Came home from work to find a message on my answering machine from some guy who says he was a coordinator for some sort of singles group which he used to host locally up until very recently, and he said he still has a contact list with over 5,000 names on it, and would I please call him. Red flag: he mentioned that the group he used to host was rather upscale (not thinking like Henry Ford, obviously), but just the same, maybe some of the people on his list wouldn't mind being grandfathered into a new group which is aimed primarily at working class singles. I'm going to give this guy a call and see if he and I can work something out; he obviously got ahold of one of the 1,500+ flyers I've been plastering onto windshields in my area.

It was my theory that as soon as my upstart offline singles club got at least 150 people, it would be time to start splitting it up into niche groups... and along comes this guy telling me, essentially, that I better be careful what I wish for because I just might get it.

BTW if you run an online dating service with a lot of clients in the West Los Angeles area, I sure feel sorry for you...

You ShouldBeing responsible and mature to date is not the only thing. You have to have respect for yourself and others around you online dating. That is the most important thing that you would have to be careful about.

Something sounds a bit odd here. This sounds a pretty unethical thing to do as well as potentially illegal to buy or use peoples personal information that they have not consented to give. I know what I would be doing if I were contacted by you and which authority might be interested in recording privacy violations.

Do I smell fear of potential competition???

I returned the guy's call, and after telling him how far I'd gone with it, he basically said I'm making progress, and that the worst I could do at this point would be to give up (though I can name a few people who wish I would). When I pressed him further, he said the only reason he stopped hosting HIS group was because it started taking over his life. Sounds to me like he made the mistake of thinking he could run the show all by himself.

In the meantime, I'll be distributing many more ads. No hard feelings, eh?