Posted on: 2008/06/10 07:20pm
By: Anonymous (Marty)
I've heard it often enough: someone will tell me "you should try whatever-dot-com!" Then I reply, what makes whatever-dot-com different from other online dating services? Funny how none of these people can give me a straight answer. Am I to assume whatever-dot-com is run by operators who actually care about customer satisfaction over profit, and isn't used by people who just want to play games?
AFAIC all of those online outfits are the same, they're either just "profile mills", or for those who have over $3K to waste, you can get dumped by a professional matchmaking service. About the only one who's pushing the envelope is Renee Piani... giving seminars is her thing, but she has organized a few singles events which allow things the speed dating outfits don't, like exchanging contact info. No wonder attendance at speed dating parties is off by 40%.
Even so, there's nothing for commitment-minded singles unless you want to fork over a couple thousand bucks, and nothing at any price for artistic/creative singles (I've looked). A crook would read this and decide he'd better hop into action to separate said singles from their cash, but I think the whole dating-service scene will soon become a curiously reversed situation in which honest operators will begin to appear and take over the field from the shady ones. Ms. Piani has seen the writing on the wall, at least enough that she doesn't stoop as low as her competitors... but her outfit still isn't the same as a localized club-type organization for singles. Funny thing about helping singles meet, it's a terrible business model, but it's what singles should have been doing before online dating came on the scene.
Like the saying goes, you can't fool all of the people all of the time... online dating services are slowly starting to learn that lesson.