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Lavalife.com is an online singles dating site and also a friendship site. Lavalife is based in Toronto, Canada and according to its corporate information; it currently has over 600,000 active registered users in that region alone! Lavalife was launched in 1997 and was one of the first online dating providers to give video messaging to [...] |
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LavaLife Canada
Lavalife.com is an online singles dating site and also a friendship site. Lavalife is based in Toronto, Canada and according to its corporate information; it currently has over 600,000 active registered users in that region alone! Lavalife was launched in 1997 and was one of the first online dating providers to give video messaging to its users.
Further demonstrating its technological savvy, Lavalife.com also offers telephone services to its North 
American and Australian users. With this feature, which is relatively uncommon and extremely useful, members can join the network, search for profiles and send “smiles” to other users – all from their phone.
Navigation on the site is easy. The site classifies its communities as for dating, for relationship, or for intimate encounters so users have a clear idea of what their potential mates are looking for. A menu at the top of the screen allows you to easily click to view a new section. Visitors can create their profiles for free, and search for other people in the database. It does not run on month-to-month subscription, but requires credits in order for the member to gain access to advanced features and services. Each member must buy credits in order to send and reply to messages, watch videos, and other features. This allows you to spend as much or as little as you want, depending on your budget and your interest, which is also very useful.
Another one of the excellent features is that members can respond to emails for free! Most dating services force you to pay a monthly fee to have access to your emails from other users and to respond to them. With LavaLife.com, you are allowed to respond to any email you receive for free. Since it’s free to read emails you receive and respond it provides a huge advantage to LavaLife users over other services. Most sites have monthly fees and annoy you with automatic monthly charges “for your convenience.” – Not LavaLife, thankfully.
As with all services, there are some downsides to using LavaLife for online dating. For one, you can’t turn off the Instant Messaging feature. This is highly annoying, particularly to women, who have trouble browsing because they are always being interrupted with someone wanting to Instant Message them. The service would be greatly improved if you could toggle this feature on or off, depending on your preference.
Also, while common to most dating sites, fake profiles for people pop up often and it is irritating to find out you’ve been communicating (or trying to at least!) with someone who doesn’t really exist. LavaLife.com seems to kill fake profiles quickly, which cuts down on this frustration, but it still happens more than it should. They also provide a code of ethics for its users in order to ensure safety for all users and have a top of the line security system in place to protect your personal information and identity.
Overall, I really like that LavaLife hasn’t fallen into the trap of many other dating services that force both people to be members in order to communicate. Allowing free members to respond to emails for free is a great selling point. LavaLife.com is pleasant on the eyes and fairly easy to navigate. If they can overcome the problems associated with their Instant Messaging feature and allow users to see and communicate only with people identified in the age range they set, then the service will be much improved.
LavaLife is a little pricey but the fact that I can use it from my phone is awesome and definitely worth it! There are also a ton of profiles from the Toronto area.
The dating pool isn’t as extensive as some of the other sites I’ve tried (like Yahoo) but being able to use it from my phone was awesome and I really like the IM feature too. It makes flirting so much easier for me! I’m still using the service but I wish it was a little cheaper.
I used the service for awhile and thought it was pretty expensive. While I did have it, though, I met some great girls nearby using the IM feature. Much more meaningful than “smiling” or “winking” or whatever some of those other sites had me do to show interest.
Lavalife: I was the victim of a cyber bullying by two people a man and his cyber girlfriend. They produced not a handful but hundreds and hundreds of profiles on lavalife. They stole photos and identities from other people. If the man likes a girl he talks to on lavalife he comes time and time again under different profiles to talk to this girl. He used to get his girlfriend to talk to them and relay the information but now he has found out that she is lieing to him. Many of these profiles are still operational. They also targeted the children in my family through their facebook, myspace and bebo sites. They call these profiles family names so they are accepted.