Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 3/5

• Limited content
• No adult clips
• Navigation is fast and easy

The Full Story:

Before I became a member of the LocalSex.com site, my first impression was that the site was clean but boring in terms of its layout. The pages are principally laid out in white, with only a few navigation links.

After becoming a member, I found out that, yes, the site is cleanly presented, but it is not a boring place. Let me give you an overview: in creating your profile, you would be asked to provide a number of details. What category of pleasure seeker you fall into (for example, Man Seeking Man), your postal code, ethnicity, age, height, and weight. When you go to Messages, you find out that the site is affiliated with Adult Friend Finder–the site has a link going to that dating site, and tries to “upsell” you to it periodically (though not aggressively). I liked that among the categorical choices offered to you are Couple Seeking Men and Couple Seeking Women. It bodes well for the prospect of finding someone here who will indulge even slightly left-of-mainstream fantasies.

When uploading your pictures, the site has a number of directives. First, the picture has to be less than 1MB. Second, the photo must not have explicit nudity (which may raise the eyebrows of some people since this site is an “adult dating” one, after all.) However, I think this is a way for the site to explain that it is primarily an adult dating service and not really a porn site. There are some individuals who think that there is no demarcation line between these two genres, but trust me, there is. LocalSex.com is a site that proves it.

Other evidence that this site is sticking with adult matchmaking instead of merely providing adult-related content includes the following: first, there are no videos, not even teasers. (At least I could not find any, and I am a member.) Another is that there are no galleries of hotties clad in bikinis or prancing about semi-naked. I don’t know about you, but it is a refreshing change for me as a reviewer of such sites to find one that is honest and focused. LocalSex.com does not pretend or try to come across as something that it is not.

Does this mean you’d get bored on the site? If adult content is what you are really after (more than hooking up) then the answer is a resounding “yes”. You will have to go to another site to satisfy your craving for porn. However, if meeting prospective fuckdates is really your primary goal, then this site will serve the purpose. Just be aware that it is (probably deliberately) not as sophisticated as some of the leading/major hookup sites, so don’t sign up expecting too much in terms of high-end features or bonus adult content.

At the bottom of the page are some other clickables; one of these is the Casual Encounters blog. Obviously, it’s a blog site focused on adult dating. It has a lot of content, much of it humorous, so it’s a good way to kill time while waiting for something or somebody on a lazy afternoon.

In terms of customer service or support, LocalSex.com has a “Contact Us” section. The site’s primary means for members to communicate with the webmasters is through email. Just email webmasterATlocalsex.com if you want to get in touch with the people running LocalSex.com. I don’t get the feeling they have a large staff, but the queries I sent through were responded to in a timely and professional manner.

One amusing aspect of LocalSex.com that I haven’t noticed present in other adult matchmaking sites is that in its Safety and Privacy Section, the site warns its members not to exchange numbers with other members in the site. While this may seem impressive because it shows that LocalSex.com as a caring entity, I don’t think this warning should have been posted. After all, this is a dating site. People want to make contact. Another warning they give to members is to “never give other members money.” I think it’s a good thing that the webmasters put this one up. There is also a “Protect Children” clause, which outlines the responsibility that members have to combat child exploitation. Overall, these warnings make LocalSex.com feel like a responsible, no-nonsense matchmaking site.

I think the site has a long way to go if it wants to become a stronger competitor in the genre. Adult content, perhaps? LocalSex.com could also add some more “life” to its overall design. Putting in more colors does not mean compromising the site’s simple design and layout. The best thing which could be said, at least from the perspective of spendthrifts and those with money problems, is that membership at LocalSex.com is completely free.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 4/5 Content: 3/5

• Excellent search capabilities with filters for various profile attributes such as age, interests, location, photos, etc.
• Comprehensive messaging features including email, webcam chat and instant messaging.
• Live webcam feeds from five randomly chosen members on your home page.
• Some members are clearly sex workers; need to be careful about scams.

The Full Story:

Just looking at the sign-up page of Fling, you get the impression that it is an extension of a porn site. Some of the pictures of female members shown on the page to serve as “teasers” are clearly professionals working in the Internet sex industry. Once you log in, you are immediately presented with five webcam feeds “randomly selected” from members. One should be careful here because some of these members with live webcam feeds are likely to be camgirls. (Not to entirely discount the possibility, of course, that some of them are really hot chicks out there looking for dirty sex.)

The actual signup process for Fling is straightforward; the registration form has only one page, and filling it out takes approximately one minute. Only a little personal information is required to sign up because you can fill in more details after your account is created (this is how it should work with all dating sites, in my opinion.) While the basic membership is offered without charge, there are certainly advantages to “Silver” or “Gold” membership. A Silver member is able to see bigger profile photos and is able to create a hot list (known in fling as a “black book”.) As a Silver member, you can also use webcam, chat, and internal email to make contact with other Silver and Gold members. It should be noted that free members will not be able to reply to you, only paying members. As a Gold member, you also have the added benefit of being given preferential ranking in other members’ search results. And with a “gold” membership, even free members are able to respond to you.

Basically, the purpose of Fling is to provide people who are interested in a casual sexual encounter with a chance to get in touch with like-minded individuals. At first glance, this would appear to be no great challenge—the membership database is large, and many of the photos depict attractive members in various states of undress. I had the feeling, though, that I had seen a number of the photos before. In porn sites. The really attractive part of what Fling offers though, is their guarantee. Fling will gift you three months of membership if you are unable to hook up with anyone during your first three months. A great guarantee—a unique one in the adult dating industry, so far as I’m aware.

