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.

I’ve taken care of the main integration issues now, but the site redesign/re-theme is still a work in progress. Feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments, or use the contact form.

Top 10 links for week beginning 05/10/2009

1. Giving up is on the rise…
2. Police warn ‘casual encounters’ very dangerous.
3. Abstinence clowns freak as Obama cuts their funding.
4. China mom chops willy.
5. Masturbate-A-Thon 2009 Champion Masanobu Sato Speaks.
6. 10 Incredibly Bizarre Sexual Practices.
7. Top 10 non-porn movie sex scenes.
8. How to tie up your boy, girl, or both.
9. Sex in sci-fi.
10. Ted Haggard ridiculed.

Hi there. We’re doing a blog redesign/theme change today, so just in case anything looks freaky and weird, fear not. I AM ON IT. Yeah, I bet that strikes fear and respect and something-not-unlike awe into your collective heart. Or collection of individual hearts. Or, well, you know what I mean. Brace yourselves! This is going to be HUUUUUUUGGGGEEEE…

Quick Summary:

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

• An active and engaged community of fetish-lovers
• Slightly more tailored and attractive design and features than AFF
• Exercise more caution about meeting members than you would for a “vanilla” adult dating site

The Full Story:

ALT.com is AFF’s kink/fetish “adult dating” site. Despite being owned by AFF and representing a subset of their database they do seem to have made a reasonable effort with ALT to tailor the website to the targeted demographic. As the interface and features are largely the same as AFF’s, I’ll try to concentrate this review on the points of difference. (If you want to read the AFF review to learn more about the generic shared features, it’s over here.)

I made my account a while ago, and finally got it upgraded it to GOLD status the other day. I logged in. This is what the home page looks like. Yes, another Christmas tree. However to my eyes it’s a Christmas tree with a slightly cooler color scheme than this one, though I obviously can’t speak to everybody’s aesthetic of web palette.

The first thing I noticed once my eyes adjusted to all the visual clutter was that there was a banner ad for Penthouse  staring me in the face (Penthouse? Really? On a FETISH site?) I think the site just rotates the banners through the various FF properties, but it was still a bit of a “lolwut?” moment.

ALT does have several offerings that distinguish it from the regular AFF site. For example, in your profile there’s an extensive list of fetishes that you can classify yourself using. Doing so will make it easier for other people into similar kinks to find you, and will advertise your kink/s to the other members. To see for yourself what I mean by “extensive”, look at the full list  here. The site also provides members with a “Fetish consent worksheet” and the ALT.com toolbar, which is an IE plugin that lets you know when you have mail in your alt.com account, when your ALT friends are online, etcetera.

Figuring at this point that the best way to find out about the site is to chat to some of the people who use it, I logged into the “newbie” chat room. You can see a list of the chatrooms here. I’m thinking that the “Topical” rooms’ relative popularity gives an indication as to the levels of the site’s patronage amongst the various fetish groups and subcultures.

The chat rooms seemed active and full of genuine and intelligent people. The half-dozen or so I spoke to told stories tinged with ambivalence. Most had met people from the site, some had had good experiences, some had not. Those who had experienced both regarded the ALT.com “culture” as quite different to AFF’s. For one thing, they said, people on ALT.com tend to meet in public and socialize with others from the site first, before getting into anything sexual or kink-related. Because a lot of them enjoy inflicting or receiving pain of some sort, it’s important  for all parties to be confident that they haven’t just hooked up with a Patrick Bateman-style serial killer. This “feeling out” process can (and should) take longer in this sort of environment than in one that’s just about the quickie “vanilla” sex hook-ups.

Some of the women also talked to me about having been lied to and misled by men masquerading as women, doms masquerading as subs, unemployed bums masquerading as high-flying corporate executives, etc. As elsewhere on the Internet, people on the site are sometimes less than honest about their desires, appearances, financial statuses, etc. It does seem to be the case from what I was told, however, that it’s a site with a real community and one through which you will have no great difficulty meeting and interacting with people in the real world.

Overall I decided that I’d rate this site a little higher than the main Adult Friend Finder one due to its superior design and stronger community feel-though it’s obviously only going to work for you if you actually have some fetish or kink in the first place to explore.

How about the rest of you? Any experiences at ALT you’d like to share? Comment away!

As promised, here are the two FREE adult dating e-books we promised, written by renowned author, blogger, and sexpert Lyla Marsh.

Click the links to download them and save them to your computer.

They’re in PDF format so you’ll need to download the free Adobe reader to view them, if you don’t already have it installed (most computers will.) Enjoy!

