ThaiLoveLinks, Thailand’s Singles Site
Summary
Genre: AsianThe Good:
A nice, easy to use site with a friendly group of people, it's a convenient and safe spot to meet Thai men or women here whether you're looking for a new spouse or a just a friend.The Bad:
I didn't find any serious negatives at ThaiLovelinks, the only minus being that the format has a bit of a "templated feel" about it.I found ThaiLoveLinks to be a lively, sociable place that fills the needs of a wide variety of singles searching for love, sex or friendship. On the one hand there are Western guys looking for pretty Thai girls, but there are also Thai women and men looking locally.
I was invited to try out ThaiLoveLinks by a friend of mine. She’d been using it for a while and said she’d had some great experiences there. The first thing to know about this site is that they don’t care if you’re a Thai or even Asian for that matter. The community is open and welcoming whether you’re there to find your next Mr/Mrs Right or if you just want to browse around for an afternoon.
I came across men and women looking for a variety of different relationships. Here are a few examples of what I found:
- People looking for foreign marriages (mostly Thai women)
- Men and women looking for an online friendship rather than anything deep and committed
- Thai locals dating amongst themselves. Mostly they hang-out in their own groups
- European/American males looking for Thai girls to marry
- Younger people looking for online chat. Many are keen to practice their English skills!
- Older men looking for MUCH younger women
This list is by no means exhaustive as you can readily meet people looking for just about any type of relationship.
How Do I Get Started on ThaiLovelinks?
Right on the home page, ThaiLoveLinks allows you to create a profile for free under their standard membership. This is the same for all Cupid Media sites, of which ThaiLovinks is one.
The extended range of chat and communication tools and easy interface make it appealing and fun to use.
Communication: You’ll need a paid membership to send and receive emails to other standard members on ThaiLoveLinks. If you upgrade to a gold membership, you’ll also receive instant messaging and your profile will rank higher in the search page. You’ll also have greater flexibility in putting personal information in your email messages.
Premium features: With a platinum membership, you’ll have access to video messaging and a translation program. That helps you communicate with your friends even if you don’t speak the same language. However given that there are lots of free online translators, I feel that it probably isn’t worth upgrading just for that alone.
Standard members can:
- Create a profile and add up to five photos
- View other people’s personal ads in full, including all photos
- Send flirts to break the ice
- Search for people by any criteria they put on their profile
- Certify yourself, so others can see you’re real
- Talk to Gold/Platinum members using email
- Receive online help and support (24×7)
A premium upgrade lets you:
- Send emails to anyone on the site (including other standard members)
- Use the personality matching system
- Use text, video and voice chat
- Prioritize your ad so that you appear at the top of searches
- Use the language translator program
- Send and receive video and voice emails to your matches
Finding Your Love Match
There are several different ways of finding people you click with at ThaiLovelinks. Firstly, the advanced search feature allows you to narrow down your matches to find exactly who you’re looking for.
Fill in your personality profile: When you upgrade, one of the most useful perks is that you get to complete a “personality profile”. This is basically a compatibility test – a list of factors that you can display on your profile and people can search on.
In my experience it helps immensely in finding people you really get along with. Your test lets people know your basic personality traits and this is also fed into the matchmaking system. This means ultimately you’ll find people who you’re more likely to have “chemistry” with.
As an added bonus the upgrade also ensures your profile receives just attention. It will appear at the top when people search.
Going On…
I’ve learnt that the most effective way to use ThaiLoveLinks is simply to be open and honest. I found the people on there to be warm, sincere and welcoming – even though I’m not from that part of the world and don’t have a great deal of knowledge about their culture. After a few days, I’d already struck a few friendships and even had a few offers of dates.
It’s not too difficult to get involved in the community as the site is so active. Whether I went on during the day or at night, there always seemed to be people there to talk to.
Is it for Me?
At first glance, ThaiLoveLinks does seem to be a site mainly about “fixing up” western men with young, pretty Thai brides. But once you join you realize it’s more than that. Anyone who’s interested in mixing and making friends within the Thai community will be at home there.
The extended range of chat and communication tools and easy interface make it appealing and fun to use. Moreover, one of the best things about Cupid Media is that unlike a lot of other dating sites, they don’t rebill you once your subscription runs out.
