e-Dater OnLine Dating

Metro Date has urban flair. When it comes to design, it’s maybe not the most edgy with its lavender and amber graphics, but it has some features that are cooler than its colors. You don’t necessarily have to be from a major metropolis, but when you fill out your profile, they will ask you the name of the biggest burg nearby. Although Metro Date isn’t currently as popular as some of its competitors, it is offering a combination of features that make it a site to watch.

Metro Date has comic strip appeal, looking larger-than-life with a pop art feel to its interface. I could imagine that if Clark Kent was going to try to meet Lois Lane online that he might login to MetroDate. Even if you’re not a part-time superhero in tights, you should feel very much at home here.

“I like when a site forces it subscribers to add a picture since it definitely improves the overall quality of the profiles.”

Filling out my free profile wasn’t so arduous a task as it sometimes feels at other sites. There were four pages of questions, just enough required information to give someone else a general idea of whom I am without my having to reveal deep, dark childhood secrets or other private details of my life.

Besides a photo, I also had the option to add a video introduction or a voice recording to my description. What impressed me most was that I was required to provide a photo in order to use their chat feature.

I like when a site forces it subscribers to add a picture since it definitely improves the overall quality of the profiles. I should also point out that you can earn a free month of service by including a video on your Metro Date ad.

Besides the aforementioned chat, there are also message boards to which anyone can post. What I like is that each thread lists how many posters are from my area. Guides are available for most major cities in the US, Canada and a few international locations.

Meanwhile, MetroDate is any easy way to check local weather since it defaults to your hometown’s forecast automatically. You can read dating tip articles or request personalized feedback from two online advice gurus. They’re not trained professionals but you can’t get enough free advice!

To contact any specific member beyond merely sending a flirt, you’re going to need to upgrade to premium since there is only e-mail and no instant messaging option. Other benefits of upgrading include access to other member’s video introductions, unlimited flirting (limited to three a day otherwise), and showing up first in search results.

Metro Date memberships are sometimes offered at discount rates as low as $9.95 US a month and if you sign up during a promotional offer your monthly rate is guaranteed for the lifetime of your subscription.

Visit Metro Date now if you want to meet that special fellow urbanite near you.

FriendFinder.com offers you the chance to make new friends or romantic connections. Maybe you just moved to a new city, crave conversation with someone from far away or are simply just shy in person but feel outgoing online. Could Friend Finder be the place you’ve been looking for? That’s what we wanted to know and here’s what we found…

The biggest thing Friend Finder has going for it is that it’s immensely popular. You could expect that from a site that has been around since the Internet became friendly, but it takes a lot to make a name and stay on top of the dating market for as many years as Friend Finder has. This site is worth a look for that reason alone.

“Friend Finder may just be your next great adventure.”

FriendFinder.com is more than just a dating site. It’s an online community. It gives you access to chat rooms that revolve around specific interests or geographic locations, although they weren’t all that active when I dropped by. The chat rooms are open to anyone who’s signed up. If you’re a premium member, you can expand any fellow chatter’s profile to see what she/he looks like and you also have the ability to open private chat rooms. You can also create and read blogs from other users as they share their thoughts on everything from gardening to galactic conquest. They have an interactive magazine which lets you create articles and post your thoughts on other people’s musings. They also offer ‘groups’ which you can form or join that are made up of people that share your interest. Friend Finder goes out of its way to make your online experience as full as can be while also including the chance for romance.

Right away you’ll be surprised by how much access is available to anyone at any level of membership. You can conduct searches by zip code to see who is nearby, respond to paid members emails without having to join the site and you can even see when a member last visited the site. But here things turn for the worst.

You can’t sort you results by last login date, which makes it nearly impossible to get a good idea of the amount of people in your area who are on regularly. Also, when you run searches, you won’t have access to the vast majority of profiles. You’ll have to suffice with small summaries and a tiny thumbnail picture. Not being able to view profiles drastically hinders a person’s ability to make an educated decision on the quality of members on a site. Friend Finder loses ten points for this impediment.