Download 1: How to Find Sex the Art of the One Night Stand Volume 1 Attraction and Seduction

Download 2: How to Find Sex the Art of the One Night Stand Volume 2 Pleasuring Her

We can’t promise we’re going to keep these books up for long, as Lyla is considering compiling them into a physical dead-tree-type book and flogging it at a B&N near you, so you’re best off to grab them now.

Stay awesome and enjoy!

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 3/5    Features: 5/5    Design: 2/5    Content: 4/5

• Interface is cluttered and ugly.
  
• Does have a lot of active members, even if they’re not all going to be the sex partner of your dreams.
• There’s a lot to do and see, if you can get past the initial christmas tree effect.
• Expect to encounter fake profiles and persistent (though ignorable) upsell advertising.

The Full Story:

Welcome to the first in a series of Casual Encounters Blog Paid Adult Dating site reviews.

You’ve probably already seen any number of advertisements online for paid “adult dating” websites; you’ll probably notice some on here, actually. Haven’t you ever thought it’d be great if someone else would pay the money, join them for you, check the site out, and come back with an honest, detailed appraisal of the service? So you could make your own mind up about whether the expense could be justified?

I thought so, too.

And after all, I figured, who better to review a paid dating site than someone who already has a hand in running free ones? Someone already in the business, who already has a set of baseline assumptions about the industry and what kinds of services you should be able to expect? NO ONE BETTER, THAT’S WHO. PICK JANAK. GO ON, PICK HIM. HE WANTS TO DO IT. LOOK AT HIM JUMPING UP AND DOWN. HE’S SO EXCITED. THIS IS HIS BIG BREAK.

Anyway. Having now convinced myself of the awesomeness of the idea by dint of theatrical emotional hysterics accompanied by capslock abuse, let’s get into the review.

First, some disclosure. Yes, our company does promote Adult Friend Finder on this website. However my commitment to you is that I won’t let myself be unduly swayed by this relationship; I’d urge you to read through this review and let me know in the comments if you think I’m going too easy on them. Honestly, I’m more worried about overcorrecting for bias and basically severing the hand which (indirectly?) feeds me.

The only reason I’m reviewing AFF first is that I get a discount on their membership fee. Rest assured, when we get to the other reviews in this series you’ll see the same lack of fear and favor.

So. Having set up the account, I entered a few details  and logged in. This procedure was all pretty straightforward. However, once I logged in I was confronted by this.

My opinion? Looks like a fucking Christmas tree. What the hell are they thinking? I mean it’s obvious that there are a lot of features, but there’s a ton of stupid distracting crap on the page too, and they’re still trying to upsell me on their “VIP” program and to their other sites (ALT.com, Bondage.com, OutPersonals.com, Hotbox.com, etc, etc.)

Anyway, rocking on. I uploaded an appropriately studly picture of myself and clicked on one of the “Live Model Chat” links down the bottom. Why not, right? Basically (and unsurprisingly) what this amounts to is a few minutes typing at a fully-clothed model (along with a dozen other guys) while being spammed with ads to start paying her for a “private one-on-one chat”, which can be cam-to-cam. Presumably in this chat she’ll take her clothes off and stick stuff in herself for your amusement – I didn’t feel like paying $4.50 a minute to find out. You can also pay $3.50/minute to watch someone else’s private chat with her (uh, not really still “private” then, is it?) which I guess at least means you get to see her naked and what have you. But without having her screaming your name when she comes (or you know, pretends to.)

Well “Live Model Chat” is a bust. I decide to try the “Live Webcams” and “Hottest Member Videos” links.

I have to say, they were more like it. Turns out there’s no shortage of average-looking chicks who are quite happy to have you watch them surf naked or check out their home-made masturbation videos. And there are thousands of videos, with full ability to search for them by age range, what’s going on in the video, etc. Certainly the most impressive feature so far.

Next I checked out the chat rooms. I found one for people in my local area, seemed to be about 20 people in there. The first thing I noticed was that they all seemed to know each other quite well; from the references people were making there had obviously been a lot of real-life hooking up in this little group (which I can only assume to be typical).  The second thing I noticed after glancing at the bar on my left was the average age of the room was early 40s.

After making with some chitchat (revolving almost entirely around variations of OH LA LA), I moved on to have a look at the blogs. It looks like AFF allow members to create their own blogs on the site, which then are rated by users. Unsurprisingly, the top blogs are those written by women who enjoy uploading naked pictures of themselves. Don’t get your hopes up too high, though. Most of the women are 40+ and borderline attractive at best. Sort of seems to be a theme developing, doesn’t there?

At this point I sort of felt like I’d seen enough to break it down for you all. So here it is:

The site is HUGE. I mean really, REALLY big. Unfortunately the interface to this wonderland of perversion is hideous and poorly put-together, but I guess if you persist you’ll get comfortable with it. The couple of days trolling around that I spent there wasn’t enough time for me, but you know. I’m a bit slow and stuff.