With regard to its search capabilities, Fling provides more than adequate functionality. You can filter results based on sex, age range, body type, fetishes, height, whether the member has a picture or not, etc. All potentially important factors–especially location (duh!)

Fling also offers some innovative features not usually found in adult dating sites, such as webcam chat with other fling members and the ability to allow access to your sexually explicit video feeds and pictures in a granular way. You can also turn off the presentation of sexually explicit videos and photos on your home page by going into “safe mode.” I really like that they’ve made the effort to protect privacy–others will not know about my real identity unless you choose to share that information with them. The site also offers some “porn site” features, such as adult movies.

The messaging features of Fling are exceptionally good. Privacy-protected email messaging, instant messaging, and live video chat. For easy ice-breaking, pre-written messages can be used, though using your own seems like a better idea. The best communication feature of all is the video chat room, where you can have cam-to-cam interaction with just one member or with several members at once.

Overall, Fling is one of the better sites for organizing a casual sexual encounter. The hook-up guarantee, for me, is the real clincher. But don’t take my word for it. Check out this Fling member’s personal testimony. And then create a free account and decide for yourself.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 1/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 4/5 Content: 3/5

• Decent quantity of porn available to members, games, AV chat, free scheduled cam shows
• Nice custom design, well-integrated with content offerings
• “Sex dating” aspect pretty much a scam. Excessive shilling and fakery, even by industry standards

The Full Story:

I don’t know about you, but to me, “casual” dating sites should be about more than looking at tits and ass. They should be about hanging out in an environment where there’s the chance of finding some quality NSA action. What really annoys me about this site is the sheer level of fakery. With most of the “adult dating” sites there’s a level of fakery and shilling for upsells, but hookup.com really goes above and beyond.

Look, all you guys. If I want porn, I’ll go to a porn site. If I want a camwhore, I’ll go to a camwhore site. The reason I’m here on your SEX DATING site is that’s I’d like to do some SEXY DATING. Capeesh?

The site is very heavily focused on convincing you that you need to join a webcam membership site or a porn site. The female profiles are mostly fake, as are the flood of messages you receive from them. It’s particularly noticeable that most of the messages seem to have been written by the same person, as the the same spelling and grammar mistakes keep being repeated.

One positive thing I will say about the ubiquitous webcam upsells, is that at least if you actually join this site you get regularly scheduled FREE (public) camshows. Although they’re not private, they are explicit, and it beats paying $4 a minute at a regular cam site for them. Watch and participate in a couple and you’ve pretty much made the price of your membership back. Members also have access to a large number of “member galleries” (read: picporn), porn videos, video/audio/text chatrooms, and adult games.

As for the site design on HookUp.com, it’s decent. Clean, attractive, straightforward. None of the content offerings look “bolted-on” as they do with a lot of other sites.

However, overall I can’t recommend HookUp.com for hookups. A decent porn site, but you’ll be lucky beyond belief (as a straight male) to find anyone real here worth banging if you join.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 1/5 Content: 4/5

• Members seem to be pretty interesting and really take the time to update their profiles.
• Every page of this site is riddled with Google Ads.
• The links don’t flow logically. It is easy to get lost in the site, or to be tricked into clicking on a deceptive link.

The Full Story

Ok, first things first: the women on this site come off as interesting – and therefore, hot. Some even look it! Most of the profiles I’ve seen are well-written and direct. A new member will quickly get a feel for who among his or her prospects would be a good match.

The filters set upon the site actually work. I once tried to message a woman whom I thought was interesting but the website won’t let me–the woman had specified that she may only be contacted by people who live within her area and didn’t smoke. Oh well.

When you do find someone you can get in touch with, you can send online gifts along with your message. There’s no chat here (I read that it was removed recently) so it’s all about the emailing/messaging.

The very major downside of the website is this: it is atrociously designed and riddled with Google Ads. This is not nitpicking. I’ve seen my share of awfully-designed websites but this is one of the worst-looking I’ve ever seen.

First on the craplist is the Google Adwords advertising. Everyone who’s done his or her share of online searches would have encountered “information-lite” websites with two Google ad banners, and a text strip of ads slapped within the text content. (Google only allows three of its ad scripts to run within the same page.)  You will find these here: two huge, chunky Google image ads and a strip of text ads within many  pages’ content. The real problem is that some of the ads have been deliberately manipulated to look like they’re part of the site’s internal content. It’s clearly a deceptive practice to gain more clicks. Sure, it’s a free site and Markus (the site’s owner) has to make money, but it’s hugely distracting and irritating.

Secondly, the site’s basic organization just sucks. It’s like the webmaster decided to play a cruel joke and just slap random links anywhere he or she pleased. There is no cohesiveness or method to the design and structure – no flow.

Ideally on a website, the navigation links are “chunked” logically. For example, when you’re in a particular subsection of the website, you’d expect to see links related to sections within that subsection. This is not the case here. It’s a retarded, confusing mess. Add this to the Google ads “hidden” within legitimate site content, and you’re bound to get frustrated after a while.

And really, both of these things – the ads, the maze of links – would be tolerable if the site at least looked good. But not even.

