I’ve been chicken-littling over collarspace.com for a while now.
I know a lot of people hate the site, but I’ve met lovely submissive men there (I found sunshine on collarspace), and it’s still the biggest BDSM dating site despite all of its faults. And make no mistake, when it comes to dating, size matters :P.
I think it’s in trouble.
It has always suffered from some level of flakiness and ‘not-being-properly-maintain’edness, but there are red flags a-plenty pointing to its imminent demise at the moment.
1. The forum side (collarchat.com) was removed some months ago without warning
2. The chatrooms were whittled down and now there’s only
3. Profile editing has not been functioning for over a month
4. New profiles aren’t being approved
5. Last ‘new user’ join date (i.e. the last profile that was approved) appears to be 21 April 2018
6. Support isn’t answering emails
About 5 days ago, I created a new account because people were saying it had been taken over by alt and you could see that in the sign-up process, which would explain why they are essentially making the site unusable.
When I clicked ‘Join Collarspace’ in the sign-up process, it redirected me to this page:
https://alt.com/go/g1124789-pct+reg
It DID let me create that new account despite that redirection, and I got this welcome email in my new account’s inbox suggesting that I “join our affiliate alt.com” and well, a dating site is not going to recommend a rival dating site now is it? So yeah, things are afoot.
I created a profile and it told me it had to be approved. It has been 4 days now and it’s still not approved.
Whatever is going on there, the site is slowly being made unusable (though why they don’t just say ‘Get over to alt.com’ to all its users and shut it down, I have no idea).
My advice to users: If you are messaging with some potentials or friends over there and you want to keep in touch, now is a good time to exchange alternative contact information because if it goes down, I don’t think there will be any warning. I think it will just be ‘poof’, gone.
A request to my readers: If you are using a free kinky dating site AND you like it AND it has more than a few dozen users, please let us know in the comments. I don’t just want names (I can google those): What I’d like is sites you would personally recommend.
___
Edited 25 May to add:
After hearing reports that they are stripping paragraph breaks and other characters out of emails (presumably for security reasons because it includes words like ‘script’), I did a test. And yes, they are indeed stripping out both, so what you send to someone is probably not at all what they receive.
What I sent:
Hello Name,
I’m just testing emails, and a thing I heard that
a) they are stripping out paragraph breaks and
b) that they are stripping out anything that sounds like it might be script-like, like the word script.So test words:
– spanking
– description
– objectiveAlso my email ferns@domme-chronicles.com
And a link to my book http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HC038MS/?tag=dommechron-20Anyway, send me money, you lowly worm creature.
Ferns
What they received:
So now if you get shitty emails, you can’t even be mad about it :P.
Update 29 May:
Re 3 above. Profile editing is back (for me and for some other users at least).
Re 5 above. There is ONE actual new user turning up for me in ‘New Users’.
When I originally wrote this post, the last new user in that list had a join date of 21 April.
There is a new one who shows as having joined 4 May.
So best case, they are going through a backlog to approve new users OR not, and the ‘New Users’ functionality is just broken. It could go either way to be honest.
—
Update 7 June:
Re 5 above. There are a few more new users turning up in my ‘New Users’ view, so more new accounts (showing a join date in May) are being approved.
Some people who edited their profiles and then were unable to use their accounts because the changes were not being approved have had their edits approved and are now able to use the site again (others are still awaiting approval).
Update 8 June 2018:
** The ‘Join BDSM Community’ link to create a new accounts now takes you to alt.com **
That means they are not allowing any new accounts to be created: If there’s a definitive sign of a dead site, that’s it.
—
Update 12 June 2018:
The ‘Join BDSM Community‘ link to create new accounts is working again now. They are fucking with us. I have no idea if they are approving new profiles.
I received an email from someone with a friend at alt: Unsurprisingly, this fuckery is a deliberate push to get users to switch to alt before they shut down CS (max 18 months, though I expect it will be dead long before that).
—
Update 12 September 2018:
I’m still getting reports of people being locked out after updating their profile, and new accounts not being approved. However it seems to be pretty much random: That is, some are getting through fine (I am seeing a lot of new accounts now), and some are not (plenty of people reporting that they are in limbo awaiting approval).