If you want to demonstrate some interest in someone’s profile, you can send him/her a friendly wink. You can add a profile to your hot list and that member will be notified that they’ve become your newest addition. The popularity of a profile can lead to privileged access—even for a standard member.

Silver and Gold level subscriptions offer several advantages: the ability to view and contact all members, unique detailed search options and an e-mailed list of possible matches sent to your offsite address. Both types of premium service appear above standard members on completed searches, have faster profile/photo approvals, as well as customer support. Gold versus Silver goes the extra, extra mile by faster speed in all services, increased storage limits, and it has the most advanced keyword search pull details from any interesting member profiles. Paying for this service spells convenience and fast friends or lovers. There are also extra services like highlighting your profile and allowing all level access to contact your account, which you can get by paying a monthly fee in addition to your membership.

Friend Finder is a site that has earned its stripes. However, there can be a lot going on at times and seems a bit clunky for compared to some of the other leading dating sites. There’s a lot to take in from the start, but if you’re up for the challenge and think the price is right, Friend Finder may just be your next great adventure.

ChristianCafe.com is such a friendly, feel-good and safe kind of online experience where you can’t help but feel welcome. Just to be clear, it is very much a Christian place to go and really is best suited for sincere believers, although there are options when filling out your profile for those who are non-practicing or not currently strong in their faith. They are better than some of the competition in recognizing that it is important to establish both religious affiliation and individual church denominations while still trying to bring everyone together.

You start by filling out a profile to begin your free seven-day trial. I have to say that the description you are expected to provide is rather extensive. There were about 11 short essays required, as well as lots of multiple choice questions to answer. I normally get annoyed if a site asks too much information, but I must admit that the questions were pretty thoughtful and definitely would provide a more complete idea of a person than by just asking them their favorite food or favorite color. As with most of the services provided by this site, before you post any written content it will remind you that it is a Christian site and that any inappropriate comments will be removed and/or your membership could be cancelled.

Like any secular site, Christian Cafe has a chat service. Unfortunately, due to previous issues involving trial members, it isn’t available to anyone but paid subscribers. This doesn’t greally surprise me since it is already ambitious to invite so many people from different kinds of churches together peacefully without risking letting outsiders easily interject into online discussions. There is also instant messaging, which can be accessed by reviewing the members online and clicking on the “quick message” link. You can create your personal directory of contacts under the “friends” section.

A very unique section of the site, which I haven’t really seen anywhere else so far, is the post-a-prayer page. People literally write prayers that everyone else can read and ideally join in making their own prayer for the poster. This is another section of the site where the administration warns that they have sole discretion as to what is acceptable or not. It seems reasonable since some people have a gift for saying more and asking less when praying, making accusations or endorsing political views or personal opinions. My only comment on this issue is that I found some of the pages under “cool links” had a slight political undercurrent that I know would be an issue for some believers, although nothing “anti-anything” was included in the mix.

I appreciated on the sign up page how the site made comparisons between the costs of the service and the cost of going to dinner and a movie. So I will quote them almost verbatim and say that at just under $30 US, one month membership costs about as much as a film and a theatre snack, and you know how much a jumbo buttered popcorn costs these days.

Visit Christian Cafe for a casual and relaxed place to meet fellow believers from diverse faiths.

Relationships.com is a faith-based dating site that focuses on a common love for Christianity. The idea here is that shared faith is an essential part of finding the right relationship. It leads to stronger bond that is necessary to forge a lifelong commitment. It’s true that other general dating sites will allow you to search by religious beliefs, but there can be many other less-attractive candidates that you’ll be forced to weed out along the way. Relationships dating site is specific. Everyone shares a common belief, and that seems like a good place to start.