Visually the site reminds me of when the plaintext-dominated websites were the thing. You know what I mean: all text content, with chunks of paragraphs and no images, perhaps “jazzed up” with a non-white  background color. Webmasters would just diddle with their font sizes or colors to create visual interest. That’s how a lot of the pages look. You end up thanking the members for having pictures in their profiles; otherwise, the visual experience would send you to sleep.

When you date, you want to attract people, right? So best foot forward. It should be the same with websites, especially dating websites. Dating sites should try their best to engage their members visually. The site should at least be easy on the eyes – it should be attractive and make you want to stay longer.

This does not happen here. If it weren’t for the interesting members and their very engaging profiles, I’d have deleted my account and taken my business elsewhere pretty quickly. What can I say? Looks do matter.

I’d still recommend PlentyOfFish on balance because of the size of the membership database and the quality of the profiles. The messaging and filters work well enough so there is a decent possibility of getting together with someone who meets your criteria. But my recommendation comes with the caveat to look at the site by squinting through your face-covering fingers.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 3/5

• Basic-but-effective dating, and FREE!
• Google Ads galore, although inoffensively placed
• No-nonsense, simple design

The Full Story:

Mingle2 is pretty much a “starter” dating website. They try to keep everything simple. You can do a basic or advanced search or scan through who’s online, and you can search according to the interests you put in your profile. Once you find someone you’re interested in, you can IM her through the website’s chat, email her, or send a “nudge”. A nudge is a cutesy way of letting a person know that you’re interested in her without saying anything.

One unusual and slightly quirky feature that Mingle2 has is “Mutual Match”. In keeping with the “starter” feel of the site, Mutual Match is like flirting for kids. If you’re interested in someone and you don’t want to be the first to email, instant message or nudge, then you can perform a Mutual Match. Through the MM interface, you are asked whether or not you think someone would be a match with you. The other person will answer the question also. If both of you answer ‘yes,’ then I guess it’s a good lead-in to an initial contact. Of course, some may feel that this is a bit juvenile. Why not be upfront and just start communicating with someone, right? But I guess it’s cute and different so why not.

Aside from this, there’s nothing else that really makes this free dating site stand out. The members are pretty average. Some are hot, some aren’t. Some put a lot of work into their profiles, some just make do with the essentials. It’s the same anywhere. If anything you really have to work to communicate with the members on this site that you’re interested in in order to determine compatibility. And the site (to its credit) offers good tools for doing this.

There’s nothing spectacular about the site design visually although I like that the website’s very spacious and clean. There are no frills or gimmicks; what you see is what you get. There are, however, a TON of Google ads. I guess I just haven’t gotten used to service sites like dating websites that are riddled with such ads. I wonder why these sites think it’s such a great idea to show ads of direct-competitor websites (in this case, mostly Mate1′s). Why lead traffic away from your website to a competing service, right? I suppose this is the cost of keeping free dating sites free. Why am I complaining about it? I guess because the idea reeks of bad business. If a site has to survive through ads, why not sell the ad space yourself and select only non direct-competitor ads?

There was one thing that really impressed me about Mingle2. The community. Here, the community focus is a forum wherein members can talk about anything under the sun. One might think that since this is a dating website, no one will bother posting. Well, that’s very untrue. A look at the forum shows a very active and diverse community within Mingle2. It’s actually quite surprising. I mean, doing a simple search will get you some results – those close to your locale and those that fit the filters. But the forum gives you a better idea of just how many members are actively using Mingle2 and how many get online regularly. A dating website can easily set up a forum page, but it’s not easy to get it populated by active users. If anything, having an active forum assures new members that their callouts for friends and what-not will not fall on deaf ears.

Overall, Mingle2 does the job it sets out to do. It can definitely help you to hook up with people, especially if you participate in the forum discussions. The features are basic but sufficient.

I would definitely recommend checking out this website. Its simplicity is its main draw. Mingle2 offers the potential for quality interaction through their search and community features. And you won’t want for interesting, if not intriguing, results. Of course if what you’re really after is a hookup, you’d probably be better off going with a site like GetItOn.

Quick Summary:

Value: 4/5 Design: 2/5 Quality: 4/5

• Decent selection and quantity of performers every time you log in
• The color scheme is hard on the eyes. Bad site design! Bad!
• Payment system is a bit deceptive

The Full Story:

This is one hot webcam site, literally–when you go to the website, you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about. The site design is so glaringly red-dominated it hurts the eyes. I really wouldn’t want to look at it longer than I had to. The homepage itself is a confusing mess of text. It’s supposed to tell me which performers are on, and their lineup of ladies. If it’s supposed to impress, it doesn’t. I wouldn’t even bother to straining to read it. Come on guys! There are more colors in the web design palette!

When you sign up as a member, you’d find the internal pages more interesting. They’re still all red, of course, but in this section of the site at least you get a preview of the girls, including the ability to check out the vaunted 69’s Team (the site’s most popular webcam girls). You can also pay to watch prerecorded cam shows, and free “teaser” chat with girls is available.

And are the girls hot? Yes, most of them are. And their specifics are sufficiently varied that you shouldn’t have any problem finding one that you’d be interested in. The free chat lets you video chat with whoever is online performing. This is good because it allows you to figure out quickly if you’d like the girl and if she’d be up for whatever your kink is. I had reasonable success finding one who was up for mine. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself!)

One “off” thing is the payment system; particularly how it works if you want to watch more of the webcam shows. Clicking on on “Buy Credit” to watch the full show leads you to the buy page, which is sorely lacking in appropriate navigation. For one thing, there is no “back” link in case you change your mind. Not having this may confuse those who aren’t used to LiveJasmin’s web interface. Or it could lead to unknowingly clicking on “Buy” because you want out of the page. The site already has your credit card information from when you signed up, so one click is an instant purchase.

