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.
