One of the older dating sites still running, Casual Kiss is a well rounded and well populated dating site offering a large number of additional features and contact options for either free or very inexpensively.
Overview from Casual Kiss
"The best (and cheapest) dating site! Where else do you get blogs, clubs, chat, and community all in one nice little package?"
What a Casual Kiss Membership Includes
At the time of publishing this review, Casual Kiss was offering free memberships with the caveat that perhaps at some time in the future they would charge for their services again. (See the Membership Costs section of this review for more information).
With that in mind, a membership with Casual Kiss allows for full access to every corner of this information-rich and feature-heavy site, including:
- People and Search: Dating personals, dating clubs, local dating events, and which members are celebrating a birthday today;
- Words: Confessions (where dating members admit their most intimate secrets to all other members and where other members can comment in turn), blogging, message boards, dreams (same as confessions but instead about member dreams), horoscopes and dating advice;
- Media: Hot or Not, video messaging, voice messaging and photo albums;
- Interact: Features such as who's seen me, who's interested, who's voted for me (for member of the week), blogs I'm mentioned on, address book, subscriptions to message boards and blogs, my secret crush, my voyeurs, my reject list and who's winked at me.
Unique Features of Casual Kiss
There are so many unique features at the Casual Kiss dating site - which are constantly changing and being updated to include newer things - that its hard to keep up. Some of the more unusual features include:
- The ability to change the look and/or color scheme of the Casual Kiss site based on personal preferences;
- A chat room which not only includes text chat but also webcam chat with users from all over the world;
- A networking feature similar to Facebook or MySpace;
- A one-click search feature for other members looking for a "one night stand", which Casual Kiss defines as "members who are looking for a quick date in the next 24 hours';
- Voting privileges for Member of the Week and Hot or Not;
- A "voyeuring" feature showing who has looked at your profile recently;
- The option to blog, post a photo diary, or send eCards to other members.
Casual Kiss Membership Costs
Fees for Casual Kiss have fluctuated immensely over the years. At first the site was completely free during an extended (almost five years) beta test, and then it was sold to a company who started to charge a small monthly fee (less than $5) for full access to all of Casual Kiss' services. Now Casual Kiss' main web page states, "Put away your credit card and email your a** off!" but there is still a link on every personal members' page to a subscription offer - which currently tells users there is no need to pay for services at this time, but "when required" there will be a $5/month or $14.95/year fee for full service access.
