aLoveLinksPlus Recommended Matchmakers of the World!

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free trial membership includes posting your profile, adding pictures and sending “I’m Interested” notes. Great online games to play. Paid members can contact other paid members. Straight and same sex personals available.

WHAT WE FOUND: 18-60s.com really does offer a fully free membership that, with a little work from you, will allow you to send and reply to messages, use the Instant Messenger service, upload pictures and a short video along with having a very complete profile that will help others find you. There is a price to pay, however: you must respond to the verification email you are sent, you must complete your profile (an incomplete profile will not allow your membership to be approved) and have it approved, this should be quite quick, and take no longer than 10 hours depending on when you joined. Your membership is a month-to-month membership, you need to renew every month to keep current, optionally, make a small donation to 18-60s.com for a longer term. The five minutes or so that it will take you to complete your profile and reply to the confirmation email is worth the price of the service. For your effort not only do you have unlimited access to all features you are assured that the profiles you search/browse through are just as complete. What a great way to ensure that serious singles are the entire membership. Use the quick search feature to browse member profiles before you join. We found the service’s website easy to get around, fast replies to customer service messages and plenty of members in the areas that we searched. 18-60s.com is one of the online services you ‘must’ join.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Totally free membership includes photos, video, instant messaging, forums, sending and replying to messages. Straight and same sex personals available.

CHANGES WE'D LIKE TO SEE: (Suggested February 2004) Faster profile approval, a feature tour.

WHAT WE FOUND: ePersonals is one of the better of the online services. You’ll have to join to be able to search or browse the current personals, but that only takes a second or two to fill out the first form and it’s free. Watch as you do though, because you’ll be led to the payment form and encouraged to at least purchase the 7 day trial membership that gives you complete access for about a dollar a day. To avoid immediately deciding whether to pay or leave, just click on the “My Profile” link at the top of the page and complete your profile. From there you will be able to search the other members. This is a fast search based on the zip/postal code that you entered when you first joined. We really like having local searches appearing first in the results, it makes you feel that much closer to meeting someone. If you select to “clip” any members as you browse the results, they’ll be saved in your favorites area for later viewing and contacting. It’s free to send messages but to view any replies to your profile or to messages you’ve sent you must become a paid member. You also need to be a premium member to chat with others. Sent messages are also saved in your “outbox” so you can refer back to them at a later date. A unique feature is the “Profile Meter” which will tell you how much of your profile still needs to be completed. There are points for every part including uploading your photo with your profile, when you get to 100, you’re done. Another great feature is the “Last Login” date that is with every profile. If you’re interested in someone, but it’s been 2 months since they’ve logged in, don’t expect a reply. So, be sure to check in every week or so, at a minimum. The Connect “Who’s Online” features let’s you see who’s visiting right now and where they are located. A new PrivateCall features that allows for telephone contact between members is available. A great way to phone other members while keeping your phone number secret since the call is made through the ePersonals system. Check out the site for details. A great way to make quick friends through messages and the phone.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free to join, become a paid member to chat and to reply to messages. Include up to 4 pictures with your profile. Cheap 7 day full access trial period. Anonymous telephone calls available between members using the PrivateCall feature. Straight and same sex personals.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free 3 day free trial lets you use all features. Live phone sex, photo galleries, chat rooms, streaming adult videos. Straight, same sex and same sex members personals.

WHAT WE FOUND: Joining Fast Cupid brings you into a fun atmosphere of singles that like to chat, create video introductions and blog about themselves to create a better than usual profile. We found the registration process easy but with a delay in the confirmation email before we were accepted as a member. We really like the blog feature, it adds a greater degree of personalization to member profiles and keeps you active in visiting profiles. There are three types of memberships available: Standard (or free), silver and gold. The free membership opens up all features including using the Instant Messenger service, upload a photo and a video to your profile but you can only reply to a limited number of messages each day, only see a member’s main photo not their additional gallery of pictures, and the Cupid matching system will only provide 10 possible matches to your profile as well as only search member profiles by city. Silver and gold members have unlimited send and receive capabilities, search members by distance and zip code, have over 30 (silver = 20 matches) Cupid matches emailed every day. Gold members have even more features including first listing in all search results, the possibility of being a front page featured member, priority profile and picture approval, and also have access to other members MSN, Yahoo, ICQ chat ID nicknames as you add them to your hotlist. We suggest starting with the standard membership and upgrading as you find interesting members you’d like to meet.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free to join with limited ability to reply to messages. Upgrade membership for unlimited use of all features depending on upgrade level (silver or gold). Instant messenger, chat and video introductions available. Every member can create their own blog for a more personal experience. Straight, same sex and swinger personals.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Basic membership allows messages and IM’s to be sent, membership subscription available for more points, searches and virtual wallet bucks to be spent in various dating games and rating games. Weird service, complicated navigation. Web games are great to match people up but used sparingly by members at off times of the day. Not a lot of information in the FAQ’s and it’ll take master to figure out the subscription plans. Straight and same sex profiles available.