This potentially creates a problem for those who don’t really want to watch and may just have clicked on the Buy button by mistake. There’s no back link and, even when you click on the browser’s back button, the Buy page (helpfully) refreshes itself. You have to do this about three times to effectively get out of the Buy page. A person might just give up and click on Buy just to get out of there. I mean, this is probably what the site owners are counting on.

Other than this, the site delivers. The free video chat is a good way of engaging the viewer. It’s also good that they have warnings on the video chat feeds of performers who have problematic Internet connections. I means you can estimate how long you’d spend in private viewing and decide whether or not to move on to someone who has a better Internet connection.

LiveJasmin can also boast a decent search function,  similar to those of other sites in the same niche, but a little better than most, I think. I really liked that they made theirs so powerful. You can specify down to the granularity of hair color, length, and eye color. Details like these are important, especially for webcam sites with thousands of performers. You won’t have to go through a gamut of performer profiles just to find one you’d like.

In summary, if you’re a fan of camsites or camgirls in general I’d recommend giving LiveJasmin a go, or at least signing up for a free account and having a look around. It’s not cheap, but it’s certainly gratifying.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 4/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 3/5

• A legit dating site, with a wide membership base.
• The design is too compressed. There’s a lot going on within each page so there’s very little “white” space left. It’s hard on the eyes.
• Some functions are redundant and don’t work correctly.

The Full Story:

This site presents itself first and foremost as a browseable database of “available” people – a HUGE browseable database. And I think this represents the germ of my main problem with it.

It is always great for a dating website to have so many subscribers. It’s great for the site owners, and it’s great for us, the users. They get their income, while we get a lot of choices.

But the fact that there are so many results should not affect how the website is laid out. At Mate1, it seems like they’ve adopted the presentation strategy of cramming as many results as possible into just one page. A typical results page is a 6 X 5 grid of results. Meaning there are six people (with pictures) per row, and five rows for each page. The allotted space for the results is about 500 X 700 pixels, which is like, only half of a typical monitor screen.

Now, imagine being the user and going through each one of these results. You’d want to read up on the interesting-looking ones, right? The problem is that there isn’t much space allotted for each person in the results page–at least not enough to include information you might want, such as occupation or orientation. It gets tiring on the eyes. There’s just too much visual noise.

Most everything else about the site is decent. There’s the requisite flirting options for each profile–you can say “hi” or send a personal message to anyone you’d like. You can even chat if the member happens to be online. There’s no fuss about this. And not much by way of restriction either. There’s no need to be in someone’s “buddy” or “allow” list if you want to chat with her.

One funny thing about the site is that it beats you over head with the idea that you should be here to “search.” Why? Because three of the five main links on the top of each page are (redundantly) pointing to “Search.” There is Search (according to your parameters), Popular Search (according to popular parameters), and In Your Area (local search). Now, if anyone comes in here and complains about not knowing where to begin looking for dates, then maybe it’s poetic justice that he or she doesn’t get one. Duh!

I tried using the Advanced Search option where you can specify certain details, such as non-smokers only, spiritual persons etc. I also specified that the results should only include those that are at a maximum of 25 miles from where I am. I used the Search section on the left side of the screen. And lo and behold, I was given results that had women from other countries! Hello?!

I decided to attempt a little troubleshooting. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the Search section on the left? Maybe I should’ve used the one on top? (Yes, there is a search section right below the three main search links, and right next to the Search section on the left panel screen.) This search section was oddly not updated when I previously tweaked the search parameters.

So I searched again, and this time my search yielded more suitable results. Gone were all the out-of-the-country results (although some of the women on the list were still way beyond my specified radius).

Still, if one were to employ redundancy in a site layout, there should be a meaningful limit to it. It can get confusing to the user to have so many search options in one page. With Mate1, there’s about five Search links on every single page.

And, more importantly, the functionality of the whole website, especially the redundant features, should cohere with everything else. If I change my specification in one Search section, the others should update their values too. In the case here, I had to update each time I used a different site search option.

Oh well. I suppose this is the price you pay for having a deluge of choices. In the final analysis, the logical loopholes in this dating site are tolerable. A hot hook up is certainly possible, so it’s all good.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 5/5 Content: 5/5

• Beautiful clean, clear design.
• Excellent matching, search, filtering, messaging, video, and communication tools; no obtrusive advertising.
• Database isn’t heavily populated yet, so membership participation in some areas is at a low level.
• Doesn’t have as much functionality as some competing sites, but does what it does brilliantly well.

The Full Story:

Get It On is Adult Friend Finder’s foray into “scientific” adult dating. It is also a response to criticism of their flagship “Adult Friend Finder” site as being cluttered, gaudy, ugly, suffering from featuritis, et cetera (criticisms I discussed in my earlier review of it, here.) It is my opinion that Get It On has largely succeeded in what it set out to accomplish.

To sign up to the site (free!), you have to fill in a reasonably long questionnaire. The idea here is to give the site’s software a good idea of what your sexual preferences are and what sort of sexual experience outcome you’re trying to achieve. This information is then used to build your profile and sort through available people in your area; the site will present matching profiles to you when you log in, with a “percentage sexual compatibility” rating next to them.

