Guided communication vs open chat

Hmm, it is very rare that I have ever had the same match on the various different sites. However, I did use to find a lot of matches from Match on the old Yahoo! Personals site.

at this point I'll be happy to do any decent communicating. I've had only 4 matches in a week, and 3 of them were 'flex' (the fourth ignored my GC, ha.)

I agree with you, Gr8Guy, as I very rarely see the same people on the various different sites, as well. Guess it all has to do with location. I refuse to use POF anymore, OKC is a place I rarely visit anymore (though it can surprise me from time to time), eH didn't match me very well (I don't do well with the whole opposites attract thing, and that's what I always get there), I only use Chemistry when they have a free weekend because I think it's outrageous that they want me to pay for that when I already belong to Match and that one is MUCH better for me. I can pick and choose, and find people who match me on the things that really matter to me on Match, and they give lots of options for communication--which brings me to the OP's question--I much prefer open chat over guided communication. Guided communication doesn't tell me much about a match because I found that many of my matches didn't put the time into it that would have been necessary to make it a productive way of learning more about them--no quality. It was a painfully frustrating way of learning nothing. Kind of like algebra class in high school....

I wonder if you would have the same opinion / desire about starting off with e-mail if you were the one that was having to craft untold numbers of "cold call" first e-mails where it is unlikely that any response will be forth coming. I was on Match twice. The first time was a 3 month subscription in 2002 and had ZERO response. I foolishly signed back up again with the 6 month / 6 month free guarantee and contacted over 600 different girls and got for positive responses and a couple that at least said "no thanks". But 99% did not respond in any way. To go and read through 600+ profiles and then write an e-mail that is tailored to each individual person takes a great deal of time with very little payback.

Since eHarmony has done so much over the past year to render the site near useless I was recently thinking about giving Match a try again. Luckily someone on here (could have been you, don't remember) saved me from wasting my money. They pointed out the fact that there are tons of guys and few girls on Match and so the girls get a lot of attention and can pick and choose from dozens or hundreds of guys.

My opinion of POF follows yours. OK Cupid is a higher quality site though I have never really used it mostly because they don't present me with many matches that I find interesting. They mostly match me with girls who could be my daughter or ones that could be my mother. Very few in my age range. Then they have the "Message" indicator where the person can indicate if they will welcome being contacted or not. Nearly every one of the matches I find of interest have a red message light indicating that they aren't interested in getting contacted.

Now Chemistry is a real winner site. I have been on there as a non-paying member since they started and probably have not gotten 50 matches in all that time. And it is a very rare occurrence that they can find a match in my city of over 2 million.