They seem to have re-allowed paragraph breaks in messages, but I haven’t bothered to fully test what is or isn’t being stripped out. It’s still shit and both your sent and received messages are a crap shoot in terms of what gets through.
—
Update 16 July 2019:
The site is still up and running (I’m surprised, to be honest). The quality of messaging has improved somewhat since I gave the example above (that is, while they still strip out some text from messages you send, it’s not as bad as it was).
NYMaster has just left a comment to point out that they have removed the ‘New Members’ link which used to show you people who had recently joined the site. I’ve confirmed that it’s gone for me also. Not sure if it’s because there are no new members joining (there were, for the record), or if they just want to hide how few. Or maybe they’re just going to phase out functionality bit by bit until it’s completely unusable (whether it’s unusable now is arguable :)).
—
Update 17 Dec 2019:
The ‘Join BDSM Community’ link for new account registrations is again going straight to alt.com, same as it did in the middle of last year.
Alyssa left a comment to point out that the direct link to creating new accounts can be found here:
https://www.collarspace.com/bdsm/register.htm
Mind you, whether a new account will get approved or not, and if so when, is anyone’s guess. Don’t hold your breath.
My shouty advice still stands:
IF YOU’RE TALKING TO ANYONE ON THERE, GET ALTERNATIVE CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THEM (note that if you DO give alternative contact information, check your sent box for how that message looks after it goes through the ‘strip all the things out’ filter that CS has in place)
265 comments
From an IT guys point of view
It has been taken over
Or hacked to death
Or both.
Ferns
I’ve been on collarspace for several years, recently I completed a profile change that has not been approved! It’s been several weeks and I can’t send messages to friends until it is approved! I’ve sent messages to collarspace support with no apparent response! Would love to get back on! Thanks for the info in your blog! I can be a Dominant or very submissive to the right lady! Thanks Bob
I have been on the site 11 yrs. I took away some things from my profile. Did not even add to it. I was told my profile was not approved and i needed to look at the terms and conditions of the website.
:/
I’m not convince that that profiles are being approved or not based on the content or changes.
They’re just arbitrarily approving/not approving/ignoring profiles sitting in the ‘waiting for approval’ queue. That is, I don’t think you can somehow ‘fix’ it to get it approved.
I assume the objective is that people get so pissed off they join Alt :/.
Ferns
i have multiple accounts there, the other day, when i tried to reply, it said i need a profile in order to reply. apparently someone “changed” my profile so that they could then deny it to block me.
and of course they don’t care.
I am a submissive, you might be interested in me. Message me on hangouts… shandajackson1@gmail.com
I added new pictures to my profile on 10-15-2018 and my profile is still not approved. I have sent messages to the admin almost every day now without a response.
@Sweetestmarie, i’ve Done the same thing and even mentioned that people are disenchanted with their whole website. ????
Didn’t mean to be “anonymous”
Was your profile eventually approved?
really ? lawrence.2arellano@gmail.com
The reason this is happening is real simple. Earlier this year congress passed a bill. This bill now makes dating matching sites liable for any bad encounters that happen because of their site. Example If you meet a guy name Joe and he rapes or hurts you, then you can turn around and sue the site operator or even worst the site operator can now be criminally liable for that encounter.
Craigslist is the first site to pull their personal section out directly because of this law pass. They even stated on their site “Due to the new bill being passed by congress, craigslist is removing the personal feature, unless the law change.”
So alot of these sites is shutting down or slowing down their stuff.
Collarspace aka collarme has been in a spiral situation even before that due to the site operators had a fallen out. The lady that owned the name collarme removed it and left the other part scrambling to figure out what to do which he ran the servers that the site sits on but, not the name. He register collarspace as a response. The site has been plagued with problems for last couple years now. We are finally seeing the major aftermath of it all.
All I did was add a list to my profile of the bdsm compatibility and now its been waiting for approval now for 3 weeks.
I made a change to my profile in October and there was a message saying that after a review then it would be updated.
It us now Dec. 30, 2018.
WTF?…I have sent many messages to the supposed “support” without any response !