Once you’ve got your list of prospective compatibles, you can simply click through to any one of the profiles and start communicating with the person using the site’s tools; email her, flirt with her, hotlist her, whatever. Get It On will also lets you record and upload personal introduction videos, and view the saved and broadcasting videos of other members, videos that–no surprise–mostly involve the indicated individuals busying themselves in acts of self-pleasure (some things never change.)

The layout and design also really deserves a mention. Visually, the site is the acme of minimalist/Zen beauty. Clean, clear, no fuss, no mess, and best of all everything just works. Entirely gone is the “Christmas tree” design of yore, replaced by a delightful and contemporary Web 2.0 composition. One thing that particularly struck me was the complete absence of upsell advertising—the site doesn’t seem to be trying to sell anything except for memberships to itself! This may be because the site is relatively new and AFF don’t want to frighten away new members, but I hope it’s more of a long-term strategic decision than that.

I should also point out some possibly-negative features. One is that because the site is fairly new, the size of the membership database can’t compete with those of AFF’s older, established sites. This doesn’t seem to meaningfully affect the search results or matches, but definitely has an impact on things like the number of member videos broadcasting at any one time. I guess there might be something to be said for joining early and scooping up all the hotties, though, hah.

There’s also an obvious lack of a member’s forum, real-time chat, and cam-to-cam functionality. While this might turn some people off, I don’t think it should. Get It On is quite deliberately “stripped down”, with the idea of turning it into a lean, mean, hookup-finding machine. It’s not about sitting around and e-socializing all day with probably-distant Internet strangers (there’s a million other sites you can do that on, and most of them are free), it’s about finding someone with compatible perversions sexual preferences who lives within an hour or two’s drive of you and then hooking up with them to make the beast with two backs.

If that sounds like what you’re after, I’d definitely recommend giving Get It On a shot. Given the marketing muscle that AFF have, the site’s only going to become more popular, and quickly.

Get in on the Get It On ground floor now.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 4/5 Design: 4/5 Content: 3/5

• Seems to have a decent base of “real” users, although profiles are fairly content-lite
• Straightforward and clean design
• Some fun features, including “Rate Booty“

The Full Story:

One of the first things that I try to assess when I’m reviewing an adult dating website is how “authentic” the site’s membership base is. Sure, it’s fun to look at naked pictures of hot models, but you know most of those profiles are spam, shill accounts, or bots dressed up to artificially inflate the site’s social proof statistics. And looking at porn online is fine, but you’re there because you want to hook up, right?

Well, when it came time to review to Online Booty Call, I was pleasantly surprised. The member’s homepage gets right to the point of the site – finding booty calls. Everything’s laid out clearly for you when you log in: booty requests, messaging system, online booty calls, and, of course, the pièce de résistance – random booty. There’s also a search option to the right, which lets you determine a prospective booty call’s proximity to you.

One thing I noticed immediately was that the random booty calls are not so random. Results are always confined to within your stated area. A small thing, but I appreciated it. I mean, imagine seeing an oh-so-hot random booty, only to find out that she’s in the opposite coast. That would suck, right?

One thing I didn’t like, though, were the sparse profile pages. Sure, there are a couple of photos, and maybe an uploaded music clip. There’s basic info on height, weight, age, orientation, and the like, but the About Me is almost always empty. This is supposed to be the profile’s “calling card,” no? And a way for members to filter according to their preferences; but when you look at a lot of them, they’re empty. I won’t put all the blame on the members. I mean there’s here’s hardly anything in my profile, either–I signed up for an account, and when it didn’t FORCE me to fill anything in, I didn’t.

I think it probably relates to the site being relatively new, so they’re trying to lower the barrier for entry to new members. I disagree with the policy in terms of the effect on the user experience, though–there should be more required questions or fields, such as about what a person likes or dislikes, what’s he or she is looking for, etc. This way, when I browse through my booty call prospects, I can filter them based on more information, instead of just deciding on one’s booty worthiness via a (let’s-face-it-usually-deceptive) photo or two. Why waste time on someone you can’t even get any mileage out of, right?

The Rate Booty section is something that really amused me. Sometimes, I’d log in not even looking for a hot date. I just want to rate people.

The design and layout of Online Booty Call is really pleasing to the eyes. I like that it’s clean. No gaudy banners, no awful animation. Navigation is easy and everything’s organized neatly. It is hard to get lost here. There was one thing I found counter intuitive, though: my booty invites. I sent a couple of booty invites to people I found in my searches. And for the life of me I can’t seem to find those invites anywhere. They’re not in the Booty Requests page under “Sent”. They are nowhere to be found. Now, I suppose that I’d have to wait till they accept my booty invite before I see them in my Booty Call page. But I think there should be a way to “follow up” or something. Plus, what if I want to see whom I’ve sent invites to so I won’t accidentally do it again?

Overall however, I liked Online Booty Call. It’s user friendly, genuine, and I think I’ll be able to find a decent playdate or two in there. Profile content may be lacking for now, but perhaps once the membership is large enough there’ll be more; especially if the service really takes off. For now, it is obvious that the site owners are keen on just populating their member database. (There’s even a sweepstakes going on right now–the number one member referrer wins!)

Give it a shot.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 5/5 Content: 4/5

• Straight-up dating agency for people looking for affairs and casual relationships
• Direct and to the point. You get a slew of profiles when you search according to proximity, and none of them seem fake.
• Simple, functional design. Just what you need and nothing else.

