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Driving around the eastside we've noticed a bunch of guerilla advertising signs tucked into soft shoulders and median strips curbside: the first was SilverLakeSingles.com. We were vaguely curious, perhaps giving a moment or two of thought to why they hadn't done somethingmore hipster, like pasteups, then reconsidered in light of Sony's backlash. Then we let it go.
Until we drove by AtwaterSingles.com. And EagleRockSingles.com, HighlandParkSingles.com, SouthPasadenaSingles.com — you get the idea.
They are identical "dating" sites with individual logos for the separate names. But we're not convinced these are actually sites for dating — an awful lot of demographic info is required in order to enter (annual salary, 2 phone numbers, work schedule). And you must supply the best time for the sites to contact you. Sounds like some kind of shady marketing firm to us.
Is your neighborhood represented with one of these creepy sites? We came up empty for Santa Monica, Venice, Echo Park, East LA, Glassel Park, Mt. Washington and Pasadena. We're curious what's inside, but we didn't dare enter.
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I live in Washington DC and we have these signs, too! Definitely some sort of crazy marketing scam.....
So sketchy.
It's a private domain registration. The sites all seem to have been procured in march of this year.
The membership login is buried at the bottom of the site and there's not one single piece of contact info.
Sketch!
and from the meta tags in the site source
"Singles Service @ Singles.com! Singles.com provides dating services to Singles. Meet other singles on Singles.com. Search for members that are Catholic, Single and are looking for Dating, Chat Room, Chat and Catholic Dating Service."
"singles,personals,personal ads,dating,match,Catholic singles,Catholic personals,Catholic personal ads,Catholic dating,Catholic match, Born Again singles,Born Again personals,Born Again personal ads,Born Again dating,Born Again match"
I was getting around to doing a post about this very subject over at the Pedro blog. We've been getting sanpedrosingles.com sign doohickeys all over for about a month or so. I've seen torrancesingles.org signs around in that neck of the woods as well. I've considered an exploratory joining in the spirit of investigative blogging, but I can't stomache the concept of supporting "real world" spammers.
Honestly, LakewoodSingles.com (saw when I was rolling through my parents' neighborhood)? Who would even want to touch anything from that part of LA County? Essh...
I'm in Torrance and I've seen those afore mentioned torrancesingles.org and redondobeachsingles.com (or maybe it was redondosingles) signs. Perhaps others. Not currently in the market myself so my level of curiousity has been cursory but now I am a little more intrigued.
Someone must know what is behind this...
I've seen those in the SF bay area as well.
Actually these signs are in Pasadena, but I think the city yanked them very quickly.
The stock photos at the sites are hilarious. Does anyone at silverlakesingles.com look like someone who'd set foot in Silver Lake, let alone live there?
Notice there is not even a privacy policy on the site. Sketch-o-rama.
They're not just in CA. I work in New Jersey, and see these things all the time. Check piscatawaysingles.com
They're not just in CA. I work in New Jersey, and see these things all the time. Check piscatawaysingles.com
re:"local" dating sites... it's a nationwide scam.
We have signs exactly like this in my neighborhood in Las Vegas, and I went to their site and entered my info to see what would happen...
They feed your info to the local branch of Great Expectations, which I always thought was a legit dating service. It's not. I actually made an appointment with them and went down to their local branch, where they put me through a high pressure sales routine trying to get me to buy a dating package for $2700!
I wrote up the full story back in February at:
http://foryourentertainment.blogspot.com/2006/02/bottom-feeders-of-dating-pool.html
We have those in Austin also... They're really annoying... Just when we started getting rid of all the Herbalife signs :-P