Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Practicum Post #2-Kristin

JDate.com’s mission is “We create families and build the Jewish community.” You can be as involved as you want to be on JDate. People of all ages 18+ are members and have profiles. You can message or email people you want to talk to depending on what you subscribe to on the website because there are restrictions. You can only send 10-15 messages or e-mails a month to people you would like to talk to. I think the reason for this is so people treat the website seriously and don’t abuse it or violate people’s privacy. In one success story I read, the man talked about how he had a JDate account for a while and the women he sent messages to were not interested or just did not respond back to him. He said that he became discouraged from the lack of responses he received and deleted his account. A year later, he signed up again and looked through the profiles of women that were attractive to him, and he ended up falling in love and getting married.

The website is very interesting to me because there is a lot you can do as a member and the site makes it very user friendly to navigate. You can look up, read about, and post comments on success stories. JDate news and success stories are shown in JMag. The website also has a JDate alumni news section, where those that met on JDate can share pictures of their new born children (JBaby) and blog family updates. There is also a separate JDate alumni community through the website. There are links to the JMagazine, which is the Jewish Magazine. There is also a JBlog, where JDate members can blog about anything Jewish, about the website, or finding relationships.

There are barely any ads on the website because they charge a monthly fee to be an active member (which I’m just a member with a profile). The ads are usually of something for or about a wedding, which makes sense because the website encourages and promotes long lasting Jewish relationships. The other ads they post on the website are promoted by JDate because they are group or community trips to a vacation hot spot during a specific time period. Right now they are promoting a Club Med trip to Ixtapa Pacific from March-May. Something that really stuck out to me on the website was that JDate has an ad shown in Times Square NYC. I did not know the website was that well known or reputable to put an ad out in Times Square.

The one thing I can’t do, but I wish I could is to be able to communicate to other JDate members. However, I cannot because I do not want to pay the monthly fee. The website is very protective of its members. I tried to get into a chat room without paying the monthly subscription and it wouldn’t let me. The fact that you have to pay keeps people, like me, who are not actually serious about finding a relationship through the website. The website is heavily monitored and there is a disclaimer that says “Members engaging in sexual, vulgar, abusive, or inappropriate behavior in chat and IM will be deleted from the site. Chat and IM conversations may be scanned by the abuse team. Please report abuse.” The website is respectable and does not want random people to harass anyone serious looking for a relationship.

1 comment:

  1. Kristin, have you notice any other members that just have a profile? Can you do anything when you just have a profile? I only ask because when using Bebo for my practicum, I joined Zoosk as an add on application. It is impossible to really be a part of the community on Zoosk without paying. You can merely see who views your profile, but yet you still can't look at there's without paying a monthly fee? Have you been able to participate at all without paying?

    ReplyDelete