Casual Friends Review

Casual Friends used to beat around the bush about its purpose. It called itself a community for intimate dating and short-term matches, which gave it a tone of highbrow diplomacy. However, it has decided to realign itself on the market. Discretion remains the letter of the day, but this site is now aimed toward those folks in relationships looking for some discreet fun on the side. A little more to the point, I’d say.

You know the drill. It’s free to create a profile on the site. You are not required to divulge many details to the crowd on CasualFriends. You do, however, need to write mandatory brief paragraphs about yourself and the person you would like to meet. Having members write their own descriptions is often more revealing than supplying them with arbitrary checkboxes to complete.

“…this site is now aimed toward those folks in relationships looking for some discreet fun on the side.”

Free searches are limited to within 100 miles of a zip or postal code. That’s a bit of a negative. If you’re looking for a quick hookup, it’s much easier within a smaller radius. All the same, you’ll need to upgrade if you want to decrease the search radius to 50 miles around your location. It will also give you other criteria to use when you upgrade.

You can see who is online at the same time as you, which ends up being your only way of gauging the activeness of another member before paying. The last login info is blocked from being viewed by guest members, even though they can see all other profile details. This gives us cause for worry as it may be a sign that a site doesn’t have an active membership.

It is at least free to reply to emails or instant messages on CasualFriends.com. Having a way for paid subscribers to communicate with a guest visitor is important. It makes the subscription seem more likely to help you make connections and that’s why you would join the site in the first place. It also makes investing in a membership a more worthwhile choice.

Other features offered include chat rooms, message boards and personal blogs. You can sample these areas of the site for free. They seem to be relatively active too. A section of videos offered requires you upgrade to view them. Since they are only labeled as “discreet,” I’m not sure what they actually entail as far as content goes.

The biggest problem with the site is that it’s still not very popular. It just doesn’t get that many visitors. Limited popularity and difficulty in finding how many local members are active makes Casual Friends a hard sell. At least you can try it free for three days, but you’ll need a credit card.