The introductory profile process is virtually painless. You only have to fill out a handful of questions to get online. The problem with this is that it allows you to skip some major questions. Of course, once you’re online with a basic profile, you can head straight to the profile section to fill out many more detailed questions to help pique the interest of other members. After searching through the member database, it was clear, though, that the majority of members had put time and energy into ensuring their profiles contained a certain amount of quality.

Making that first move is relatively easy with Relationships. You can send free smiles or ecards without dropping a dime. The ecards cover many different areas. You can send a verse from the bible, uplifting messages, holiday greetings, birthday wishes, pickup lines and more. You have to pay, though, if you want to send a personalized ecard to a Relationships member. All other communication comes at a cost, too. That’s where the monthly membership fee comes in. The only other thing you can do without paying is scanning the boards. Hopefully that will be enough to give you an idea of what Relationships.com has to offer.

To aid you in your quest for the perfect match, the site offers a personality matching system. Each profile gets color coded so that you can find those most like you. The site will even do the work for you by sending you matches on a regular basis. All you have to do is pick which traits are important to you and that will be matched against answers from other profiles. At the very least, it’s a fun way to see what this dating site has to offer.

Our research shows it as very popular site, although I somehow doubt it’s as popular as the numbers suggest. What is clear is that Relationships.com is a popular domain for a dating site and it is a good starting point for single Christians. It is at the higher end of the cost scale at $24.99 US per month so hopefully your three-day free trial will be enough time to make a decent decision as to the value of the site.

Enjoy Relationships.com, where Christians are brought together.

LDSMingle.com is kind of ambiguous as a name when you stumble across it on the Net. To be honest there is a local pharmaceutical testing facility with a very similar sounding name, but obviously this site isn’t about experimental drugs at all. Once I discovered what the “LDS” actually stood for, my personal ignorance seemed obvious. It is an acronym for Latter Day Saints or in other words, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the past more commonly referred to as simply, the Mormons. Sometimes when one visits a personals ad Website that is so specialized in its attraction, it appears amateurish and really has no appeal beyond its specified target group. I really can attest that this was far from the case with this site. I was immediately struck by its fine presentation and sleek set-up; it’s very hip and now, showing that a religious site can still stay in the loop with style while respecting its special grace and purpose.

Signing up is quick and easy. Beyond the usual types of questions about appearance, location and occupation, you will also be asked very specific questions about your level of involvement in the church, temple status and mission. As I stated before this site is really designed for LDS singles; singles that are serious about establishing meaningful online relationships and judging from the site testimonials even ideally finding successful marriage partnerships. Once you’re done joining for free, you can start to browse through the other members’ profiles and photo galleries. When you see a subscriber to whom you take a fancy you may send him/her a smile or even an e-cards. You can also receive either of the same for free to your own account.

The purpose of upgrading your membership is to allow you to take that initial contact to the crucial next step of full communication. For example, free members can only read messages from fellow LDS singles on the message boards, but once you have signed up as a paid member you too can post your own messages too. You also will be able to enjoy live chat with your paid subscription. Unpaid accounts can send simple smiles or e-cards but if you want to take advantage of being able to fully express yourself in words you need to upgrade to paid so you can take full benefit from sending and receiving “Mingle Mail”. Finally, as I have said about any site, direct communication between individual members is the best way to get to know one another, so your membership fee also entitles you to instant messaging service, as well.

At just under $15 a month and with over 160,000 members already, this site represents a truly excellent value as well as a unique opportunity for an LDS single to make meaningful contact with another very special LDS match.

Visit LDS Mingle if you want to meet your LDS soul mate.

A site like Ethiopian Personals makes for an easy review. It’s well laid out and works easily under the command of your mouse. Yet it’s not all roses when it comes to this niche dating site. We took a tour and this is what we found…

Any new visitor to Ethiopian Personals will go through the profile creation process. Most sites ask a few basic questions and let you in but this dating site goes out of its way to offer you more. Why should you care? Well, generally speaking, a dating site is all about the member base. The more involved they are with the site, the more often they usually visit. That benefits everyone. EthiopianPersonals.com gets you involved from the start by asking you numerous questions that require answers. They even have a large extended answer section where you can fill out tons of different details. Details are what attract people, after all, so do you best to take advantage of the opportunity that the site provides.