The Full Story:

This is a nice, easy website for people looking to hook up locally, particularly if it’s for an extra-marital tryst. Ashley Madison’s concept is “a dating agency online”. After logging in, the main options presented are to: open your mail, update your profile, or search for profiles. There are no bothersome ads, no link to this and that. There isn’t even any of the harping cams and videos upsell advertising that many adult dating websites have.

What you see is what you get. Take the search for example. You can do a simple or advanced search. With advanced search, you can filter for fields. You can remove the “attached” people from your results page, if you are only looking for singles, or you can search for them exclusively, if you’re after the thrill of a fling.

Your search results in a list of profiles. You will see the basics elements of the profiles there, such as picture, location, age, what they’re looking for, and their current relationship status. For each result, you’ll see if the person’s online or not. You have an option to immediately chat with those online, if the person isn’t online you can message her or send her an online gift using credit points, which you purchase—a slightly different model than the subscription one used by most site. (A good model, we think—you only pay for what you use.) Profiles also have a private “showcase” link; you will only see the photos in here if you have permission from the showcase owner.

And that’s it. That’s basically the website.

Ashley Madison boasts a higher success rate in terms of hookups and affairs instigated than most other sites; the lack of community chat, webcams, and porn may be the main reasons why. Contact here is one-on-one, focused, personal, and direct. People here know what they want and are determined to get it.

For example, when you send a gift, there’s a standard flirty note there, and a field where you can add your own message. You are discouraged from sending random gifts to random people, because every gift you send costs you credits. When you “wink” at someone, you need to let them know what your wink means. There’s practically no way to avoid getting straight to the point. When you find someone and contact them you’re almost forced to let them know right away what you’re after. To me, that’s how an adult dating site should work. No games.

As for the design, the website is easy to navigate. Your standard links are those to your email, the profile search, and the links to update your profile or account. There’s no confusion as to where you’d need to go.

When you need to contact someone on your search results, you just go into their profiles, and chat, message, or give a gift. These are the only interaction allowed within this dating service, and it’s enough.

Like the site itself, the design is functional, straightforward, and clean – the only thing that bugged me visually was the “100% Affair Guaranteed” banner.

This banner promotes a paid service of the site (it’s an upsell). For almost $300, Ashley Madison Agency guarantees that you’ll hook up with someone when you use their website – so long as you undertake to chat with someone, message someone, and give gifts to someone a certain number of times per month for three months. Failure to do so voids the guarantee. You don’t get anything extra with this – it’s just a guarantee. Unless you’re a real troglodyte I’m pretty sure you’d be able to achieve the same result without the guarantee.

The thing is the banner is shoved in your face every time you load a page. Literally, they show the banner every time they get a chance. And it’s not like you can just click on the banner to close it, or choose to hide it. It stays there until you move to another page. It starts to feel irritating and intrusive.

I guess nothing’s perfect. Overall however, the Ashley Madison Agency seems on to a winner, though, and represents real innovation in the space. You might not be able to do better for your buck.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 4/5 Content: 3/5

• Hook-up website slanted towards voyeurs and exhibitionists
• Clean, user-friendly design
• Fast video upload and download
• Nice video chat

The Full Story:

My first impression of XXXblackbook.com was that it’s for voyeurs and exhibitionists. People who like to share their kinky interests with the whole class and people who like to watch and listen.

The video chat is a good example. There are several rooms to join, depending on the topic (or kind of people) that interest you. Since the automatic setting is for video chat, it tries to turn on your microphone and camera as soon as you log in (a minor annoyance–I don’t like pushy software). Plenty of people in the video chatrooms have both on and some of them are busy masturbating for your amusement: mostly guys, though I saw a couple of woman busy at it too. Also notable is the “Erotica” option under your personal profile. This allows you to write and share your own erotic stories. Most of the ones I read were more porn-y than “my eyes locked on his engorged member as it bobbed about like a fern frond,” though that’s what I expected from a predominantly male membership. XXXblackbook.com also offers a personal video upload option. Again, most of the videos are pretty graphic home-made sex videos.

Anyway, assuming you do find someone interesting on the site whom you want to contact, you can send mail, chat live or send a flirt. A flirt is one of those “nudge” type feature. You don’t have to think of anything original, just choose one from the dropdown menu. Cute.

I did encounter one difficulty here, though. When you see that someone is online, you need to go into their profile in order to contact them by mail, flirt or chat. The thing is that the Chat Live and Send IM buttons are next to each other. I checked both out myself and was sent to the Video Chat rooms when I clicked on Chat Live. I was like, “Okay – so where’s the girl?” I was forced to click on the back arrow of the browser to get to the girl’s profile page again.

I did really like the search options. There are basic, advanced and perfect search options. The basic’s good enough when you’re just looking for someone who’s online, and not necessary someone to hook up with for real. Unlike other dating sites that I’ve seen, the result pages are neat and do not have a cluttered, ‘too busy’ feel to them. There’s enough white space that you feel you can ‘breathe’, visually. A nice touch also is that more information about people is provided when you mouseover, including how many photos they have, what their rating is, and what kind of a partner they’re looking for.

The video quality of both video uploads and video chat is commendable. The graphics are clear while not being so high-res that it affects the streaming speed. There’s strange background noise on the video chat room sometimes though, even when switching between one video and another. It’s weird, but it doesn’t always come on. Someone in one of the chat rooms told me that it was some hacker trying to bug the hell out of the chatters, which seemed unlikely.

