Faceparty.com

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I joined Faceparty.com in 2003 when I still lived in Belgium as I wanted to chat to people from where I used to live in the UK and maybe run into some old friends of mine that I'd lost contact with. Also joined for a laugh with one of my mates if we could find and decent blokes near so. No we didn't until I moved to the UK lol.

== What is faceparty.com ==
Faceparty was setup in 2000 and is based in London. The website ...
...you can chat and meet different people. Faceparty has 4,734,603 members. It's mainly UK based but does have people from other countries.

== The layout of the website ==
At the top of the page, there's a Faceparty banner. Underneath that you will find a box blue with the following links.
Home | Join the Party | Browse Members | Party Chat | Grim Rita | Swag

At the bottom of the page, you'll another blue ... more

Faceparty.com

I joined Faceparty.com in 2003 when I still lived in Belgium as I wanted to chat to people from where I used to live in the UK and maybe run into some old friends of mine that I'd lost contact with. Also joined for a laugh with one of my mates if we could find and decent blokes near so. No we didn't until I moved to the UK lol.

What is faceparty.com

Faceparty was setup in 2000 and is based in London. The website is owned by CISNet™. Faceparty.com is a place where you can chat and meet different people. Faceparty has 4,734,603 members. It's mainly UK based but does have people from other countries.

The layout of the website

At the top of the page, there's a Faceparty banner. Underneath that you will find a box blue with the following links.
Home | Join the Party | Browse Members | Party Chat | Grim Rita | Swag

At the bottom of the page, you'll another blue box with the following links
Events | Adult Verification | Cool Tools™ | I-Protect™ | adBloc™ | Terms | Contact

Home is for the homepage where you can login. It has welcome message "Welcome to the Biggest Party on Earth™. Faceparty is the most advanced on-line community in the world. We're more than a website - to thousands we're a way of life. Learn more about us." You see this message whether you are a member or not. Under that, you will see three pictures and three member names. These are people that have just updated/created their profile. Then there are two pictures which takes you to different links. Photo TXT and Faceparty Merchandise aka Swag.
Photo TXT, I'll explain later on in my review as it belongs under a certain page.
Faceparty Merchandise aka Swag is where they generate more money for the site by selling hats, T-shirts and that kind of thing.

There's two way of joining Faceparty.com. Join by typing your name and email address in box that say New Members: Join now! and then click on Join the party or just using Join the Party link in the toolbar.
Both of these ways, will take you to a page where you choose your member name, password and fill in your basic details. Like your real name, email address, where you live, your birthday etc. Something that struck me was this warning "It is a criminal offence to lie about your age on the Internet" I didn't know that. Then you have to agree to the terms and conditions and you're joined up.
Now you're signed up, you can login in the main page. That will automatically take you to your account page.

On 'My Account' page you will find a toolbar with the following links
My Account - My Profile - My Pictures - My Messages - My Buddies - My Settings - Help

My account - takes you back to the main page of your account. This will give you a list of what is basically already on the toolbar. Also it tells you your account website, if you want to show your profile to non Faceparty members. This is just
http://www.faceparty.com/ and your member name on the end of the link.

My Profile - This page is where you talk about yourself. There's a list of things you can do. There's some links that are in orange or purple you can't access unless you pay for it. I won't be reviewing those links as I'm a non paying member.
The first time you arrive on 'My Profile' you will see Create your profile that changed to View Profile and Edit Profile after you've filled it in.
The form is easy to fill in and would take about 5 minutes unless you write a long bit for certain sections. There are 5 sections and a introduction section (which you can't fill in yourself as you already filled it in when you join up. You don't have to fill in everything. If you don't fill in something, it just won't go on your profile. For example, how much you weigh. I don't know if I want people know that and as my weight tends to fluctuate so I'd be changing it all the time.
The orange links are Who's Visited, Online Diary, Who's Rated and Theme Builder.
Other item on the list on the my profile page is 'View Ratings'. People can rate your profile and this link allows you to view those ratings. There's all kinds of different ratings you can get like Hunny, Lil' Angel, Star, Stalker, Fishy etc. To be honest, I think they are quite pointless.

The links on people's profile are
More pics - to see more pictures of the person's profile you are looking at.
User online/offline - tells you if the person is online or offline
Private chat - You have a conversation with them if they are online without having to exchange MSN, AIM or YIM names.
Send message - For if they are not online or you would prefer just to write them a message
Rate member - I explained about rating members and with this link you can rate that person's profile
Add to buddies - Buddies are a list of people that you are friends

Moving on. This site is about chatting to people and people like to know who they are chatting to so that were the page, My Pictures comes in.
My Pictures - you can upload your pictures in two ways. From your PC or by Photo TXT. From your PC, it's fairly easy. Choose a picture in any of these formats (JPEG/JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PICT and PSD), choose a caption for it (you don't have to it you don't want to choose a caption) and upload it. You can have maximum 4 pictures as a non paying member. Note: It does take 24/48 hours for your first photo to appear. After that, it seems to appear instantly.
By phone, it's quite easily as well. All you do is register your phone by following the instructions on the screen and then they will receive your MSMS and upload your photo onto your pictures.
Manage your pictures is where you add captions, changing the default settings on what picture is first in your profile or deleting pictures you don't like anymore.
Again there's some orange and purple links - I-Protect™, Create 3D Logo, Edit Pictures, Faceparty Identikit™ and Character Shop™.