“Ethiopian Personals gives you as much room to play for free as you can ask for.”

Bigger is often better and single Ethiopians will be happy to know that there are a ton of options available to help narrow searches. The best part about the search is that you can access all the features even if you haven’t paid for a membership. Some sites that use geographic searches based on zip code limit your radius to 50 or 100 miles so that it bulks up the amount of members that are returned on any search. Ethiopian Personals lets you narrow that range down to 20 miles. They also let you customize the search to any of the many variables that you looked at while filling out your own profile. This is certainly one of the strongest features of the entire site.

Another great thing about the site is the amount that they’ll let you do as a free member. You can send signs of interest to other members and receive emails if they’ve paid their monthly dues. You can even reply to members who have sent you email without coughing up any coin. When it comes to online dating sites, Ethiopian Personals gives you as much room to play for free as you can ask for.

The biggest problem with the site – and it is a big problem – is the member database. They just don’t have a lot of people registered compared to some other sites. This is bound to happen when you are aiming for a targeted market, such as Ethiopian singles, so it’s not a strange mystery. The site itself is fantastic. It could easily bloom into a more popular site if given the right amount of time and proper advertising. If you join now, you may not have as many options as you would on other sites, but you’ll certainly get a lot of face time with new members as they start to arrive! That may be worth it in itself.

Another problem comes in the way of price. Most dating sites that are trying to gain members generally ask for less money. Ethiopian Personals wants $24.95 for the first month of membership and then $19.95 for every month after. That’s about average for most dating sites. To us, technically speaking, EthiopianPersonals.com is worth that price but still seems a little expensive for a site trying to attract new clientele.

Overall, if you’re Ethiopian and looking for love, it won’t hurt to join for free and take advantage of all that they offer to new members. Run some searches in your area. You just may find yourself in a lucky spot that has many members worth contacting.

At Black Singles Connection, your skin color takes top priority. The site runs slick under the careful clicks of a mouse button and getting through the introductory questions and creating a profile is painless. The site has changed a lot since we last reviewed it – for the better. Here’s what we found this time around…

There’s more to this site than meets the eye. Black Singles Connection has been around for years but the company is now operating on a new domain – BlackSingles.com. It’s shorter and easier to remember and if you login or signup with Black Singles Connection, you’ll eventually get pushed to BlackSingles.com, so there’s no need to worry about missing out on any of the action.

After reviewing a number of the other ebony dating sites in the category, I was pleased to see that this site had an Alexa score that warranted some attention. For those who don’t know, Alexa is a measure of a sites’ popularity, although it’s anything but accurate. However, it’s what we have to work with and I think it succeeds in telling us that BlackSinglesConnection.com is one of the more popular sites for black personals. (Please note: we’re taking tour reading from BlackSingles.com as BlackSinglesConnection.com begins to take a back seat.)

The popularity it has gained is well deserved in that the site allows visitors the ability to check out most of what is offered without having to dish out money. The biggest point winners after popularity are in the areas of last login stats and localized searching. Black Singles Connection lands perfect marks in both.

“…the company is now operating on a new domain – BlackSingles.com.”

Busy sites like to show how busy they are. They do this by displaying when members last logged in. Black Singles Connection shows this at the top right of each member’s profile. Keep this in mind when you first start running searches and you’ll soon get an idea of how many people are online in your area every day, week and month.

The other big plus deals with the ability to conduct searches for people in your area. The closer the search radius, the easier it is to connect with those nearby. On this site, you can narrow the ebony profiles you see right down to those within a ten mile radius. That really helps those who aren’t in a position to travel far for romance.