Collarspace is totally gone, it just updated my profile two days ago and two days later I can’t log in. Found you by trying to research what the hells going on.
Kinkcell in new free one from Romanian, but it is searching it’s way,
Thanks.
Ferns
Really? I thought perhaps authorities wanted to cut down on the blatant prostitution on sites like Craigslist (backpage.com).
If I ran a free, user friendly, easy to use/navigate site like cs, I’d make people verify their accounts with government issued id’s and video interviews to create an account. And I would set statistics in Stone (like age and location, as well as insist upon the use of a person photo, however “demure” or identify “obscuring”; id make it impossible for users to create more than one account using a single up address, and would prevent any internet troll without a stable up address from opening any account at all. Creating a website that works technically, as well as for the intended social purposes is the way I would fund the management of such a site — by maintaining a product/service worth the cost of adspace. It amazes me how people can fuck up the simplest of things. We all appreciate quality a, , sincerity, and safety; so that’s what an intelligent person would offer, rather than waste time and energy creating crap.
Has dose the horizontal/ vertical line mean on collarspace?
I can name a few I don’t recommend – Dating Kinky, GFet and FetL. None of them have a critical mass of users anywhere in the world I can see and none of them have serious IT support or digital designers working with them.
I would wager the reason collarspace is being made to die a slow death is bc alt.com is mostly fake profiles and is expensive to join. Although it does seem foolhardy to not even get a few of the users over while you still have a modicum if goodwill.
Thanks Bonnie.
Datingkinky has been down for months and months, so yeah. I’ve not heard of the other two.
I think starting up a new dating site is so difficult. It’s no good until you get a huge number of people, and getting people to join when it’s still starting and isn’t actually useful (yet) is really hard.
Ferns
ALt IS A COMPLETE !!!!! RIP OFF SITE
FL is great for some things. But finding people nearby with common interests is like pulling teeth on the site. If they chose to widen their search field attributes, I might actually enjoy using the site.
Hello Ms Ferns–long time reader, first time commenter! (I also recently listened to your podcast for the first time).
It is interesting to see you say this, as I have been having similar thoughts about Collarspace for a while. The problem is, while it is barely functional, there are actual reality-based kinky people on there! Alt, by contrast, is functional (though pretty rickety itself) but mostly empty apart from bots.
My own suspicion is more along the lines of the owner/s of Collarspace not really caring to fix parts of the site as they break down, and relying on ad/referral revenue from Alt.
Where oh where is the OK Cupid for kinky folk?
Yes, I agree: There ARE actual people on there (still). The thing that puts me off alt (apart from people saying it’s crap, which they say about CS also) is that I have to pay.
And honestly, I just… don’t want to pay to wade through a bunch of bullshit in my inbox (which is par for the course). I mean, I can get that for free! :P
“Where oh where is the OK Cupid for kinky folk?”
I know quite a few kinksters (me included) who do just use OKC. I’ve answered all the BDSM questions and I have tried both explicitly stating that I’m dominant and implicitly implying it. I have not yet met any local submissives, but the international ones seem to be great :).
Ferns
I’ve never even hauled my arse onto FetLife, so I don’t know about this one! It does sound like the cyber equivalent of your local shop starting to display a ‘back in 5 mins’ sign which is up for half the day. A couple of months later it’s a eCig place.
Fetlife is great for discussions and networking (and I have found submissives there), but there’s no ‘dating site’-style search and a lot of people aren’t on there for dating: It’s deliberately not designed to ‘find partners’, so there is still a need for that.
Heh… and yes to the analogy.
Ferns
Fetlife style of the page is wired I get lost in it
Is there a kink section of the OKC?
No kink section, but plenty of BDSM questions in the Q&A, so if you answer a lot of those, your matches should reflect that.
Ferns
Agreed it’s not set-up for dating but there are personal ad sections. Anyone interested in you can message you and you can take it from there :-)
Thanks for this info. I’d agree, looks like its death by a thousand cuts over there. I’m going to share this post. A bet auite a few of my followers use it.
Thanks,
Key
Given there are so few alternatives, I’m willing to bet they do :/. Thanks for sharing.