Overall, I’d describe the site as neat and functional. Though they’ve already amassed a sizable membership it doesn’t feel as though they’ve compromised the visuals and space as a consequence. I did find the ads troublesome sometimes. Do they have to be animated? Really? I felt they often detracted away from the simple ‘classic’ feel of the site. Having a looped animation of jiggling boobs and cock sucking going on while you’re trying to read some woman’s erotica page, can be downright irritating.

But this is one dating site I’d come back to, even when I’m not up for hookups or whatever. They’ve clearly put a lot of effort into trying to make the site a place you’d like to hang out, even when you’re not on the prowl. On the video chat, for example, there’s usually a group of people playing strip Texas holdem up poker. And over in the next chat room, a group of older men and women are playing trivial pursuit–albeit fully clothed. So, the “adult” fun here is not all naughty and kinky. I met some really cool people during the few weeks I spent here; and arranged a “play date” to boot.

Worth a go.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 4/5 Design: 4/5 Content: 5/5

• The Internet’s most popular “dating” website for the Fetish and BDSM community.
• Packed with features and a thriving, active membership.
• Attractive and niche-appropriate design.

The Full Story:

The diversity of the BDSM community forever amazes me. Yoking together a community this heterogeneous is no mean task, but for my $19.95 bondage.com seems to have come closer than any other similar site to doing so. Frankly, I doubt any other BDSM or fetish website exists with the number of members, resources, and user facilities that bondage.com can boast.

I signed up for a premium account, logged in, and decided to begin by assuming the role of someone looking for a “play date.” One of the more useful and interesting features you’ll initially encounter after signing up is the BDSM checklist. The idea being that you can check off everything you’ve done and grade your experience (on a Loved it->Hated It continuum.) This way, anyone browsing through profiles can know instantly if you have “play chemistry” with them–you can also email your checklist internally or externally to others to prep them for your BDSM preferences before deciding whether to meet or not. Even if people browsing your profile don’t physically refer to the checklist, the website will do it for them automatically and offer them an instant compatibility rating. Another nice feature for casual profile browsing is the reply rating–it’ll let you know how often members you’re viewing respond to email (or indeed, if they respond at all.) It’d be a great time-saver if other dating sites had this feature.

I found the A/V chat feature a bit off-putting. It took quite a while to load and had an “obviously third party software” feel (the design has not been integrated into bondage.com’s distinctive look). Plus, once you get it up, it does its level best to turn on your microphone and camera for you. What if I just wanted vanilla text chat? Just sound? Just video? It seemed needlessly anxious to be exclusionary. Pushy software that always thinks it knows best is a real pet peeve of mine (Microsoft Word should be consigned eternally to the Stygian depths.) Anyway, after text-chatting with some of the members for a bit, I shut it down and went to another page. There wasn’t much going on in the room, anyway. The A/V chat has only one room and isn’t organized according to topic. The administrators seemed kind of heavy, too. No insults or bad language on an adult dating website? We’re not 12-year-olds, people–how about you let us decide how we’re going to interact with each other?

The forums seem to be a better way to start quickly interacting with the community and making connections. I noticed that some topics were getting a lot of hits, particularly those in the humor section of the forum. After posting and responding a bit I realized that it was a lot of fun. Full of flirty exchanges and journeys into comical sarcasm.

Another way to get into the community is through the groups section. I guess they’re like a kinkier version of Yahoo or Usenet Groups, only you get to post personal ads in them too. I joined “Learning the Ropes”. Each group is given its own discussion forum–they’re often disappointing, though. The first one I joined, for example, had active posts but the only topic was “Introductions”. I was left thinking “Okay, well. I’m new here but I’m sure I can manage to engage people beyond a basic meet-and-greet introduction.”  The group “Humiliation & Degradation R US” was one of the better groups I explored; it seemed very active and popular, and members had a range of topics available for discussion. All groups are user-created by premium members. I think it wouldn’t be a terrible idea for the bondage.com operators to step in and try to provide a bit more moderation and content for the groups feature. After all, it is these discussions that help to make the website “sticky”.

I stand in open admiration of the effort put into the creation of the site. Like I said, it has pretty much everything a serious BDSM practitioner might need and its pragmatic, attractive, and functional design is organized logically and intuitively. they make it easy to filter and tailor the site to provide the experiences you want to have on it. You can effortlessly switch between interacting with groups, individuals, or just trolling about on your lonesome enjoying videos, stories, blogs, and so on.

One thing aside from the A/V chat which did bug me was the “shopping” section of the site. As Bondage.com does not sell its own physical merchandise it uses affiliate plugins to facilitate kink-related purchases. This means that sometimes when you decide to check out details of items, you are redirected to an offsite merchant page, losing your bondage.com connection while you shop and with no links to quickly get you back home. These links should really open in new windows.

Anyway, this is a minor glitch and wouldn’t stop me from recommending the website to anyone involved in the BDSM lifestyle, or who is curious about exploring it. A-. Good job.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 2/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 3/5

• A great site if your idea of a date ends in you snatching that box of tissues beside your bed.
• The design is OK. Nothing fantastic, nothing out of the ordinary. Just OK.
• The dating component of this site seems to just mask what it’s really trying to sell – that is, the premium pay-per-minute online webcam chat.

