[Atlasphere] Why the Atlasphere isn?t like Match.com

[O-Land News Junkie]

We’ve had more than 100 new members join in the last 24 hours, on the strength of this mention on the NY Times blog.

One of our new subscribers just sent us the following feedback, which highlights a key aspect of the Atlasphere’s business model that most members probably aren’t aware of:

...Speaking of credit, I’d like to “credit” the Atlasphere for not requiring that both boy and girl be subscribed in order to communicate through the dating site. As you know, Match.com and others require both parties to subscribe before communcation can occur, and so a large percentage of the “available” women (and men, I’ll guess) on these sites are not truly available because they haven’t subscribed. This is borderline fraud in my opinion, and I’m glad to see that at least one site has the integrity to be fair to its customers...but I shouldn’t be surprised, because this is exactly what one would expect from an Objectivist-affiliated business.

Keep up the good work!

Couldn’t have said it better myself. When the person you’re writing to must have a paid subscription to respond, and less than 1% of the members have subscriptions (which is quite common on mega-sites like Match.com), that means you’re 100 times less likely to be able to strike up a conversation — and your subscription has 1/100th the value you thought it would.

That has always seemed awful to me.

The Atlasphere’s policy, here, is beneficial not only for subscribers, but for free members as well — because even if you don’t have a subscription yourself, you can still meet people on the Atlasphere by simply replying (for free) whenever a subscriber contacts you.

And neither of you must figure out stealthy ways conceal your e-mail address in your message.

http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/743.php