This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Smingle.com. All opinions are 100% mine.

A little known fact about me is that I was once on a nationally syndicated talk show talking about my positive experiences with an online dating site back in the late 90′s, before online dating was socially accepted as a norm. I joined a dating site again this week and boy have things changed. I’m still very happily married, but I joined Smingle to experience a fresh approach on the online dating market. It’s a different kind of online dating site, with its unique virtual dating experience being just one of the things that made me want to review it. The video below is an introduction to what sets Smingle apart from other online dating sites.

A Unique Online Dating Experience

Although I haven’t been on an online dating site in years, I’ve seen some of the newer features they offer, along with the basics. Smingle has the basics covered, especially the important ones like sending a message, instant messaging, adding your own photos and viewing photos of others. In the time I spent on the site, I found most of the basics to work well and everything was pretty easy to find. All of the basics were also available to any free account. By contrast, some of the advanced features are only available to Elect Select members.

The feature that stood out the most to me was Smingle’s virtual dating platform. According to the European Journal of Social Psychology, “People who go on virtual dates first tend to like each other more when they meet and are two times more likely to go on a second date.” A virtual date is just two people getting together online in a virtual environment to get to know each other before meeting in person. I think it’s a safe way to get to know someone a little better before you take the next step and I like the way Smingle’s virtual dating platform works. Because I’ve only been on the site a few days (that’s my excuse, anyway), I was unable to procure a virtual date with any of the lovely ladies on the site, so I enlisted the help of Smingle President, Bev Lehmann to help me test it out.

If you watched the video at the beginning of this article, you got a peek of how Smingle lets you create a custom avatar. You can also choose from a handful of available settings, both indoors and out. I’m the avatar on the left. I don’t know why I picked blond hair, but it’s otherwise close enough. On the right is Bev. As we chatted, our words came out as speech bubbles, with the most recent on top. During our short date, I tried a few of the action buttons. Available to you are “Flirt”, “Touch Hand”, “Blow Kiss”, “Touch Face”, and “Kiss”. Each action button results in an animated representation of that action on the screen. So when I clicked “Blow Kiss”, my avatar blew a kiss to Bev’s avatar. When she clicked the “Kiss” button, it asked me to allow her to kiss me. Really, this is a super-powered chat application but the avatars and animated actions add a personal touch and make it feel a bit more real than just a flat text chat.

Another feature I found on Smingle that I was previously unaware of in online dating was their Create a Date section. The idea is that you create the ideal date experience and put it out there for others to find. When someone else comes along and that’s their ideal date, too, you connect for the perfect date. I think it’s a great idea and really lays out some expectations to hopefully avoid boring dates.

Video Messages and social media integration were also new to me in the world of online dating, although they’re likely not ground-breaking in the industry. The video is done very well, integrating the video capture right into the browser, rather than expecting you to capture, save, and upload a video.

Room For Improvement

Nothing is perfect. While Smingle has all the major bases covered and hits a couple home runs on the side, the site leaves a little room for improvement. I really only found a couple things important enough to mention, but they are important features to me. The first is the ability to filter members by who is currently online. The virtual dating and chatting features are great, but they’d be so much better if I could find people online more easily. The listing does have a green “Online” identifier below each member photo to indicate that he or she is online, though.

Spammers and scammers are everywhere and membership sites are no exception. I got messages from two girls on the site and both wanted to connect off-site and provided Yahoo.com email addresses to get in touch. Those are almost always a scam and luckily there’s a “report” button, but there may be a better way to weed those people out like phone number verification or something.

Three Months Free

Above, I mentioned Elect Select, which is $19.95 per month. That’s not too bad for an online dating site like this, but the good news is that you can get 3 months FREE. Just sign up for a free account and then upload a picture to your profile. After you’ve done that, an admin will upgrade your account. Most people are going to upload a photo right off, anyway. Is three months enough time to find that someone you’re seeking? Who knows, but after three months free, you should be able to easily decide if it’s worth the $19.95 a month to keep mingling.

Conclusions

Going out and meeting someone can be intimidating and can yield pretty bad results sometimes, but online dating can be kind of cold and impersonal. Smingle’s virtual dating and create a date approaches breathe some life into the online dating experience and make it a little more fun while still keeping some of the risk at an arm’s length. The experience was great, and although there were less women than I’d expect to find in my area, with a little time, I’m sure the features and user-friendly design will bring plenty of people to the site.