Ferns
Tried a test registration and yes everything links back to alt.com. so it is safe to say collarspace rest in peace… Lol Just as well as it was a sad quality of pervert folk who hung out there.
Than of course when I decided to join, my card was declined apparently by the bank it was issued on because of banking morality usage clause..
Shittt, this world sucks soft old men weee wee’s when your bank tells you who you can use your card with….lol
So where are people going to go to after the sky falls? Should we plan for the diaspora now?
I’m just going to run around screaming :P.
I actually expect a whole bunch to land on Fetlife and then we will see a gazillionty-bazillion (this is a real number, lots of zeros) complaints about how they can’t search by A/S/L… “but whyyyyyyy??”
Ferns
Screaming sounds good. I can’t stand Fetlife because it’s so damn serious about everything.
Sadly I think you are right… the CS experience is that of wading through treacle… quite sad.
I won’t be joining alt.
Hopefully someone at fet is watching the general chats and can see that there are a host of people who need a virtual location to play, and sort out the search/contacts.
There’s not much more out there to play on.
You might have been using different wording, but I suspect places ‘to play on’ are easier to find than places to finding places for ‘dating for RL relationships’.
A FL add-on would actually be great, but that’s not going to happen.
Ferns
I couldn’t agree more about Fetlife being too damn serious. It’s nothing but a high school “cool kids club” full of pompous egomaniacs. I have been infuriated with collarspace after being on there for several years, changing my profile picture on a whim to something more updated over 5 weeks ago, and still being unable to contact the people I had met on there worth talking to. Strangely enough…I’m glad I’m not the only one.
I used bdsmdate.co.uk(mind you bdsmdate.com is different just another url of alt.com)
bdsmdate.co.uk is sort of stripped down version of collarspace but atleast some sort of dating style structure.
Also, for location have to put UK.
But still best among all I have found untill now.
Tries aboutflr.com but not sure if its active.
Hope you guys try bdsmdate.co.uk and community builds up there again
Thank you for the tip about bdsmdate.co.uk (a non-US site!).
And no for aboutflr.com: it’s a horror show.
Ferns
Fetster is one
https://www.fetster.com
Thank you for that :).
Ferns
The “edit profile” function is active again. I don’t know if that’s a sign that things are coming back, but it’s at least something…
Thanks Tara (I have edited the post to include that. Plus there is ONE new user in the ‘New Users’ section, so maybe they are approving them…).
We’ll see I guess. Fingers crossed.
Ferns
I was just on collarspace.com and the only join button/link took me straight to alt.com.
Will be trying fetster.com
Thank you SO much for this. I’be been pulling my hair out over this site for months. It became incredibly buggy and now I can’t even create a new profile. At least I know why now!!
You’re most welcome :).
Ferns
After being on cs for sometime I could not even sign back in since Sunday night, it’s terrible as I was going to meet a great guy this coming saturday, I signed up using another profile and still not approved.
This just happened to a friend of mine too, with no obvious reason! I too was in regular correspondence on CS with a lovewly girl, for a couple of years now and I can’t rewply to her last message. She’ll just think I’m ignoring her which really pisses me off.
@MistressRight1: Ugh :(.
Tell me their nick and give me an alternative contact (email me if you want) and I will let them know.
(mind you, the last time I did this for someone, the recipient deleted my message unread, sooooo… *shrug*)
Ferns
Is there anyone on here who still has an active profile on CS who could send someone on there a message from asking them to contact me another way? Thankyou
I can help.
Many thanks Patrick. Just saw your reply and had just posted this to Ferns. But here goes again.
Patrick, would you be able to send a short message from me to a friend on CS? Her profile is IamListening. If you could copy and paste this, or something similar, and direct her to this blog I would be most grateful. Thankyou – hopefully – in advance!
“Hi! This is a message Lordgeous asked me to send as there are so many problems with CS these days. He changed a couple of words in his profile months ago and didnt realise his profile has to be re-approved. And he’s still waiting, as are many others, and other people on there are finding their profiles waiting for re-approval for no obvious reason. His email (which he says he’s given you before) is lordgeous44@gmail.com. You also set up a hangout contact on there (Emma Lord) which you could use.”
