The Pudding Taster's Tips for Selecting a Dating Site

Here are some of the things to look for when you join a dating site, mostly from the perspective of a straight male.

This piece is personal opinion, based upon personal experience.

Does the site tell you when somebody last logged in?

A dating service should tell you when somebody last logged in. This indicates whether the person is active on the site. If a person has not logged in for a long time, there is no point in trying to contact her (or him): this person has left the site, but forgotten to delete the profile.

How hard is it to unsubscribe?

Sometimes, dating sites make it deliberately hard to unsubscribe. As long as you haven't completed the unsubscription process, they can legitimately add you to the number of members - even if you haven't logged on to the site in two years!
If it is hard to unsubscribe, this means that there will be a lot of profiles from people who stopped using the site long ago, and never managed to remove their profile.

How is the male/female imbalance dealt with?

Since there are far more men than women on dating services, women get flooded by messages. For men, this means it is very hard to get a response.
Some services, like PaiQ.nl, solve this by only allowing contact between people matched by the system, thus limiting the deluge of messages towards women.
Another approach, taken by PlentyOfFish.com, is to let users set restrictions on who can contact them - like age range, and "must not have messaged users for Intimate Encounter". Other services, like Match.com, do not seem to address the issue at all.

If it's a paid service: can Free Members write back?

Paid dating services have 'Free Memberships' and 'Full Memberships'.
A Free Member is anybody who ever made a profile in the site and hasn't deleted it.
A Full Member is a paying member; only paying members can contact people.
On many sites, including match.com, lexa.nl and relatieplanet.nl, Free Members cannot respond to the messages they get. The sites never tell you who is a Free Member and who is a Full Member, so as a paying Full Member, you spend a lot of time composing messages that the recpipient cannot respond to until (s)he pays. Depending on the dating site, the recipient of your message may never see more than the subject line!
On a related note, paid dating services like to say that paid dating services are better than free ones. The theory is that people who are willing to pay for online dating are more serious about it. But if that is true, then why don't they tell us who the serious members are?

The Pudding Taster and the Virtual Quizmaster (1)

A review of klikthet.nl

"Klikt het?" is Dutch for "Does it click?"

This is a dating site that is set up around a game. To participate in this game, one has to upload 2 pictures (a headshot and a full-body shot), and fill in a questionnaire. The makers say that they'll keep it easy and just give you just a few questions, but "a few" seems to be a very relative term....there were over 30.

Also, some of the questions were a little weird. Like, "what hair colour should your ideal match have?" - the Pudding Taster doesn't have much of a preference, really! Her ideal weight and age had to be specified down to a centimeter and a year, respectively. And leaving it blank was not an option - you can only play if you answer all the questions first.
Then you have to specify, among others, your taste in music and your favorite trademarks. Sadly, some of the Pudding Tasters favorite trademarks were missing - and that includes the Fair Trade label.
Adding something yourself was not an option, but that was for a good reason that will be revealed later.

The weirdest question was what your ideal match should be - single, in a relation, or married. Yes, you read that right - the site allows you to match with someone who is already in a relation or even married.
The Pudding Taster is increasingly led to believe that the makers of dating site questionnaires are very weird people!

Playing the game

The game is simple - you are shown pictures of members and asked questions about them. For example, "how often does this person smoke". You can then choose from 3 possible answers. Giving the right answer will give you 4 to 6 "clicks" (the precise amount differs per question), giving the wrong one will cost you a similar amount. Skipping a question is an option this time, but will cost you 3 points.... er, clicks.
Other questions included what trademark fitted with a person. This explains why you have to choose such things from a limited list, and are not allowed to add new entries. The answers given in the questionnaire are meant to help in composing a multiple-choice quiz for other members.

This quizzing game is regularly interrupted by a different kind of question - two pictures of other members of the desired gender are shown, and you are asked which one you like best. Dragging a heart symbol to one of the pictures might get you in touch with this person - at a cost of 20 clicks. If the other accepts, you become "clicks".

The game is quite addictive, if a little superficial. Are we really supposed to determine people's culinary preferences from their looks? (The Pudding Taster wonders if the people at klikthet.nl cater specifically to people wearing deerstalker hats and smoking pipes. Elementary, my dear Watson!)
Even so, it's one if those games where you keep thinking, "OK, let's play one more round".

The Pudding Taster got a match on Klikthet.nl. He sent her a message, and is still awaiting the response. The drawback here is that you know practically nothing about your match - all you have to go on are two pictures. Even someone's preferred trademarks might have been a conversation starter.

Pudding Judgment: pending.
The concept of this site is very good - play a game and meet potential dates. While on other sites, you hang out waiting for one of your matches to come online, here you spend the waiting time taking quizzes.
Also, the system determines to whom you can speak, although you have some input.
Still, it hasn't given the Pudding Taster a date - or even a communication! Until it does that, it fails as a dating service. Since new matches are given only once every 2 weeks, according to the site itself, the Pudding Taster is giving it some more time.

The Pudding Taster and the Social Network (2)

Yours truly, the Pudding Taster, has continued his adventures on Single.nl.
He has sent messages to several people, but not gotten a single response (no pun intended). Not that the Pudding Taster is surprised: this is quite normal for dating sites, for reasons explained elsewhere. He has also been active in the forums, but that has not yielded results either.

How does Social Network pudding taste?
If Single.nl were a pudding... it would have been made by a cook who did a half-hearted attempt at establishing who you were, then based his pudding on that. The cook presents his pudding as being better than others,but the ingredients have gone stale.

And now in English:

"a cook who did a half-hearted attempt at establishing who you were"
Single.nl allows you to describe your interests - things in which you are "interested", "not interested" or an "expert". But the subjects are vague. For example, what does it mean to be an expert in "military"? That you are a Civil War buff? Or that you have a profound interest in military hardware? While the one does not exclude the other, there's a world of difference.

" the cook presents his pudding as being better than others"
Single.nl says it's a social network. Why? Because you can be "friends" with other members? News flash, Marquet B.V. - other sites have been doing that too.

"the ingredients have gone stale"
There are very few people on this site. Worse, it doesn't tell you the last time people were active - you may be writing to someone who hasn't been online in 3 months.

Pudding Judgment: 3 out of 10
Single.nl is not a social network. It is just a profile gallery like every other run-of-the-mill dating site. Worse, however, is that it has a very limited membership. And even there it is doubtful which of the members are active. The whole thing has been a waste of time.

Dutch pudding is not made out of fish!

or, what could have been a review of plentyoffish.com

PlentyOfFish, or PoF for short, is an old player in the world of free dating websites. It also happens to be one of the few sites left where you can browse profiles without becoming a member first.
So yours truly the Pudding Taster went to PoF and, to his surprise, found a woman he'd like to contact. She looked nice (4 pictures, a good sign), was of an appropriate age range, and looking at her "Chemistry result" seemed to be his kind of person.

So the Pudding Taster hit the "Contact now" and started the process of joining. Having already agreed to the Terms of Service (!), the Pudding Taster is suddenly halted by this:

You are attempting to signup from a country we currently do not accept signups from your current location. We only accept users from Canada, UK, US, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, France, Italy and Germany

That's right, they don't allow members from the Netherlands.
Of course, the Pudding Taster could have used a proxy server to get around this... but it still means that every recent PoF member from the Netherlands is someone who knows how to use one, too. And the number of women on dating sites is small enough without limiting them to the geekier ones.

So... no Fish Pudding for today! Culinary speaking, that's probably just as well...

(Note: minor edits in article, on Feb 11, 17.24h)

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.