Yahoo Personals is a part of yahoo network that has gained highest reputation at Alexa.com as no.1 website around world and the most recognized brand on the internet so I don’t feel oblige to introduce it to you anymore.If you’re young, and active looking for love, you’d never get wrong with yahoo personals.
Company:http://personals.yahoo.com
Motto/Slogan:Better First dates. More second dates
Members:Over 11,000,000 members with 70% male/ 30% female ratio, mostly aged 20-40 years old.
Categories:Matchmaking – fun seeking casual dating and romance for heterosexual and same sex singles
Countries:USA, Canada and world wide (totaling 13 countries)
Free membership:Yes! As a basic member or non paying member, you are free to create and post your profile, browse /search for personal ads, send and respond to icebreaker (yahoo personal flirting features to express interest to other members). To make it complete, yahoo personal is giving out their services such as voice and video greeting to make your profile more personal and they are also free.
But you must be subscriber to be able to initiate communication or use Yahoo Instant Messenger.
To convince you their excellent work to establish a better first dates and more second dates for you, Yahoo personal offers 7 days free trial policy as a test run to access their full access without actually becoming a paying member. Take this opportunity and let the fun begins.
Profile Set Up:Setting up profile is easy and quick. It only takes you about 15 minutes to 20 minutes.You have to go through 5 steps of profile set up but don’t feel oblige to finish 5 steps in one sitting. You can save and finish later at any steps any time.
In first step: About me.All you have to do is answering questions about your personal stuff such as your name, birth date, your appearance, life style and personality. All questions is answered with pulled down and checked boxes. Once you finish click continue to step 2
This will send you to step 2 called About My MatchIn this step you state your potential match’s physical attributes / appearance; life styles and personality. The last one is to decide criteria most important to you. If you cant’ stand with a match with heavy drinking habit or you don’t want to date a person with kids. Please do mark your criteria. You won’t like find yourself in a nasty surprise at the end once you find out the potential match you’ve been emailing with for weeks is actually a father of 2 kids with alcoholic problem.
The end of step 2 will lead you to your intro line and your profile essay.This profile essay is your chance to make yourself shine and standout from the crowds. You really need it. Especially in Yahoo Personals, you need to make a grabbing intro and astounding profile otherwise your profile will just sink into thousands profiles of your rivals.
Step 4 and 5At these steps you are asked to make your privacy option and final review of the whole steps before sending it to Yahoo Personal for approval. Your profile will be manually reviewed within 24 hours. Once your profile is approved then you are allowed to add more personal touch to your profile by adding 30 seconds recorded voice introduction and video message.
Now, your profile is ready for eyes of thousand potential dates from your area. Can you hear the excitement in the air?
Search Capability:Very powerful. Unlike most online dating services that only provide general search tool, Yahoo Personal has already left them far behind with its very neat and powerful search capability. Yahoo personal provides 3 search types to help you find your match: keywords search, advanced search and Location search and interestingly, you can add key search to dig dipper into any profiles.
Keywords search – this option is for you who want a non-frills search. Just specify sex, age range, distance and location then hit ‘Find My Match’ button and let your monitor full of your prospective match’s photos.
My search for singles in New York within my age range yielded about 1,000 prospective personals. But when I added keyword search like bodybuilding – the result dropped significantly but I got more qualified prospect match.
Advanced Search – you can be as picky as you want to with 27 options to narrow down your match. These search options include everything from your appearance preference, life styles, interest, and personality type to love style.
The last option – search by locationChoose a certain state to find singles in your area if you are not willing to fly half globe to meet your sweet heart.
Compatibility Analysis:Nope. No compatibility test at all.Instead Yahoo!Personal provides Personality&Love style test developed by specialist in the field of love and relationship to give you some amazing insights into what make you tick , how you love others, and love style that fit you.
Don’t skip this test. It only takes about 10 minutes and it’s not hard at all. All you have to do is pick several words that describe your character and listen to people describing themselves in several situations and mark how similar the person to you.
My test result is: personality type – individualist and best matched with person with observer personality. My love style is romantic. I took this result to help me to conduct my search and it delivered a better matches.
Special Features:
1. Your personal profile help.This is a big help. Really, if you are like most singles - stumble with personal essay and can’t figure out how to make a stunning profile that standout the crowd, you may want to try PersonalTrainer.com which has partnered with Yahoo!Personals to help you whip out personal ads in shape and best represent who you are. I think this service should’ve been available to paying members for free – but it’s not. Ouch!
2. SmartFit TM matching system – Mutual MatchThis system uses your personality& Love style test result to pinpoint the people who truly fit with you. You will find a fit parameters/ranking on your profile search results and see how much the profiles fit and match you.
3. IcebreakerVery helpful feature for shy man. You can send small quick note that express your interest without have to struggle to find the right words or write lengthy email. Just find a pre-set one line note that expresses your thought. For instance, my favorite line is “ I like your profile, can you tell me more? “
4. Save the search resultYou could save potential matches for future following up. These saved potentials matches appear right on your left side of your personal homepage for your quick jump once you are ready to initiate contact.
5. Matches by MailI called this matches by mail as lazy man matching system. Very helpful if you are busy and simply can’t log on to yahoo personal everyday. Your matches are delivered to your personal emails within a certain time set during your profile set up. You could set it 3 times a week, once a week or prefer to not activate this function which means no matches sent to your mail.
6. alertThis feature will let you know if you you have matches
7. Who’s viewed meYou’ll be notified when someone views your profile, sends your icebreaker completed with the viewer’s profile for your easy reference.
Site Navigation:Fast ( 61% of the sites are slower ( Alexa.com )
This website is designed with the idea of simplicity in mind. The interface is clean, and very…very user friendly. Their site speed is fast loading. I tried to access using both modem and cable connection and found it work perfectly.
You won’t find any complicated or confusing tools here in Yahoo personals. If you can read, you can navigate easily as your finger clicks your way from one section to other section smoothly. It’s incredibly easy to use.
As to the designs, there is no fancy design, only clean and simple graphic here and they did this not without reason. They know how to build excellent dating websites that enhance your experience during your search of potential matches.
SafetyYou will receive a build-in email account dedicated for all your online dating communication purpose. You can only initiate contact and reply within yahoo personal members only. This is to ensure all your personal data is kept safe and your online dating experience is fun.
Help and Support:
Comprehensive help sections, you don’t need heavy tutorial here. Just take their flash video tour, you will understand why other online dating services need to have tutorial like this one.
Their customer care responds email within 24 hours.
I Like:
1. Vast date base – Tons of profiles
2. View similar profiles featureThis feature sounds very Amazon.com .If you like this book, you might also like these books - If you are browsing interesting personal you will be prompted to similar profiles to your likeable. The more chances you find someone or two.
3. Cute greeting and pre-select teasers.
Dislike:Hmm…Nope. Nada. I could not find it
Do I recommend it?Absolutely. With yahoo personal I am pleased and feel at home. Although yahoo personals only offers standard features and not as rich-features as Match.com, it does an excellent job that not all online dating services can do better.
Finding a date at Yahoo Personal? You are dealing with their 3 excellent!Great Messaging Technology, comprehensive search capability and strong community –building features. With these 3 excellences, they will boost your online dating experience to a higher level of love seeking
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