Message was copied and pasted as you wished. I hope this works.
This lifestyle is most difficult at best and if they put up more obstacles to overcome it would be or could be impossible to make any headway.
Take care and good luck,
Patrick Williams
spiderconvertible69@gmail.com – just in case you need me to send another –
Very kind of you Patrick. Hope you’re not inundated with similar requests!
Thanks for helping Patrick :).
A note: If you just copy-pasted that message, you might want to check in your ‘sent’ box how it came out. I know 100% that the email address would not have gone through. You have to do some finagling with it to disguise it (they stripped the ‘com’ out of the word ‘coming’ from a recent email of mine :/).
Ferns
I had finally found someone I clicked with on CS and had been having some really great chats. I was supposed to meet them next week when I am traveling for business. That was…until I changed my profile picture a few weeks ago. I now have no way of contacting them and I’m sure they have written me off as a flake.
I had this exact issue awhile back my account was mistjojo and I had a good experience with CS, as with all site’s it’s alot of BS but as long as I stayed consistent and put the time in I will say I’ve had great outcomes on CS, Alt since it gave me no option to do a new profile on CS, and FetLife. So I guess I’ve been fortunate as far as paying for Alt I’ve always had at the least a gold membership but usually a VIP membership gifted to me for my activity plus my pics & videos getting so many likes and comments. So if I log in daily and stay active u never have to pay anything.
I stupidly edited my profile and now I can’t respond to anyone! It says it is awaiting editing but my emails to support go unanswered! If they are shutting it down at least let us go in and get our friends outside info!
I am so mad!
Ugh! That sucks :(.
And YES: Getting contact information from friends or potentials is so important. I’d be really upset if I couldn’t get that.
There have been a few more new users approved (join dates show as 16th and 18 May) so ‘someone’ there is approving at least a few new profiles, but ‘new’ is still 2 weeks old. And that doesn’t help anyone who’s edited their profiles :/.
Ferns
I asked on Fetlife if someone who still has a profile could message one particular person but no one responded:( anyone here willing to send a message for me?
If they’re already a friend, I’m happy to send them a message for you. Just email me the info (email address at the right or below if you’re on a small device) :).
Ferns
Ferns, would you be able to send a short message from me to a friend on CS? Her profile is IamListening. If you could copy and paste this, or something similar, and direct her to this blog I would be most grateful. Thankyou – hopefully – in advance! x
“Hi! This is a message Lordgeous asked me to send as there are so many problems with CS these days. He changed a couple of words in his profile months ago and didnt realise his profile has to be re-approved. And he’s still waiting, as are many others, and other people on there are finding their profiles waiting for re-approval for no obvious reason. His email (which he says he’s given you before) is lordgeous44@gmail.com. You also set up a hangout contact on there (Emma Lord) which you could use.”
I see Patrick is already on it :).
I hope you are able to get back in touch!
Ferns
Thanks so much Ferns, and thankyou for providing all this information for us. Incidentally when Ive sent my email adress in the past on CS (albeit with spaces etc) its always gone through – and there was nothing in their conditions forbidding it. Maybe everything’s changeing? One of the great, and unusual, features of the site was that it was free and not full of ‘extras’ to get money out of you. Having said that, I’m sure we’d all be happy to pay a reasonable amount for a good service. Fetlife is also excellent in this respect.
Most welcome. I know how frustrating it is when you think ‘it must be me’ :/.
And yes everything is changing, and then changing again, and then changing some more.
One day the site will just be gone, no warnings.
Ferns
I agree with you Ferns. One day this site will just dissapear. I was able to get back on after having to modify the language used, so they are not taking care of the site and censoring their users. You can only do this so long and users will lose interest not unlike the owners of the site, but for different reasons. I am making sure that any solid connections formed there I have a backup to reach them in case today is the last day. Good luck to all. Ciao
I’m in the same situation Wendy, I hope they get my profile changes approved soon! Bob
Thank you! It seems as though they just released my profile so I contacted him right away! Thank you so so much for offering
Glad to hear it :).
