Today, we launch a new service on Forumosa:
Forumosa [color=darkred]Friends[/color] (http://friends.forumosa.com)
Forumosa Friends is a “friend-finder” service - you can look for (and be found by) potential partners - romantic-, friendly-, travel-, etc.
Registration is free (your Forumosa Friends profile and registration are completely distinct from your Forumosa Forum identity), but if you want to make contact with the people you find there, you will be asked to upgrade to a premium level (and that has a cost)
Forumosa Friends is part of the Meta4-Group - so the people in this network are NOT only Forumosans or only in Taiwan. Meta4 Group has run this network for several years now, so there are thousands of profiles from around the globe already there.
Please share your thoughts and feedback in this forum. Meta4 operates that service, and we get a commission for Forumosans who register AND subsequently upgrade their Forumosa Friends account to the premium level.
Well done. It is a bold move and although you may get some criticism from people who see it as opportunistic profiteering, anything that increases the likelihood of people "hooking up"with other people, in whatever form that may take, is for the good. Taiwan Ho and Tealit have services of this kind but neither site is even nearly as well known as Forumosa.
Haha! I thought you were serious about this until I clicked on the link and saw those weird photos, and the actual ads. Those two photos of the laughing people are hilarious. Very funny. :bravo:
I signed up for this thing about a month ago. My beef:
You need to be a little more upfront about the cost of contacting other members. I had put 45 min of my life into setting it up before I found out I really could not use it for anything without paying quite a bit. The dissapointment was more off-putting than it would have been had I known about the fees upfront. I could find no mention of these fees in the sign up area.
Again, the fees. By US standards, they are probibly about right, but for your run of the mill Taiwanese worker the are staggering! It hardly constitutes a “community” when 9/10ths of your available members are financially unable to speak.
Tetsuo wrote [quote]So you can register for free, but if you want to actually use your registration for anything more than just looking, you have to pay?[/quote]
Exactly, which makes a joke of the website’s constant harping on about being “free”. I find it a little distasteful for a community site like Forumosa.
So, why not be upfront about the costs?
Well, possibly beacuse it might be construed as flying in the face of everything this community oriented site seems to stand for… But hey, I’m a newbie. Far be it from me to preach tradition when I just crashed the congregation a month ago.
Crap! You mean it is not a joke then? Come on! Did you see the facial expressions on the laughing people? Or some of the featured ads…one guy said he liked small rocks, and there was a person who said they liked “Orientals”. Hallo! It can’t be real, can it?
I met a guy (at the HH) who told me he paid the US$25, and has recieved 40 emails in a week.
I agree with everyone about being very upfront about the costs. It’s a credibility issue. There’s nothing wrong with charging for a service that is free via tealit, although I doubt we’ll make much money from it, but we have to be seen to be honest with our members.
If people start feeling like they are a ‘resource’ to be milked then they will stay away in their droves. That goes for having excessive advertising too. There are ways to make money from forumosa without making people feel exploited.
And I just noticed the ad for forumosa friends here in this forum. Im playing drumset in a band!Im a very happy and nice girl…when u are interested I will talk with you…bye bye kisses Tacky. Tacky. Tacky. It’s overtly commercial crap.
Forumosa is fantastic in spite of itself, why ruin a good thing. Surely with all the business expertise residing in this community their couldn’t be found a better way to support this site and provide some money for those who spend time running it.
See, you pay a reasonable fee, say US199 for a year, and then you don’t have to deal with all the tacky ads that drove everyone else away and made the place a ghost town. And alone in your cyberparadise you laugh and play and ever so slowly go mad…
Thinking with your small head again? It’s got me into all kinds of trouble in the past.
We have our own advertising site in testing right now. Use it to attract punters by offering a free service, then add on a few ‘for-profit’ bits such as advertising for taipeimanwhores.com or Maoman’s new speed-dating venture.
ie use the personals to enhance the site, not to spoil it.
If there were some way to post an anonymous profile that would be great.
