The information was exposed by a blogger, Chris Soghoian. He was approached by the PR company, Burson-Marsteller, and asked to publish these anti-Google stories on his blog. He decided he did not want to continue with doing this and so made public the emails he had received form the marketing company.

There was much speculation about which company it could have been that were behind them. However, eventually The Daily beast, which is a news website uncovered that it was Facebook who were paying the PR company to do it.

Facebook has admitted that it was them who paid the PR company but have denied reports that it was a smear campaign. They claimed that they just wanted to make people aware of what Google was doing with their data.

It is no secret that Facebook and Google do not get on. They cannot agree on data sharing methods and they have also both worked hard at projecting a relaxed image of their companies being owned by laid back young men when in fact this has revealed the power and energy of the corporate giants.

It has not only damaged the reputation of the PR company but will have also tarnished that of Facebook, meaning that Google has come out as the victim, which is a good thing for them and certainly not the result that Facebook were looking for.

Dating Profile and Sign Up

You can just sign up to the site with an email and a username, but your profile will only be visible in the site by completing all of the sections. Sign-up is painless, and it’s reassuring to see that they promise not to share your data with any other sites or advertisers. There are two ways to create a profile. The Profile Wizard is the quick and painless way and good for starters – you choose from a series of word clouds, and a templated profile is created for you. Alternatively you can write it yourself (in my experience, you get a much better response if your write something personal).

Search and Contacting

You can search by several different criteria on IllicitEncounters.com (gender, location, photos etc.). Results are displayed in an easy-to-read list, with a photo and decent description. There were hundreds of female members in my area, who seemed of a much higher quality than I’ve seen on similar sites.

Contacting other members is only possible if you upgrade, but free membership thankfully gives you a very good idea of what you’re going to get if you do. Once upgraded, contact is simple (message or chat), and IE has the added option of showing your full conversation threads with other members meaning that you don’t have to sift through your inbox looking for earlier correspondence!

Special Features

Not so much a ‘feature’, but the site’s members just seem of a completely different league to most sites; intelligent, genuine, and refreshingly honest about what they’re looking for. Profile are well-written and heartfelt, and the response rate to messages is very good. Also, IE is unique in that it is policed by a human admin team, meaning that scammers and escorts are nowhere to be seen. The site are so confident that you won’t find any ‘professionals’ that they offer members free membership packages if they find one. If you have any problems, you can just pick up the phone and call them – a world away from the White Label sites that make it impossible for you to contact them. I also like the ‘Panic’ button which instantly takes you to an innocuous site such as Google should your other half inadvertently enter the room whilst you’re surfing Illicit Encounters.

It also bears repeating that you can try out 95% of the site without even signing up. It’s nice to know that the site trust their success enough to invite possible members in to try it out for themselves without paying a penny.

Conclusion

IllicitEncounters.com is one of the more expensive dating sites out there, but you pay for what you get – a real quality service and access to thousands of genuine, like-minded individuals. Most definitely the wisest choice for UK spouses looking for a bit of extramarital fun.

Smooch so far..

I signed up and created a profile, so far I’ve been quite impressed. Each user gets free messaging, the ability to see if messages have been read and to see who has viewed there profile. So far I’ve had two messages since yesterday! Although nothing that will turn into anything or at least I don’t think so..

Overall the features Smooch Provides for free are extremely good! On par with some other smaller dating sites. That said I’ve still had most success with Dating Direct.

So how do Services such as Smooch make money? Well interrior pages of Smooch contain Adsense which is supplied by Google. Everytime a user clicks on an advert the site earns a small amount of money. Much the same as you can see on the right hand side of this site. Please don’t just click it though.

I posted a Casual Sex based ad for Kensington London.. obviously as a woman and got 220 responses in 3 hours, that is crazy shit.

Most of which would jump of a bridge to have sex with my fictional character, let alone sign-up to anything.

Not that I would recommend doing that..

I’m going to “attempt” to write a WordPress Plugin allowing updates on both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Wish me luck

In case you weren’t aware Will Young the Pop Idol winner graduated at Exeter University and has been a long supporter of Positive Action South West, thus having strong roots to the South West.

This whole event was his idea, to raise awareness of AIDS and money for the local AIDS Charity. Awesome job.

See you there!

Faceparty was the UK’s biggest Social Networking Site (although they don’t like it being called that). In its prime it was an awesome place which I made many new friends through. Probably the best “party” or “social networking” site I’ve ever been a member of, until I was removed.

What happened?

In 2008 the company that owned the site CIS Internet was facing bankruptcy and sold it to a new company Anarchy Towers Ltd. We were lead to believe the site was sold on a per-profile basis and not all profiles were purchased. A huge 7 million profiles were deleted. This coincided with new Child Protection Laws which required Social Network sites to verify email addresses so they could be checked against a Sex Offenders list. Which Faceparty had never done..

So in conclusion.. Its never been 100% clear what happened, but the site has unfortunately only ever limped on since. I eagerly await the day Registrations are reopened so I can rejoin =D

Alternatives

There are a number of alternative sites you can use instead of Faceparty:

• Dating Direct

Faceparty Password

At the point of the site being acquired in 2008 the site had become over run with affiliate spammers who were promoting porn websites. FaceParty’s new owners implemented an invite only system which mean’t one of the remaing 200,000 users had to invite you.

I actually managed to get a password a couple of times, however for some reason my accounts were both removed at later dates. No idea why?

If you would like to offer an invite or are looking for an alternative I hope my article as helped!

Original Post:

Finally got a new Faceparty account, the password is easy to find just Google it. My partner didn’t lose his so I could have just got him to invite me, but I never seemed to get it working?

I think maybe my e-mail got banned because of my tutorial on viewing private content? who knows

Advertising on Facebook is still Unsolicited Junk to the browser/visitor.

Search its a completely different ball game, the browser is actively out looking for your Product or Service. After all, a young girl doesn’t always buy perfume for herself. Search Engine adverts are anticipated and relevant. Facebook isn’t.

That isn’t to say Facebook isn’t helpful in building a brand and it will get converions, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all like every affiliate marketer is making out.

Still its nice not to be getting millions of comments per day. I do have to admit to having about five MySpace accounts linking back to this domain name, all with over 1,000 friends each. However I don’t see the need to Comment Spam, Message Spam or Bulletin Spam.

Well done Tom!