The one major flaw is that you can’t receive mail until you’ve paid for a membership. Does this sound reasonable? It might, however, a lot of other sites let members contact non-members for free. Although it may not make or break your decision, it’s an issue that you should be aware of.

I give equal weighting to pictures and profiles on dating sites. What you write says so much about the type of person you are. Black Singles Connection allows you to view profiles from top to bottom from the moment you login as a free guest so you should have no problems reading between the lines with what each of the other members here are trying to say.

BlackSinglesConnection.com gives you more than just the ability to connect through email. You can instant message people and take part in discussions on the chat board once you’ve joined. There’s also an interesting personality test that divides people up into colors based on answers to a series of questions. You can view your search results in as a photo gallery without all the additional profile information and send virtual cards to other ebony singles on the site. These are all solid offerings from a dating site that seems to know what it takes to put together a solid portal for singles.

The current monthly membership fee for the site is $24.99 a month. That’s at the higher end of what the average dating site charges, but with so much to do on the site, and the way they’ve allowed new members to really feel at home without having to pay, makes it worth it in the end.

Black Singles Connection may serve a targeted niche, but it is quickly gaining in popularity. This site will put you in touch with the black singles community and you can make magic happen from there!

Big Cupid is designed for people of size, whether they’re big beautiful women, which is usually shortened to BBW or big handsome men, a term with which I was previously unfamiliar but according to the site is abbreviated to BHM. I have to say, up until now, I’ve never seen an online dating site that made mention of a man’s size. It’s usually a case of double standards with guys either not seeing their own weight accurately, or referring to themselves as cuddly teddy bears without being direct about what that means. These are aspects that I’ve found are overlooked on many BBW sites, which in some cases almost appear to treat such attraction as fetishistic, rather than a typical question of personal taste. However, when it comes to BigCupid.com, this is what we found…

When you sign up free, you are required to fill out a number of fields and include a couple of write-ups describing yourself and your potential ideal partner. Since a good section of the process is mandatory, it does insure a minimum amount of quality in each profile. Furthermore, each one is manually reviewed before going live on BigCupid.com. Having to provide a minimum amount of detail would also facilitate better use of the advanced search options based upon the additional criteria provided.

“The biggest hurdle is the site’s limited traffic.”

One issue with both the free basic and paid premium searches is that there is no truly localized searching. The closest you can narrow the search down to is the nearest city. This is unfortunate, as you’d expect that at least when you upgraded you would find someway to search closer to home, but since you don’t give a zip or postal code when signing up, it makes some sense that the searches always cover a wide radius. At least you can read full info on each profile you click, as well as the last login date, too.

There are multiple contact methods and it is free to reply, but you must be a premium member to initiate chat rooms, instant messaging and, of course, email. If you choose to pay extra beyond the standard gold membership and go platinum, you can add video to your profile, or even include it in a message. Unlike many sites where nobody uses the video feature, there were quite a few videos available online here.

The biggest hurdle is the site’s limited traffic. That, combined with aforementioned lack of local search capabilities, creates a larger issue for people trying to decide whether to join. Even if the site isn’t overly popular, if you could easily verify local numbers it might dispel any doubts you have about signing up. Big Cupid needs to work on drawing more visitors and improving searches, but with few sites offering a place for both genders of larger-sized people to meet, it does remain a special place to meet someone.

BBW Personals Plus is a site with a large scope. In recognizing that niche dating is as much about body size as it is about sexual preference or race, BBW Personals Plus lays the groundwork for plus sized connections. The site’s been surfed and the numbers are in. Now we’ll see if this site is a grand success according to our review criterion.

Off the top, the profiles on this site contain solid information. You are asked the basic questions about your hobbies and your martial status. It also asks for your height and weight, the latter having a few extra options so you can define your size as accurately as you’d like. Most of the women on this site have profiles while the vast majority of men appear not to. This begs the question of why the disparity between the groups, but that’s not for this review to attempt to answer.

“BBW Personals Plus seems like it’s growing in all of the right directions.”

