One common thread amongst those who complain about me and my services is this:
“She’s taking advantage of geeks!”
I even had one guy take it a step further and say that I was taking advantage of people with autism-spectrum disorders.
*blink*
Yeah, I know.
But I’m not here to defend myself – I’ve done that before. I know who I am – a geek – and I know what’s in my heart – the desire to help other geeks find love using my writing skills and experience in the online dating world. If you want to question my motives, knock yourself out. But check out my service pages and you’ll see testimonials from all my happy clients.
Which leads me to my Exhibit A for what Taking Advantage of Geeks looks like:
http://www.geekmatchmaking.com
Go on, check it out. (Not linking directly to prevent their angry mobs from seeing the traffic from here and coming to visit.)
Write Geek Enough, and It’s Now Geek Dating!
Other than the word “geek” plastered all over the page and one shitty JPG of a laptop with love glasses, there’s nothing about this site that says it’s made by geeks for geeks. In fact, it looks an awful lot like a bunch of other shitty dating sites, but with some “creative” copy written by a $3/hr freelance copywriter from India.
The Fine Print Says It All
Now, do me a favor and scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the footer. You’ll see a line that says “Powered by World Dating Partners.” Anybody know what that means?
It’s known as a white label site, which means that as the dating site owner, all you need to do is customize your site and put it out there, and EVERYTHING ELSE gets taken care of by your company, in this case World Dating Partners. To be clear, this means the site comes pre-stocked with profiles from other white label sites. To be extra clear, the people you find on the site may not have signed up for geek dating at all.
To see what white label looks like in action, compare:
http://www.geekmatchmaking.com/static/stories/feedback.do
http://www.dating.com/static/stories/feedback.do
http://www.makefriendsfast.net/static/stories/feedback.do
http://www.australian.summer-romance.com/static/stories/feedback.do
Success Stories?
Also, if you Google the “success stories” you’ll notice they show up on multiple sites, sometimes with small details changed, but often not.
But hey, why wait for legitimate success stories that you’ll never get? Why not just use the same success stories that every other white label site uses and tweak them to work for geeks?
Sad.
Dater Beware!
How can you tell a legitimate geek dating site?
- It looks like it’s run by geeks.
- It’s not powered by a white label company.
- The members have geeky profiles.
- The success stories don’t show up on other sites. (Google is your friend!)
- You ask around and hear good things about it from other geeks.
Where Can A Geek Date?
Want a geek specific dating site?
My #1 geek dating site (other than my own, which is a bit different!) is definitely SoulGeek.com. Up to nearly 19,000 members, SoulGeek is a site run BY geeks FOR geeks.
Check out my interview with founder Dino Andrade, J’s interview with Soulgeek spokesman Richard Hatch of Battlestar Gallactica, or follow Soulgeek on Twitter. They’re great people who run a great niche dating site.
About e
Yea, unfortunately all the major dating companies are jumping on the “niche dating” bandwagon and end up creating thousands of these crappy spam sites. It’s too bad because it’s really cluttering up the landscape…
.-= Matt Savage´s last blog ..My Cougar Dating Story =-.
Also look at geek 2 geek (google it). Not a “white label” site as you describe it, but a pure dating site, which soulgeek is not. I think they have over 100,000 members which makes a huge difference.
@ Don – I don’t think it’s a problem that SoulGeek isn’t a “pure” dating site. Finding dates through mutual friends happens all the time, so the more friends we have, the merrier! SoulGeek has also taken the time to reach out to me and talk with me on several occasions, while Gk2Gk has not (even though I have emailed them). I plug the folks that I know are connected with the geek community and see them as more than a means to a paycheck. I can’t say that for Gk2Gk yet. They’re welcome to contact me so I can interview them!
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this; I just wish I’d read it before I signed up for Geekmatchmaking.com, which was a disastrous experience. Being a nerd from New York, I eagerly joined (despite noticing that the happy couples on the interim registration pages looked like they’d been provided by the same company that makes inserts for picture frames). Next thing I know my mailbox is being deluged with email from guys from developing countries who speak little to no English and clearly hadn’t signed up through Geekmatchmaking.com themselves; I doubt most of them would have known what a “geek” was. Then I do a little research into their testimonials — yeah, there’s no mention of these jackholes on CNET. It’s a feeder site into some much larger international personals universe (presumably every company that World Dating Partners runs) that has absolutely nothing to do with the niche Geekmatchmaking purports to cater to, and the whole thing is just a scam. When I canceled my profile, they suggested that I hit one of their two “partners,” one of which was adult
Sorry, to finish the above, one of the “partners” was an “adult” dating site and the other was geared toward the South Asian community (although if both are the same kind of fake niche site as Geek was, subscribers are in for a nasty surprise, as I frankly think they had all of the various subscribers from their “partners” thrown in there together anyway).
@Don Brooks Stop trolling! Everybody out there thinking of trying Geek 2 Geek, google ‘Don Brooks geek 2 geek.’ Don is either the biggest fan of Geek to Geek (amazing how often he posts about how great Gk2Gk is) or there is a troll lurking about. What is that… I just rolled a 20?! One more dead troll
PS – I know it is 2 years since “Don” posted on here, just wanted to inform anyone passing by.