Despite some implicit assertions to the contrary, AFF is not full of attractive, nubile 20-somethings hungry for action. Think more late-30s-or-older-averagely-attractive-and-possibly-with-kids-or-weight-issues.

Will you get laid through the site? Yeah, probably–but just be aware you’re likely to be looking at post-prime puss, and it might take a little work. The chicks who are giving it up are likely to have an inflated sense of self-worth too, on account of all the male attention they’re used to getting. Men pursuing them are also likely to experience a lot of competition from those selfsame snatchhounds.

Expect AFF to continue with the attempts to upsell even once you’ve bought a membership. Upsells, for example, for paid model cams, paid porn film downloads, a higher level of membership than you have, etc. The ads aren’t misleading and you won’t be tricked into clicking stuff, but you will see them on your screen plenty.

On balance? I’ll give them a soft A-.  I can’t complain about the size of their database (nearly 32 million people as of when I’m writing this), or with the fact that there ARE a boatload of people on there at any one time, looking for casual sex, or with the huge amount of what-amounts-to-amateur-porn available, but the design of the site is ass, and true site hotties are in short supply.

Stay tuned for our next adult dating site review, we’re thinking of either taking a look at Fling.com or uLust.com.

So let’s kick off this Thursday with an extreme act of unbridled enthusiasm. I’m thinking something like this:

BEWARE OF SAUCY CAUCASIAN NINJER

Look at that ninjer fly. Wow. No, not that kind of wow, dork.

Oh, some minor site news. We’ve started a YouTube page to store any videos that we’ve linked/embedded here, so you can get them all in one place.

Guess that’s it for now. Stay safe.

Found a great picture today. Reminded me of me of my last relationship. In fact it reminds me of how all of my relationships end up, eventually. Which is a pretty good argument for casual sex, or a pretty good argument against embarking on a long term relationship with me. I prefer to, uh, think of it as mostly being about the former.

I mean whatever. I’m a guy. I can’t help it. Though it slays me that people like Professor Campbell are being paid to “discover” things that a) everyone knows, b) no one would be in any doubt about who bothered to look at stuff like, say, the ratio of men-to-women who sign up to adult dating sites.

Also, I’ve started a Facebook. Because I’m all about jumping on bandwagons five years too late to matter. Feel free to add me as a friend (Yeah, well. Janak Flnoord, you probably wouldn’t have had TOO much trouble finding it on your own.)

Live in fear.

Your drift isn't really what I'm concerned about catching.

So we went and got ourselves a fancy new logo, what do you think? I’m reasonably happy with it, but I think its dimensions might mean changing the blog layout, which is annoying because I HATE CSS SO MUCH ZOMGRAGEGUNNAKILLMYMOMWHEREZMYMEDSETC.

Oh well. My own stupid fault, really.

We used this company for the job (my own shoop skills are pretty much limited to cropping, resizing and fucking with filters). I’d say they did a reasonable job for the price. 6/10?

They gave us these 5 designs to start with, the idea being that you choose one to develop further. It’s a nice idea, but it’s pretty obvious that a few of the designers didn’t even bother looking at the site before considering color schemes, as I’d asked them to.

We went with the first design. We asked for them to stick our tagline onto it (uh, again?) and lose the faggy hearts. I suggested maybe some kind of “couple silhouette” to go with the text logo, to underscore the “anonymous casual sex” dealio. We got back this. Okay, so their designer really felt like we needed hearts in its logo. On account of how we’re all about the romance and poetry and special hugs for special people. (Moron.)

Anyway we asked them to remove the hearts (uh, again?), they did, and here we are. Behold and stuff. Great story, no? Yeah, okay. Slow day.

Ahem. But in other news, this guy:

We be jammin'

Just a brief one to let you know we’ve added live chat to the site. Come in and say hi; I should be idling in there (Janak).

Welcome, salutations, kunik, and namasté. This is the inaugural post of the Casual Encounters blog, a community hub for people interested in hookups, swinging, anonymous sex, and friends with benefits.

What can you expect to see here? All sorts of stuff. Over the next few weeks and months we have posts planned on the topics of adult dating humor, booty calls, interviews, stories, and site reviews. We’re also going to use the blog to keep you updated regarding our adult dating websites and we’re hoping that you’ll share some of your stories and experiences with us.

Anything you’d like to see here? Anything you’d like to tell us, or sound off about? Let us know.

And in case any of you are wondering. The post title is a reference to this scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Kevin Costner at his most hilariously wooden and Alan Rickman at his most comically sinister. Costner’s delivery of the line just cracks me up.