Date.com Review
Date.com has been around for a decade, and it has grown to be a site where millions of singles search for new relationships. The website has the basic features one would expect from a large online dating service, and it is fairly well organized, user friendly, and clutter free. You won’t really find out much about how compatible you are with other members, but you shouldn’t have any trouble using the service as a starting point to establish contact for a casual date.
You can’t ask for a much easier name to remember than Date.com, but the online dating website does more than that to make sure you won’t forget it. Just try leaving the site; a pop-up window comes up encouraging you to chat with a live agent about “last-minute savings,” where you can create your profile for free. Never mind that the front page already has a big fat headline and a big fat button both saying that you can join for free.
Unless you scroll down a bit, all you see besides the obligatory cheesy photo of a happy couple is a form where the company just can’t wait to capture your email address. This all leaves me feeling like I’m visiting some shady affiliate marketing site rather than a reputable company that knows anything about online matchmaking.
If you do scroll down to the bottom of the front page, you will finally get to view a little bit about Date.com. While most of the blurb is generic, it does mention one nice feature—live video and audio instant messaging. That can go a long way toward helping people verify that their potential matches are who they claim to be.
When you start creating a profile, you’ll be questioned about the standard demographic information like age, race, and physical characteristics. There are also places to list your interests, and my favorite two questions are
“Describe some fun and interesting things you like to do around [your town]”
and
“What are some of your favorite places you would take a date in [your town]?”
The answers to those two questions can give viewers of your profile a better idea of how compatible you might be with them.
Along the way to creating your profile, you will encounter banner ads and pop-up ads. One would think a business that revolves around subscriptions wouldn’t need so much ad revenue. Then again, look at magazines. I guess it helps keep subscription prices down. Still, I’d rather pay extra for a more personal touch and a site that doesn’t have dancing animals trying to sell me a mortgage.
There is a nice incentive to add a photo to your Date.com profile—it will get bumped to the top of the search results. Date.com goes the extra mile here and will even let you mail them a photo. If you attempt to skip ahead without adding a photo, they’ll even tell you “you’re off to a bad start” and remind you just how important a photo is. Those stubborn enough to disregard this can then continue.
Hearkening back to the greedy-looking front page, you’ll next see a page enticing you with third-party offers. The boxes are automatically checked, of course. After that you will come to your new home page, where you can perform all the basic profile editing, searches, and upgrades. Although the website doesn’t appear to say it anywhere, it is worth noting that signing up for Date.com is the same as signing up for Matchmaker.com—the two online dating services are interchangeable.
Free members must upgrade in order to communicate with other members. The prices range from $29.95 for a month to $119.95 for a year. That makes it slightly more expensive than Yahoo Personals ($25.99) unless you opt for an entire year.
Date.com doesn’t really have a matching methodology. Instead it relies on sheer numbers. It isn’t unusual to see 5,000 people online at once. You can search by basic demographic info like age, race, location, or income. There is a huge pool of profiles to search through, and the vast majority of them have photos, but it would be nice to have some way to search for or be matched with people with shared interests.
Overall, Date.com is a quick and easy way to start searching for singles, and it’s a good choice for people who would prefer to handle discussions of compatibility in person. If you want an online dating service to take on much more of the burden of finding matches who are thoroughly compatible, then you’re better off with sites like Perfectmatch.com or Great Expectations.
Date.com’s biggest drawback is that it just seems overly aggressive with its abundance of advertising, much of which has no relevance to online dating. It does, though, earn some of that lost goodwill back thanks to its emphasis on profiles with photos. After all, it’s true what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words. I guess that makes this review worth about three-fourths of a picture.
January 12th, 2008
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