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WHAT WE FOUND: While more USA and Canada centered Fitness Singles has members all over the world ready to be active in the great outdoors with you. Initial membership is free and allows limited contact with other members.

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WHAT WE FOUND: A dating service is included in Flirt's vast categories of entertaining and informative content. It's free to join Flirt and post your own personal ad and your membership is good as long as you login a few times every 90 days to keep your membership active (no stale personal ads here). You can read responses to your ad, but you have to become a paying member to send replies or to make first contact with someone you'd like to meet. Other Flirt categories include: advice, forums to chat and have your say, Flirt TV, style news and ongoing contests. A great service to keep you interested and "Flirting" online.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free trial to place your personal ad, paid membership required to make contact. Big website with lots of information relevant to singles and people with style and fashion sense. Straight and same sex personals available here.

WHAT WE FOUND: One of the largest and best professionally maintained introduction services. Begin with a quick search of all the women available and ready to correspond with you. You can search by area of the world or by ID number if this is not your first visit. Flower and gift delivery available, as well as email delivery of your letters to avoid the long snail-mail wait times. Order women's address individually or become a member for better access to the addresses available. This service is one of the best and has been reviewed by top newspaper and television news shows in America! You will be fulfilling the dreams of the women available at A Foreign Affair when you start communicating with them and there are staffed travel tours are arranged often so you can go and meet the women you have been writing and talking with and take your romance to the next level. Travel tours are arranged on a regular schedule to Russia, the Ukraine and Latin America. Certainly the best service available for the single man, and one of the best we've ever reviewed. Be sure to read the media reports and client testimonials available if you are unsure if this is the right service for you.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: This is a large photo catalogue site that offers many services to contact Russian, European, Asian and even American women, regularly scheduled travel tours, letter writing tips, phone contact with the Russian and European women registered at the site as well as e-mail contact addresses available. Individual addresses available or memberships can be purchased for better access to the women you want to correspond with.

WHAT WE FOUND: Fotolog is where you share your daily life one picture at a time, once a day, with your family, friends and the Fotolog members. Fun, yes! Although Fotolog takes a little getting used to (it’s rather basic presented at the time of this review) I can see this being an addictive service for those that are photo-oriented and expressive. The basic member limit of uploading one photo a day at first use seems restrictive and counter-productive to making this type of social website work well, but once you start, you’ll find yourself being very selective of the photos you do decide to share with your friends, and the Fotolog audience in general. I am impressed that Fotolog expressly states that this is not a personal photo album service. No hundreds of photos of granny’s 80th birthday party will be found here. You won’t waste your one-a-day limit uploading those pictures unless you’re very, weirdly, compulsive. You will find Fotolog a free service that allows you an expressive environment that your family and friends (and growing social network of other Fotologgers) to display the best of your images as well as ample space for your comments about your pictures and room for guests and your Fotolog network to comment on your pictures. Beyond the free membership (with the one-a-day photo upload limit) is the Gold membership which gives you more freedom of uploads (six images a day) as well as more customization of your Fotolog member page, a listing in the Gold member directory, thumbnail image of your photo beside your Fotolog name and a few other goodies that would make the very low monthly fee a reasonable expense for the truly Fotolog converted. Get out your camera and share some pictures!

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free membership is great to use and very functional, Gold membership available for some fun extra features. Upload limit of one picture a day for free members. Great social network for a daily diary of you in pictures. Service is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese. Adult images and themes will get you banned.

WHAT WE FOUND: 4PPL is a basic free dating service with an interesting Google map mashup that shows you were members are located. Joining is easy enough, a one page form to complete and you’re a member. We like the ease of use that 4PPL has, getting around the site is fast, browsing and searching is easy to do. Having displayed which members are online is great and, since it’s a free service, there isn’t any memberships to pay so you can start meeting people almost instantly.

WHAT WE FOUND: FriendCircles.com offers all the features you’d expect in a first-rate networking website. You create your account and unique home page for free. Invite friends, relatives to join your inner circle. As they join and add friends your outer circle (the network) grows. The profile information you provide allows others to learn about you and you always have control over who can read your profile, your journals and blogs. Separating profiles into the type of member you are (looking for social friends, business, dating, etc) makes the service more reliable and better prepared about the other members you’ll meet. Features include online photo albums, Instant Messenging and email, file sharing and a calendar. We found Friend Circles easy to use, and the features a lot of fun. Joining groups that were of topics we are interested in and creating our own group, is a magnet that will keep us logging in again and again. We really like the easy to remember home page ‘username.friendcircles.com’ that isn’t common with most social network services.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free to join and grow your network. Features include instant messenging, email service, groups, calendar and online photo album.