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.

WHAT WE FOUND: With more than 4 million members and a great free trial you should sign up and see all that FriendFinder has to offer. Your free personal ad can include your picture and even your video! Hang out and chat, read the Relationship magazine, browse the personals of others, you can even suggest a FriendFinder Poll Question! Pay particular attention to the Cupid Service and the new Members listed at the bottom of the front page, they'll be delighted to hear from you! You are not signing for a paying membership by filling out the profile form, so feel free to do it once you enter the site. Good Luck! Sign up for a GREAT FREE MEMBERSHIP PLAN!

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free membership includes picture and video personals, chat rooms, e-mail ad match service and a newsletter.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free to join with limited use of all features for free members. Upgraded members enjoy unlimited use of messaging features. Straight and same sex personals available.

WHAT WE FOUND: Friendster is currently in beta mode, which means it’s free to join and make contact with others that are members. This is a connecting community based on friendships and friends of friends. When you join you are creating, or joining, a network that only works as hard and as good as you do, since any and all contacts you can make have to be in your Friendster ring of interpersonal friendships. Think of the ‘degrees of separation’ game that allows you to be a friend of a friend of anyone in the world. At Friendster, if they are a member, you can meet them too! To make this service work for you, you will invite others to join or have been invited yourself. Your membership consists of a gallery that has the information of members in your network, a message center to check incoming emails and save replies to messages, an events calendar that your network of friends puts together and an online store of recommended merchants. You can have up to 5 pictures available in your profile. The profile questions are quite basic, but allow you to describe yourself well, leading to introducing yourself to others. 3 types of searches will help you create or join your network of friends, search by email address, name and by interests but remember, they have to be in your network of friends before you can find and contact them.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Friendster if currently free (while in beta mode), has the basic features of an online service that allows you to create a network of friendships to meet people. If your nervous about joining and don’t want to have to email a lot of your friends before you can see what it’s all about, follow this link and you’ll be invited into the aLoveLinksPlus.com network of friends. Straight and same sex contacts available, depending on your network of friends.

WHAT WE FOUND: A fun, free dating service that offers a great search system to find your best possible match quickly. Begin by joining Galaxy Singles, after all, it is free, and you'll start by entering in the information about your birth country and current residence. This helps people of similar backgrounds and cultures meet each other fast. Then you are taken to the real registration page. Plenty of selections to tell people about yourself including 3 essay questions that you should fill out as completely as possible (remember not to reveal personal information such as your residential address or real email address!). Once that is completed, you have two search methods available to help you find someone to contact, Standard and Advanced search. We suggest starting with the standard search and if there are too many matches, go to the advanced search so you can narrow down the variables better. You can search America by state and the rest of the world by country. There is also available an Auto Matchmaker feature available, this is a quick one-click search that will introduce you to people that live close by and share some common interests with you. You'll enjoy Galaxy Singles but keep in mind these two things: it's a fairly new service, so you'll get a lot of attention to your personal ad, but it may be a while before the right person joins for you and be sure to upload your picture, you'll get many more people taking a look at your personal ad.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free personals, including picture personals and chat. Straight and same sex personals available.

WHAT WE FOUND: A nice place to start looking and has many successful matches to their credit. The joining for free is nice and you will be introduced to a variety of people here. Send messages to any other member for free right from your first visit to Gary and Deborah's Dating Service. The match system is fast and you'll like the instant email feature too! There is also the option of viewing an astrology chart for you and your chosen match. See how the stars match you up with your choice! You will want to have an anonymous email to sign up with so you are keeping your own security in mind.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Features include free basic membership with added benefits for VIP memberships. The chat room is also a fun place to meet. Link to your photo if you have one of yourself on a website. Astrological match is also available.

Read our complete review here.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Very similar to facebook and MySpace, just different layout. Share photos, videos, interests, etc. Totally free.

WHAT WE FOUND: Indian FriendFinder offers a variety of membership packages. Standard membership is free. As a Standard member, you can chat, send instant messages, and browse through our worldwide database of profiles. You also have access to our interactive Magazine, where you can post or answer advice questions or post poetry and articles. There's plenty to do as a standard member! Free to join, Indian Friendfinder is a member service of the larger Friendfinder group. Full of free services that will get you started meeting and chatting with other members quickly, you’ll like the way this online service works to your benefit. Free to post your profile, add your picture and send instant messages to other members. Become a full member to initiate contact have unlimited access to sending personal messages.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free to join with limited capabilities of replying to messages you receive (upgrade for unlimited messaging), includes instant messenger chats and video chat. Straight and same sex personals.

WHAT WE FOUND: Interracial Match is a specialty dating service for people that are comfortable crossing the racial divide in their friends and dating partners. We like the fast membership form and the basic features that free members can access: searching for a member in your local area and being able to reply to messages from gold members for free. You can also participate in the forums, read other members blogs, add comments and create your own blog and upload pictures of yourself with your profile. The forum is also quite active and ready for you to add your comments on the topics of the day. Upgraded gold members have access to many more features that include advanced searching for other members in any location, sending messages to any member, and an advanced member page that includes notes on who has visited your profile, top listing in search results, a larger photo album for your pictures, and the option of hiding your profile from those that don’t match your preferences or from all members and keep your profile private for showing to only those members you allow.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: The options offered at Interracial Match are designed to make the service fun to use. Although gold members will have the best results in searching for interesting members to meet, free members have enough use of the site to make Interracial Match a worthwhile service to join.

WHAT WE FOUND: Jumpdates is a free service with all the features you would pay for if you were somewhere else. You will have unlimited messaging, instant chat and your profile with your picture included all for no charge once you sign up and become a member. One feature we like is the “profile hide” feature, so if you aren’t ready to be found but you want to browse and search the other members you can do that. You do need to become a member so you can send messages and chat and you’ll only need a couple of minutes to complete a basic profile. You will want to complete the entire profile questionnaire if you really want to be able to have a compatible match find you, allow yourself a few more minutes to complete the ratings and easy questions about yourself and who you’d like to meet. We like the “browse” links available from the front page that leads right to a member’s list of countries (of the world) and states and provinces (of America and Canada) that will tell you how many members are where you live.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Free personal ads, include a picture, chat, no member fees to send and reply to messages. Straight personals only.