The Full Story:

There is no fuss about Amateur Match, even when you’re not logged in as a member. You go there and you have more than a vague idea what you’ll find in the site. This definitely isn’t the place to go look for women or men who like long walks, engaging conversations, a romantic dinner, and maybe just for coffee. This site is about sex and how to get it – where, when, and, apparently, how much.

And no, this does not mean you need to pay to hook up with anyone on the site – that is, if you really do ever get to meet someone you’d like to hook up with. It just becomes very obvious after some time what the site is really about. On the Live Cam option of the site, there’s a list of premium cams, which cost a little bit of dough. And this is alright really, if that’s your thing. But then, the profiles of the women online are mixed with profiles of girls doing shows. It gets hard to figure out which of these women are real and would really want to find a sexmate online, and which ones are just looking for a guy who’d pay to watch them.

This is probably why they called this site Amateur Match. You don’t go looking for dates or sexual rendezvous here. You go here to look for amateur webcam sex playmates. And like all amateur webcams, this’ll end up costing you.

As for hooking up with a real person, I’ve set up an account and I have a couple of “buddies” in there. These women seem to be real and they have nice photos on their profile pages. Problem is that the only real way to “engage” with these women is by emailing them, even when you see the green “online” icon on. Email’s fine for starters but it can get very frustrating to see someone real, and someone you actually like online and not be able to talk to her. If the feeling’s mutual, you and your “match” need to chat (and whatever else) outside Amateur Match. So… what’s the point of doing Amateur Match when you can just go with Facebook, message someone there, and decide on something more?

Of course, there’s the “community” chat feature and it seems all right. If anyone annoys you, you can just block him or her and you’re all good.

As for the design, there’s nothing spectacular about it. No snazzy flash, no rollover galleries – nothing like that. What’s commendable though is your homepage when you log in. You go in there and everything’s neatly laid out for you – Your Stuff and the Community. Of course, this is pretty much it.

When you go to the inside pages, you’re left with the left column links. And, you may have everything in there, alright. There’s the Who’s Online, Mail, Search, Your Profile, and so on. But then, these just look like they’re lumped together, with no thought about organization, whatsoever. It would be better if the links that logically go together are placed together.

The profile tabs are nice though, very user friendly. Instead of getting a hodgepodge of photos and About Me text – like in a lot of social networking sites – you get tabs. There’s a tab for your basic profile information, with links to email, block users and more. There are tabs for Sexual Stuff, and a tab for buddies. Now, for me, this is pretty much all you need to know when looking for someone to play with.

One thing that really bugs me about the site is how much of its content belong to some other site. The live cam’s under WebCamClub. The videos are referral links to a bunch of other video sites. And the games are under another site, as well.

Now, is it just me or is this so-called dating site just a portal for all these other commercial sites? And yes, lucky you if you really end up finding someone here. You’re one in a million.

So I received this email yesterday:

Hi,

–
Jay C
Ulust.com
TrafficCashGold.com
LoveDollars.com

This was my response:

Hi Jay,

We don’t think it would be entirely fair to remove the post, as Craig was just expressing his opinion of the site and relating the experience he’d had there. However, if you would like to respond to the review and/or the comment specifically, we would be happy to publish your (unedited) response on the blog or link to a response if you’d like to publish one elsewhere.

Regarding ad space, we’re happy with our current arrangements, but will contact you if that changes.

Cheers,

Janak
CasualEncounters.com

The next day, this comment was posted on the original review:

Dan Says:

In Reply to Craig Eisele-

Ulust is not “fraud”, the member database is from 9 years of doing business. We receive TONS of new profiles daily which are approved by our customer service team to ensure the profiles are real and not fake profiles, we have a team of customer service that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year. We take providing customer support as a very high priority so our customers stay happy using the site; we also have a security enforcement team in place that does nothing but look for “scammer” profiles and deletes them immediately once found.. If you ever run into one of these scammers you can contact our customer support and get that profile reviewed ASAP and removed if found to be doing fraudulent activity or even if a member is being abusive we will give that member a warning. We try everything in our power to remove these scammers from our site so our members can hookup with REAL members in a fun / adult environment. If you have problems with any member our support team is online 24 hours a day to assist you just visit http://www.ulustsupport.com for LIVE Chat Support.

We will not go into a debate of our member base statistics as that is company data that is confidential but rest assured we have TONS of REAL new members joining daily and what our numbers show for online is accurate.

Also about females leaving the site to go to yahoo / msn / aol … not all members want to give you their personal contact information. That’s the whole reason they joined a dating site so they can have the security of getting to know a person without providing personal contact information until they want to provide that information. I would suggest getting to know the person first before you ask for personal information unless that member wants to give their contact information right away…if you went into a bar and asked a girl for her number you would most likely end up with the same ratio of numbers received. If you are looking just to get laid then you might want to try a escort site as that’s what it sounds like you are looking for,, remember http://www.Ulust.com is a dating site that can provide you with endless possibilities of contacts to a gender your seeking to hookup with but just b/c a profile states looking for “sex” doesn’t mean they don’t want to get to know your before they hookup or give out personal information.

I responded to that comment with this:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to our review on behalf of your employer. I agree that uLust.com is not a fraud, and think Craig was getting a little emotive and hyperbolic when he labelled it as such.

Otherwise though, I stand by my review, my description of the experience I had on your site, and the conclusions I drew based on that experience. People are naturally free to try your site out for themselves and make up their own minds.

Take it easy,

-Janak

Would anyone else like to weigh in on the debate? Anything you’d like to add, disagree with, questions? Hit the comments in the original post, over here.