The sites appearance has been honed and carries with it a corporate feel. By that I simply mean that it feels cold at times, but at least it’s professional. Search options received a perfect score by allowing you flexibility when it comes to searching geographically and you even have full access to each of the various criteria without having to pay for it. Finally, you can navigate as smoothly as a plane on autopilot. Together, this means that you can worry less about the sites hang-ups and concentrate more on looking for love.

BBWPersonalsPlus.com offers both instant messaging and a chat forum. IM is really all you need to make that quick connection, but it’s still nice to have options. The site takes home a big zero when it comes to the level of access you’re given to the site before digging for dollars. BBW Personals only allows paid members to contact other paid members. You will certainly be able to surf the site for free and get a feel for what you’ll be getting, but until you part with the cash, you will have to be content with having your face pressed up against the glass peering in.
Member numbers make a site and this site seems to have achieved a decent level of success. The Alexa score seems to show that it is one of the most popular BBW sites on the Net. However, we recommend doing searches for your area first and reading through the profiles that come up so that you can make your own assessment as to the membership levels in your area.

BBW Personals Plus includes many extra features to keep you occupied and expressing yourself in whatever way you deem fit. You can try sending an ecard to people both on and off the site. The chat forum provides a nice way to share thoughts within a group instantly, although the program used is a rather old style that is strictly thread-based. And the color coded personality test is an interesting way to kill time and help you score someone who might just have the attributes you’re after for a bigger, better relationship.

BBW Personals Plus seems like it’s growing in all of the right directions. With help at the wheel to personalize it a bit, there’s no doubt that it will continue to grow with the plus-sized community. In the meantime, it won’t kill you to check it out and do some free searches in your area. Good luck!

AsianSinglesConnection.com lets new members see what the site has to offer before purchasing a membership. The site definitely puts an emphasis on what I would consider to be more conservative values. It wants its members to find husbands and wives, not just randomly hook up. Written essays are screened for inappropriate content. Anything deemed “vulgar” will be removed. Right away, when I see a site that uses a word like “vulgar” I know it is concerned with maintaining a very conservative image, since more liberal sites tend to list clearly what is considered inappropriate and it tends to be a legal, not moral, distinction.

Besides the standard profile entry system that you find on most dating sites, Asian Singles Connection also has a special personality test based on your childhood memories that will assign you a color. Based upon your results, other members are supposed to be able to judge more easily whether you could be a compatible match. I found the process a little bit strange as far as the content and wording of some of the questions but the personality description it returned was accurate enough. In addition to the color system for distinguishing individuals, all of the questions you answer when you sign up also create a criterion for finding your ideal match. Not only are your simple responses recorded, they are assigned a percentage value of overall importance in finding someone special. You can go back and keep you original replies but adjust their level of relevance in identifying a matching profile so worry not.

“There’re certainly no shortage of ways to talk to your friends and love interests on this site.”

There are a number of neat and cute ways to connect with members beyond basic e-mail. You can send a smile to flirt or just say hello for free. There is a selection of e-cards to say everything from Happy Chinese New Year to Thank You For Being You. These are also free to all members.

Communication takes center stage on this dating site. You can post a message on the forums with subjects covering everything from dating to news and current events, send an instant message to an online buddy and write personalized e-mails once you purchase a membership. Live chat rooms also become available to you too once you pay. There’re certainly no shortage of ways to talk to your friends and love interests on this site.

One of the most important factors that contribute to a good site is its member base. At the time of this review, that seems to be what’s suffering most. Although, its popularity seems to have been steadily increasing since we first reviewed it in 2005. We advise you conduct the usual series of searches to see if there’re many people online in your area before paying for a membership.

Membership runs at under $20 a month. It might not be the most diverse site, but if you want to share your Asian culture and heritage with friends and have the chance to meet appropriate partners, then this could definitely be the site for you. Just remember that you and anyone else on Asian Singles Connection will have to have memberships before you can communicate.