I’m a regular on InterPals (http://www.interpals.net) which is basically the same — language exchange, penpals, cultural exchange, etc., but completely free (and I’ve got to say the design is a lot better).

As Ross points out, TC kind of misrepresented WF (it’s more of a dating site than a social network) — but this isn’t immediately clear even when you go to the site (they try to rope you in with the “sign up for free” bs). Still, I would definitely recommend checking out the legitimate free competitors out there (but hey, this is more controversial, which is always good!). Sites abound: interpals, italki, mailfriends, xlingo, etc.

Anyway, just my 2¢

It’s disappointing for me to see the Bermuda based meta4group get plugged on TC and score a yahoo deal because they are not about education, dating, language learning, international friendship making, getting travel tips… or any such legitimate purpose. They are about making money… at the expense of their customers. They are an anti-service.

Through their affiliates, they say… “join FREE today” and “Register Free”: http://www.japa...panzonefriends/

They let the poor sap look at all the pretty models, try to contact one but can’t as they need to register first. So they register, fill out pages of info about themselves, upload photos and then there’s the “invite your friends” feature, allowing them to upload their outlook express addressbook for automatic emailing of an invite to all their real friends.

All of this takes place BEFORE they try to contact that model of their dreams picture that initially led them to signing up. Only THEN is it communicated to them that they have to pay up… and pay up BIG.

My guess is, the only money this company makes, is from people who just spent the past 2 hours building their profile and don’t want to waste that time, so opt to pony up for a month.

Oh, and then there’s the people who didn’t cancel their subscription on time, or forget or weren’t aware it’s reoccurring, so get hit up again each month until they figure it out.

Just imagine how you would feel if you had used their “service” and sent out a batch of email to all your real friends inviting them to join also… having been misled the whole time that it was for free.

Adultfriendfinder can get away with it because they are porn. LinkedIn has similarities in how they work, but the nuanced differences are large enough to keep them in the pool of reputability.

To use this kind of bait and switch tactic to exploit and prey on the language learning community is something I find to be particularly diabolical.

Although this article positions them as social network and dating, the reality is most people use the site for dating and the model works for that – if they position themselves too closely as a social network it will be more difficult for them to charge a membership fee.

“Social Dating” is a developing concept which I think we’ll see more of in 2009.

Ross

TECH CRUNCH — Nov 1 — WorldFriends, the Tokyo- and Shanghai-based social network, which now has nearly 2m users from all over the world, did a soft (re)launch last week, mainly enhancing a number of networking features. WorldFriends is walking…

This worldfriend , like many dating sites, is just another booty call meeting place business model – tailored to Asian market- with the pretense of “cross-cultural networking, finding international penpals, getting travel tips and learning foreign languages ” .

Good for whoever came up with the idea.

One of the reasons that they do well is they actually have an array of domains and skins leading to the same user database

So some guy in clevland may goto http://www.paktology.com which is advertised as a site to meet asian girls . But some girl in Beijing will goto wordfriends thinking she is going to meet someone to learn english

we used to spend $25 for a medium-sized pizza or club entrance fee in Tokyo. and that was a regular price. $25 in Japan for entertainment is nothing.

trust me

Makes it easier to stand out from the crowd on POF. I do have correct aspect ratio images.