Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 4/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 4.5/5

• A professional proofreader would do wonders for this site
• Different categories for members
• A few special features like the questionnaire
• Mainstream offerings present

The Full Story:

Shagpal.com is a dating site that needs improvements on several aspects. Grammatical errors and spelling issues should not be part of a professional dating site. I know that this is a dating site and not an entry to a literary contest but still, a lot of prospective clients are educated people so they would appreciate that the sites they patronize are free from these lapses in grammar and spelling.

However, the layout of Shagpal.com is adequate. There is nothing special to it and no dramatic and obvious faults either. Navigation links are found on the left side, instead of being placed above the page as seen in many sites. The speed in switching from one page to the next is fast. Loading time is short.

When I signed up for this site, I was required to give my full name and the standard data such as username, location, age, gender, preferences, and birthdate. The site asked me to signify the areas where I wanted to look for people. Well, many sites would simply assume that their members would be looking for other people who are in the same area as they are. A profile is not mandated by the site.

A user would be asked to agree that he or she has gone over the Terms of Service, but then, here is the shag, or rather, the snag. The closest thing you would find is a terms of use, but if you read it prior to the submission of the profile, you would lose all that you’ve done.

Here is another letdown the way I see it. It is mentioned in the site’s TOS that each profile and photo becomes the site’s copyright, which the site can use as it deems appropriate. Many dating sites simply shrug off this clause, or permit a user to decide if he or she wants his or her photos to be used in any marketing endeavor. If you go to the site, you would then see that, unlike many other dating websites, there are many profiles without pictures. Should we wonder why? I sure hope that this was intentional on the webmasters’ side and not an oversight. At least they could then justify it as a sort of a statement.

The site has its standard offerings. It has search possibilities, forums, chatting, instant messaging, friend list, winks, galleries, and the ability to block users from sending you messages. Special features are present such as event calendars, restore/backup functions, and even Google maps.

Shagpal.com also has an Adult Questionnaire for the members. Covered by this section are Sexual Activities, Fantasies, Sexual Accessories (the kind of sex toys you love, for example), Physical Stuff (for example, your favorite attire in the evening). At the very least, this is something I do not see in all adult dating sites.

If you are fond of reading, then you would be at least glad to know that this site has a section devoted to articles. As of the last time I checked it out, here are two of the titles: “Anal Sex: how to give women incredible orgasms” and “Make Her Horny” (10 easy tricks), which are very interesting topics. If the managers of the site would put pictures along with the articles, it would add sophistication to the pages, not to mention that it would be more fun to go through.

Before you take out your money to join the site, read the site’s FAQ page first. It should give you crucial bits of knowledge that would be useful in terms of navigation and functions.

Does one have to be a member to stay in the site? Non-paying members would be able to search for members, upload just one photo, and search results. Those who have Silver membership would be able to upload 5 pictures, email other members, view others’ pictures, get event management privileges, and “wink” at other members, just to name a few. If you are a Gold member, then you take all the slices of the cake: you could upload up to 20 photos, upload vids, do a hotlist, ban some users, save a profile, send instant messages, and manage blogs.

In the members home page, you get all of the following data: expiration of membership, days left until the expiration, new messages (number), number of views on one’s profile, number of winks received, and members online. All of these are updated since the person’s last log-in.

What then is the bottom line that I’m gonna give? Warts and all, I still say that going to the site is not bad. After all, the site is technically a free dating place, although members do get a lot of privileges. Let us just pray that the shortcomings mentioned are soon.

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.