Ferns
So crazy I was just sent the link to your post. I was wondering why my page has been under review for 10 days now and it was suppose to be released after “72 hours”
So I am taking from this that Collar space is dead?
It might rally, but yes, the signs point to it dying a slow and painful death.
If you already have an active profile on it, you can still search, send messages etc. But anything other than that (new accounts/profile edits/support emails) seems to be going nowhere :/.
Ferns
Profile edits seem to be getting done now, albeit longer than 72 hours it seems, and the edit page now comes with a disclaimer.
I’ve seen a few people saying that, so ‘someone’ is doing ‘something’ in the back room there…
Ferns
Sadly I cannont send messages on my page I can view them though
I made a MINOR tweak to my profile text and suddenly back to “pending”. Was like that for over a week, and based on the comments here, assumed I’d never get it back.
And suddenly today, it’s back on. And now I notice this text on the edit profile screen:
Warning: Changing the profile text of your approved profile will causeit to lose it’s approved status and be put it back in line for re-approval
So as of 6/6/18 SOMEONE is approving profiles. And they’ve added a warning that changing profile text will result in a pending profile.
No ability to create NEW profiles that I see. Just a redirect to alt.com
But, slowly but surely. functionality is being restored.
Thanks Katia. It’s a bit all over the place.
I’m not sure why they would bother approving anything when they are clearly on the downslide, but it’s lucky for those who want to get contact details before the entire thing dies.
Ferns
I can’t seem to make an account on CS…. it keeps redirecting me to Alt, which is annoying as cr**
Anyone have a suggestion on dealing with the re-direct?
When it threw me to alt, it DID actually create the CS account as well. So do go back and check if it’s there.
BUT then you still have to create a profile and have it approved, and while a few new or edited profiles seem to be going through now, others have not seen theirs become active even after a week or two :/.
Ferns
It’s not even going to the register screen, it’s literally going straight from the support page to alt.com; I haven’t even seen the screen to be able to input my information to make the account.
I figured it was chrome, but even IE redirects directly :-/
Bah! I tried using the Waybackmachine to backdoor in to the registration, but it doesn’t appear that WBM links those pages quite like that.
On a similar note, WBM doesn’t even have a screen shot of the registration page for this year: https://web.archive.org/web/20180701000000*/http://collarspace.com/personals/register.htm
This is all rather frustrating considering it’s still purporting that it’s a live site.
Ahh, I just had a go, and I see what you mean :/.
So yeah. It seems it’s just a zombie site now: Deader than a really dead thing :(.
Ferns
IT’S BACK!
join the community now directs to a collarspace signup page. A new user join date today (6/11/18) appeared in my local users list
@Katia: Interesting.
I heard from someone who knows someone who works at alt.com (sekrit spies) who told me yesterday that account registrations were going to come back shortly. And so they did :).
But they also told me that alt is running a deliberate passive-aggressive marketing campaign where they frustrate CS users to try and make them jump to alt before they phase CS out (max 18 months was the guess).
Thanks for the info! :)
Ferns
One interesting tidbit. The domain was due to expire on the 22nd but on June 5th it was renewed for another 5 years:
Updated Date: 2018-06-05T21:50:33Z
Creation Date: 2007-06-22T21:09:16Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2023-06-22T21:09:16Z
That is interesting, thank you for that.
Ferns
Something odd happened on my CS homepage that I wanted to note and sanity check — I ran across this page while trying to figure out what happened.
Sometime recently (not certain how much, although I suspect within the past month) any users who had “been active” within the past two years went completely missing from my search criteria. No idea how or why.
Ugh, yeah it’s all over the place :/. All I can say is ‘it’s not you!’
Ferns
Hello I’m new to the online world, but I found a site called the cage . C*m. Is that a good site? Also sissy social . N*t ,
I don’t know either of those sites. I’ve at least HEARD of thecage, never heard of sissysocial.
My advice: If it’s free, give it a go. Why not?
If you have to pay, I’d look further for reviews of it.
Ferns
Would anyone recommend alt.com and pay the fee?
Heh… I think that might be a ‘no’ :P.
