those things are pretty cool. They continue, “All correspondence between members is carried out using DatingDirect.com's anonymous messaging system ensuring the member's personal details such as their real email addr ... Full Review
Free one mo/$24.95 3 mos./$59.85 6 mos./$99.95 12 mos./$149.95 (all renew at $24.95/mo.)
Quality of Prospects
Ease of Use
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One and Only is a general dating site.
Free services include detailed profile and photo, email contact on new joins that match your wants and even a database search based on location, age, and physical characteristics. You can receive emails from others who get "turned on" by your ad and/or photo. The catch is you must upgrade to a paid membership to respond or make email contact with other members you like. All email contact is through their anonymous system, but comes to your registered email address. ... Full Review
Total Members: 3 million currently active profiles in the Relationship Exchange network; 75,000+ new members weekly.
Prospects online at review time: Not available.
Cost
3 mos./$59.95.
Quality of Prospects
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Cupid Junction shares a database of personal ads with other sites in the Relationship Exchange network, such as DreamMates.com (so don't join both sites!).
Like other sites in the network, Cupid Junction has three sections: Dating, Relationships, and Intimate, relating to the three types of hookups people are looking for. You can have your profile displayed in any or all of the sections.
Features include instant messaging, a log to help you keep track of contacts, and site-based email. I note again, ... Full Review
I found One-2-One Match very bare-bones and not too exciting. I find it hard to believe that they have 4.5 million members. You'd think they'd have a more impressive site.
There's a small advice column, tips for creating good profiles, an IM feature, and the option to create list of favorite profiles. It's free to create a profile with photo, but only members can email or IM others. They allow you to snail-mail them a photo if you don't have one digitized (as do many other sites, by the way; I just don't ... Full Review
2Rate me is both a personals site and a rating site. Members can rate both men and women on the basis of how attractive they are. Of course, if you're feeling brave, you can sign up to be rated yourself. (You can't rate people unless you join, but you don't have to post a photo, and the photo can be of just your most attractive body part.) The site has hotlists of the hottest girls and cutest guys, based on votes. I think the raters here are pretty harsh; some beauty queens and very handsome guys were only ... Full Review
This is one of those "scientific" dating sites. They have you answer a whole bunch of multiple-choice questions, determine your personality type, and then set about fixing you up with the "perfect match." The site's main yenta is Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology, and they're in cahoots with the Lifetime TV network ("television for women"). If I seem a bit skeptical, I am. I don't like sites with such a smug attitude. Also, I have a friend who's a professor of sociology (Hi, Laura!), and that do ... Full Review
Pearz calls itself "a unique, whole-person approach to meeting people!"
It's free to join, and list your full set of profiles and photos. In order to contact others, you must purchase a premium membership. The cost is much less than at other dating sites, just $9/mo. to $36/yr, which may be because their membership is on the small side.
They say, "Most of our members stay involved over a number of months, the same as they would in most social clubs, dance, or recreation classes where people often mee ... Full Review
NeoDates is a general dating site. About the only thing they have that's unique is their selection of chatroom "environments" for romantic virtual dates. The profile questions are fun and interesting, with multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and room for longer essays. I saw plenty of straight, gay, and lesbian profiles. (Transgender people have to choose M or F, though.)
They call free members "restricted," and they can post a profile and photo, chat, and browse profiles. I'm not sure if they can respon ... Full Review
Profile options only give M and F. You can be looking for either, but you must pick one. You enter your sex, the sex you’re looking for, your date of birth, and your zip code. I was really disappointed to find that 50 miles is the shortest distance you can have the system find matches for you. Living in the Boston area, I’m personally looking within about a five-mile radius. Religion choices are limited. No Pagan or Buddhist, just “other.” But they did have “grey-gree ... Full Review
Great Expectations appears to be a more old-fashioned dating service, where real people, not a computer, fix you up with other members.
First you fill out a profile on the site. You give them your name, age, address, phone numbers, and the best time to call. Your profile includes your age, education, appearance, athleticness, religion (back to “other” for me, darn it), and all the above preferences for the person you're seeking. They give you a list of important qualities in your partner that you can ch ... Full Review