The next link there is, is 'My Messages'. This is where people can send you messages or you can send messages to people. Not really much to explain about this page. It's like reading or sending an email but one interesting thing is the random subject button. It gives you really funny combinations like stewardess disco, unusual turnip, squid brigade etc. You might get messages with text speak. Like I c ur profile. Ur a fit bird wanna ... won't complete that line but you get the idea. I normally send them one back "Message me when you have learnt how to write in English not text"
There's an orange link Message Status which is for seeing if someone has opened your message and when.

Then it's My Buddies page. It's like a list of all your friends on Faceparty. This list is built up when you click on the add buddies in the profiles, which I explained earlier. You can also add people onto your pest list. It's a form of a blocked list. There's also an option where you can message all your buddies at once. For example, if you're going on holiday. You can tell all your buddies in one go.
Again, another orange link. Buddy Spy. To look on who's member's lists you are on.

Then there's 'My Settings'. This is where you can change your personal details. Like where you live, email address etc. Also there's the privacy settings, which is for blocking other people from seeing your ratings and choose if you want to receive the Faceparty newsletter and/or texts off Faceparty letting you know about happenings on the site etc. Changing your password is also possible on this page.
Another orange link called Interactivity, which you can use to block people by Age, Gender or other criteria's.

The last page on the toolbar is Help. This is quite obvious. It helps you with your questions or problems you may have with the site.

Now, you know your way around Faceparty and have your profile filled in you can start browsing the members (in the top toolbar).
There's quick links, which are
+ All Members
+ Members Online Now
+ Birthday Members
+ Male Members
+ Female Members
+ More Options

Or you can choose by Gender, Sexuality, age, Country and Region
Plus extra settings
+ Only return members online now
+ Only return members with pictures
+ Only return members with adult pictures
and click browse members
Then it gives you your criteria that you've selected. For example
"UK, North East, Male, Straight, 19 to 24, with Pictures, Online Now
Your search returned 191 results. Displaying page 1 of 22."
And then a list of people. You can see upto 100 pages a day on the search. Paying people can see more with Cool Tools™ .

Or if you already know a member and are looking for their profile, just type in their member name in Jump to a Profile and it will jump to the profile that you want.

Party Chat is next on the toolbar. This is your standard chatroom like on Yahoo. Only downside with this, it's run with Java so it goes wrong sometimes.

Grim Rita well, it's like a problem page questions answered but it's really bizarre but worth checking out for a laugh.

The bottom tool bar
Events - Faceparty holds parties every so often and here you can find info on them and pictures from previous parties
Adult Verification - you have to pay for this. It says on the website "It lets members over the age of 18 view photography and strong language, that would otherwise be unsuitable for minors. It exists to protect children." It costs £38.95 for 12 months. Frankly I think this is expensive, just to view what they class as Adult material but I'm glad it's not the other way around. That you would have to pay £38.95 not to see adult photos.
Cool Tools™ - this is again paying and allows to you to use the orange links for £24.95 for 12 months. I wouldn't pay that for just to have access to part of the site when the free part of the site does me fine.
I-Protect™ - another pay item to protect your images getting stolen. For a fee of £16.95. Also for 12 months.
adBloc™ - this is to block the ads you get from Faceparty and guess what, you have to pay. It's 9.99 for 12 months. With Avant Browser, there's no need to get this because my browser blocks Ads for free.
Terms - if you want to read the terms and conditions of the site again.
Contact - if you want to contact them by email or by phone

My thoughts

I know what you're thinking, this sounds like a large online dating agency but it's not. Sure, it can be used for dating but there's a lot more to it.
Just looking at the photos and the people in your area for one is a big laugh. That's the reason I joined at the same time as a friend so we could judge the guys in our area.
But that aside, it's a nice way to make new friends. Sure, I get messages saying crude things that I won't mention on here but there are people that you can talk to. I've made a couple of good friends from this website. There are different people to suit everyone.
The only bad thing I can say about the site besides some online weirdoes is that the chat function doesn't always work and it's not really nice to use. So I've got a different email (MSN Messenger) set up just especially to talk to people from Faceparty and that way, they don't have my real address.
Also, I think the pay orange links aren't worth the money. It's really expensive. Choose all pay options and it works out to around £90 a year.
All in all, it's a nice safe website to use and I think I'll be using it for a long time yet. 

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