I signed up at TRUE, never joined officially… but I got all the emails from them saying they had in my inbox responding to supposed ones I sent. They also suggested that I had other people wanting to meet me… just check my inbox. When I did check my inbox, it was empty.
hmmm. I found it more annoying than tantalizing. It made me wonder which profiles were even real!
jon

Perhaps we are all missing something, but I have never gotten the “we are into strengthening marriage” stance when all we see is pseudo-porn coming from this company.

Advertising is everything. The voluptuous female models used in TRUE advertisements suggest to me a website that is more an escort service than a dating site.
Our website (Manhunt.net) which is a dating site for gay men, had a similar problem when we advertised in Mexico. Our shirtless male models in the ads suggested to the customers that we were offering street hustlers rather than dates. When we replaced the models with ones wearing shirts, our target market got the correct message of who we are.

Many people believe internet dating sites are full of nubile young girls & hunky sex gods who (for reasons never quite explained) want nothing more than to randomly bed anyone who can master a keyboard sufficiently to reply to mail.
Tactics such as your example are not only unethical (not to mention illegal), they also propagate those fallacies. This effectively scares off ‘decent’ users, such as your friend, whilst encouraging the most unsavoury types to increase their net use.
Very few people use just one site, so those encouraged in one place will expand their interests to all: Until practices like this are stamped out, sites such as ours will continue to spend long hours every week rejecting the married men, offensive mailers and outright perverts encouraged onto the net by fake ‘easy sex’ mails.
As the only site that’s been willing to really put their money where their mouth is and keep turning away such members, for over six years now, I feel we’ve earned the right to say it’s about time the rest of our Industry stopped posturing and started doing. The whole industry needs to clean up it’s act, not only ethically but morally too.

oops sorry Sam – the only site I know (knew) of 🙂

For us it’s the friendship aspect. Our singles particulary want to cultivate friendships, the mindset being if they find more it’s a bonus rather than an expectation. And we have lots of married members too (genuine ones, often with both partners being members), because married people want friends as well 🙂
Much like your own site, the last thing our members want, having specifically chosen a non-sexual theme, is to be hit on by some wham bam merchant or an aspiring swinger! We chuck them off as soon as they’re reported but I have to admit some weeks the mere numbers make me wonder what society’s coming to.

I think TRUE is cheesy (for me – cheddar pleae), but hey, that is my opinion and thousands of other people registering each month may feel otherwise. Have they lost their way? Mmmm, no, I do not believe that THEY feel so – the campaigns that they run are not an accident; they are doing the best that they know how and for them to keep up such suggestive campaigns for as long a they have, must mean that there are are tangible results for the approach and expenses.
Anyway, each site is unique…TRUE is the answer for some and not others. Are they good for the industry? Depends on your perspective…you can view their T & A campaigns as a sore eye for the industry, or you can choose to see them as a good contrast for your members to realize the value of your dating community as a more legitimate, respectful site for singles to meet.
Personally, I appreciate the variety of personals sites out there (free, paying and all else in between); the power of choice is great for consumers and in many ways, good for dating operators.
Life is good.
– Saïd

It’s unclear why some1 may consider what TRUE is doing even being tactics. It’s a fraudulent CRM (customer relationship management). Some sites would bombard new freebies with server-generated messages. Some would “fake” emails from non-existent or fake members. But TRUE is trying to reinvent the fraud as usually, as it was the case with them reinventing publicity. It sounds they would distribute the server-generated emails to real members, making them to contact a newbie. This way it’s harder to detect the fraud while a contact between real members is provoked and initiated.
Nice! But it’s still fraud a-la TRUE.

I signed up at TRUE, never joined officially… but I got all the emails from them saying they had in my inbox responding to supposed ones I sent. They also suggested that I had other people wanting to meet me… just check my inbox. When I did check my inbox, it was empty.
hmmm. I found it more annoying than tantalizing. It made me wonder which profiles were even real!
jon

Perhaps we are all missing something, but I have never gotten the “we are into strengthening marriage” stance when all we see is pseudo-porn coming from this company.

Advertising is everything. The voluptuous female models used in TRUE advertisements suggest to me a website that is more an escort service than a dating site.
Our website (Manhunt.net) which is a dating site for gay men, had a similar problem when we advertised in Mexico. Our shirtless male models in the ads suggested to the customers that we were offering street hustlers rather than dates. When we replaced the models with ones wearing shirts, our target market got the correct message of who we are.

Many people believe internet dating sites are full of nubile young girls & hunky sex gods who (for reasons never quite explained) want nothing more than to randomly bed anyone who can master a keyboard sufficiently to reply to mail.
Tactics such as your example are not only unethical (not to mention illegal), they also propagate those fallacies. This effectively scares off ‘decent’ users, such as your friend, whilst encouraging the most unsavoury types to increase their net use.
Very few people use just one site, so those encouraged in one place will expand their interests to all: Until practices like this are stamped out, sites such as ours will continue to spend long hours every week rejecting the married men, offensive mailers and outright perverts encouraged onto the net by fake ‘easy sex’ mails.
As the only site that’s been willing to really put their money where their mouth is and keep turning away such members, for over six years now, I feel we’ve earned the right to say it’s about time the rest of our Industry stopped posturing and started doing. The whole industry needs to clean up it’s act, not only ethically but morally too.

oops sorry Sam – the only site I know (knew) of 🙂

For us it’s the friendship aspect. Our singles particulary want to cultivate friendships, the mindset being if they find more it’s a bonus rather than an expectation. And we have lots of married members too (genuine ones, often with both partners being members), because married people want friends as well 🙂
Much like your own site, the last thing our members want, having specifically chosen a non-sexual theme, is to be hit on by some wham bam merchant or an aspiring swinger! We chuck them off as soon as they’re reported but I have to admit some weeks the mere numbers make me wonder what society’s coming to.

I think TRUE is cheesy (for me – cheddar pleae), but hey, that is my opinion and thousands of other people registering each month may feel otherwise. Have they lost their way? Mmmm, no, I do not believe that THEY feel so – the campaigns that they run are not an accident; they are doing the best that they know how and for them to keep up such suggestive campaigns for as long a they have, must mean that there are are tangible results for the approach and expenses.
Anyway, each site is unique…TRUE is the answer for some and not others. Are they good for the industry? Depends on your perspective…you can view their T & A campaigns as a sore eye for the industry, or you can choose to see them as a good contrast for your members to realize the value of your dating community as a more legitimate, respectful site for singles to meet.
Personally, I appreciate the variety of personals sites out there (free, paying and all else in between); the power of choice is great for consumers and in many ways, good for dating operators.
Life is good.
– Saïd

It’s unclear why some1 may consider what TRUE is doing even being tactics. It’s a fraudulent CRM (customer relationship management). Some sites would bombard new freebies with server-generated messages. Some would “fake” emails from non-existent or fake members. But TRUE is trying to reinvent the fraud as usually, as it was the case with them reinventing publicity. It sounds they would distribute the server-generated emails to real members, making them to contact a newbie. This way it’s harder to detect the fraud while a contact between real members is provoked and initiated.
Nice! But it’s still fraud a-la TRUE.