After some more site snafus (and this as a paying member — I decided to upgrade, and things improved quite a bit) I ended up googling this mysterious “Various Inc” thing. Jesus, it is sleazy — they also run all this fake “find a date” crap that’s essentially just pornography. This Andrew character seems to have made a name for himself as a major league sleazeball — fine, run a porn site, but wow, he really attracts the anonymous slander (of which I guess I am now a part.)

Now I don’t know what to think. I didn’t experience any privacy violations, and the card I used to purchase membership is now expired, so I’m not too worried on that side. But still — things do not look good for Homestarrunner.

I’m going to stick with Nerve for awhile longer. Major parts of the site still function. But at the first hint of real trouble — privacy violations, spam, etc. — I am out, and starting a dispute for the balance of the fees. Listening, Andrew?

In the meantime, I can’t help feel burnt. There are competitors springing (ha) up to nab to hip market (ugh), but I’m like, do I want to go through this crap again? Somebody needs to get some credibility back in the game. I don’t know how. I don’t want Nerve to crash, I want it to succeed.

1) Their Mail being lost
2) Their profiles being deleted
3) Previously private information (like birthdates) being revealed
4) Lost credits that had been recently purchased
5) Those credits now being worth half what they used to. I had just purchased 24 credits, with which I could have contacted 24 people. Now, under the new system, I can contact 12 people with that same amount. That was not what I paid for.
6) Removing basic features from people who don’t use the subscriber model. Most sites let you search based on distance from your geographical area. At the new Fast Cupid, you have to be a subscriber to make that basic search. They’ve cripled the site for people who aren’t on the monthly subscription service.
7) There was no warning of these changes. There was a brief note that new features were going to be added. Nothing was said of changing the entire paradigm of the site.
8) Peoples profiles were changed and merged arbitrarily. They were not given any choices on how to accomplish these changes. And if they had conversations going with people through one of the profiles that was lost. Oh well.
9) I had an actual date disrupted by this changeover, and the loss of all of my emails.

Why didn’t they just leave a good, simple system alone? The interface is horrendous and shows a lack of design know-how.

Oh, and FastCupid people? Translating my “Drink often” to “Drink heavily” might mean the same thing to you, but it doesn’t to me.

http://www.othersingles.com/springtoothersingles.cfm

Various Inc (parent company of Friend Finder)
445 Sherman Ave., Ste. C
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Phone: 650-847-3100
Fax: 650-324-9379
Email: billing@friendfinderinc.com

Are you talking about only 1% complaining about changes to your own site? Or Springstreet?

All you have to do is read the blog comments before they are deleted, to get a sense of scale of the outcry. I didn’t know about the complaints on the blogs before Springstreet/Salon staff told me about them. I doubt that the average user of the old site bothered with the blogs, so you don’t see their complaints.

Staff at Salon and Nerve have been receiving a barrage of complaints, and what is more at least at Salon they are writing back.

And if it weren’t for a vocal few, I doubt we’d have any of the civic rights we have in this country. Not to compare this situation to a civil rights struggle, but it is a vocal minority that forces social change.

Nope, you don’t need to sign up for a Premium membership to contact people, you can just buy “points” which I think go for a rate of 200 points per dollar (the rate may depend on how many you buy at once, I’m not sure), and it costs 200 points to contact someone–so it’s just like the old credits system, basically. Also, you don’t have to have a Premium membership for non-paying members to see your profile–just log in, you’ll see that you can still view all the “Standard” (non-paying) member profiles.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=fastcupid&hl=en

I wonder how long it will be until they change back? Or; When will the affiliates begin jumping? It looks like nyobserver.com is gone, gone, gone.

I feel FastCupid is taking most of the blame here, but, Nerve/SpringStreet did this to you – they agreed to the (terms undisclosed) ‘deal’ with FC, to make money for themselves – and to fuck you.

Never poke fun at a moose.

Under the new model a monthly fee of ~$20 is needed to contact someone, plus if you want your profile to be viewed by non-paying members, you have to pay an additional $20/month.

It is hard to see how many users will stick around – aside from the volume users and spammers.