The Pudding Taster and the Social Network (1)

A review of single.nl

Single.nl advertises itself as a social network, "like Facebook and Hyves, but for dating".
It is a paid service, which is normally enough reason for the Pudding Taster to ignore it. He has been a member of paid dating services in the past and found them a COMPLETE waste of time and money.

But Single.nl offers a free 3-month Full Membership, and so the Pudding Taster is willing to give this service a look.

Not too trustful of dating services, the Pudding Taster took a look at the terms and conditions first.

The legal hassle
The "Algemene Voorwaarden" (terms of use) are in a poorly rendered Flash document. You cannot select parts of the text for copy-pasting. You can print the "Algemene Voorwaarden" but not save them.
All of this does not bode well!

There are some "interesting" terms of use, by necessity typed over manually. For starters, nr 2.7.

"2.7 Single.nl behoudt zich het recht voor om zonder voorafgaande aankondiging inschrijvingsvereisten en tarieven van diensten of producten die op de site worden aangeboden te wijzigen."

[2.7 Single.nl retains the right to change requirements of subscription, and tariffs of services of products that are offered on the site, without prior notice].

Without prior notice? How hard is it to give a warning about an upcoming change of tariffs or terms?

But then the Pudding Taster finds something that is better:

"3.4 U stemt ermee in niet meer dan drie {3} e-mailberichten binnen 24 uur te sturen naar hetzelfde lid zonder eerst van de geadresseerde antwoord of toestemming te hebben gekregen. Stuurt u meer dan 3 e-mailberichten dan beschouwen we [dat] als het lastigvallen van anderen en dat wordt niet getolereerd door Single.nl."

[3.4 You agree not to send more than three {3} e-mail messages within 24 hours to the same member without first having received answer or permission from the adressee. If you send more than 3 e-mail messages than we consider [that] as harassing others and that is not tolerated by Single.nl]

(The [dat] is added by yours truly, it was really missing from the legalese!)

Condition 3.4 sounds like a good idea, despite the grammar mistake. It should save attractive ladies from over-active male suitors. Then, a few points later, it gets interesting again:

"3.7 U stemt ermee in dat voor het gebruik van Single.nl u bereid bent commerciele berichten te ontvangen, echter uitsluitend betreffende activiteiten van Marquet B.V."

[3.7 You agree toat for use of Single.nl you are willing to receive commercial messages, but only concerning activities of Marquet B.V.]

The Pudding Taster has serious reservations regarding this one. He can understand this for a free membership - but the T&C are not only for the free trial membership that he is trying, they are the same terms and conditions to which paying members are subject!
It would have been more dignified if Marquet B.V. offered a newsletter, to which members can opt-in.

All of this comes on top of a clause that allows Marquet B.V., the owners of Single.nl, to do data-mining on their membership. In that respect, it is indeed like Facebook....

The experience itself

Unique on profile sites, it says quite clearly who is a Full Member!
For those uninitiated in the misery world of "profile gallery" dating sites, here's what makes it unique.
Profile galleries have free members and paying members (a.k.a. Full Members); but only paying members can send messages. This sounds reasonable, but the catch is that paying members are also the only ones who can respond to a message. So having already paid for meeting people, thee sites now requires that you tempt others to pay... or you're not getting any contact after all.

Single.nl is refreshing in that it lets you know who is also a Full Member. You won't waste time and effort on a person who is never going to pony up the money to respond anyway. It beats the competition hands down on this point!

Also unique, but somewhat confusing, is that you can also look for a roommate in this website.

Preparing the Pudding: filling in one's profile
When filling in the profile, one gets a list of subjects, for which one has to enter where one stands on each subject. The options are "geen belangstelling", "belangstelling" and "expert" ("not interested", "interested" and "expert"). The Pudding Taster finds this rather limited; he knows himself to have a more than average interest in several subjects, but is hardly an expert in most of them.
On top of that, some of the subjects are rather vague. What does it mean to be an expert in "Computing"? Does that mean knowing how to configure wireless internet? Or does it mean hanging out on Hyves, Facebook and Twitter?

There is also a forum, which looks a bit amateurish. The threads indicate when the last message was posted, but they don't add years! So if one finds a message posted on February 14 in January... that message is almost a year old!
(The Pudding Taster wonders if messages on the forums are automatically deleted after a year?)
Also, while the threads give their latest date of activity, the messages themselves aren't dated. Rather a mistake, it would seem - is there a point in responding to a message that was posted 6 months ago?

Pudding Judgment: pending!
Single.nl will not be judged yet. The Pudding Taster has only recently become active on the site and is awaiting the results. It looks grim for Single.nl, but the site has a few good points so yours truly is still giving it a chance.