I’ve never heard anyone EVER say ‘I’m on alt, so glad I paid the money, it’s GREAT!’
Ferns
I once used a prepaid visa to pay alt.
managed to get in contact with two real people.
Phone call to one, actual meet with the second.
my verdict: Not worth it.
So far, collarspace.com is still the best site I’ve used.
even PoF.com is now paywalled and bot infested.
I’m on Alt and have never had to pay the fee. I’ve been gifted the gold usually the VIP membership just for logging in commenting to pics and videos posting them and replying to emails and so on. So stay active and u won’t have to pay
I just updated my profile today … (6/20/18) Guess we will see if it does get accepted and
updated ? .. I was surprised when it said I had to go through all that again but thought they are
just being careful which I think is ok if that is in fact the case ?
They have absolutely done the review thing forever if you make changes, but the approval seems to be hit and miss at the moment. Good luck.
Ferns
I had been experiencing the same things as mentioned in the post. Out of curiosity I set all my search criteria to ANY ALL and Joined and suddenly got plenty of new profiles. Very odd. Then changed search to what I usually use and got lots of new profiles. Anyone know what’s going on?
Age Location Joined
Click to view this profile
gaymercubslut
23 San Francisco, California 06/24/18
sma72032
37 Conway, Arkansas 06/24/18
Click to view this profile
lovesOTScarry88
28 Las Vegas, Nevada 06/23/18
Click to view this profile
sissycucksandra
28 Worcester, Massachusetts 06/23/18
auroth
24 South Western, Pennsylvania 06/23/18
Click to view this profile
Thejoshguy
26 Bend, Oregon 06/23/18
Click to view this profile
Redsub88
29 Carpentersville, Illinois 06/23/18
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Readytogo100
32 Florida 06/23/18
slavejayson06
44 Raleigh, North Carolina 06/23/18
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Naughtymind
Thanks for the info: I’ve noticed a lot more new accounts have been approved also (looking at ‘New Users’ shows a bunch of new users now). Though on the downside, the New Users view used to show users based on my search criteria: Now it shows everyone and the only filtering option is zip code, which is useless to me.
Ferns
I’ve been an member on and off for over 10 years now, and would be sad to see it go. I am a web developer by trade, and have several times over the years offered my services without reply.
I have recently been considering developing an alternative site myself as like you have been expecting the site to shut down at somepoint. I have planned it out from a design and development perspective, and feel I could run, maintain and host the site myself without needing to charge for membership. My only concern is getting a user base before putting in all of the time on building the site, as marketing is not my area of expertise.
Good on you for offering to help them out. I think quite a few people have done that over the years.
I think you have hit on the major issue with any new dating sites, and that’s the marketing. A site that relies on a large user base to be appealing is always going to be difficult to get off the ground.
Tricky biz.
Ferns
I had the same idea, and ran a site called Subrosr https://subrosr.com/user/signup for a few months as a hobby.
I shut it down, when the number of people joining started to get overwhelming, and I realised it needed to be a limited liability company, with the proper legal backing, to succeed properly. (Please feel free to use the contact details on the site, if you wanted to contact me, however)
In my opinion, I don’t see the challenge in marketing. I think the things that matter are:
1. legal
2. a respected figure at the head of the site, who can manage the site publicly.
3. a good technical team
I think 2. is probably the most difficult one to find.
I’m so glad you posted this. I added a pic to my page, (a page that has been on the Collarspace site for years mind you) and now its been under review for days. So I am now unable to reply to messages that were sent to me. Any subs who want to contact me can reach me, Madame Renaud, at curvesahead7@yahoo.com I will have to set up a new space on Fetlife and Alt I guess. I am now looking through the comments to see if there are other sites available. What a terrible thing to do to people.
Ugh, it sucks. But I’m glad my post was helpful.
Having a profile with the same name on Fetlife will definitely help people find you if CS does go down completely.
I just had a look on there and your profile turns up, so hopefully it’s been approved in the last day or so. But yeah, I’d avoid any updates if possible.
Ferns
I am stunned by the trouble and care you have taken in helping people with this. Thankyou so much.
You’re so welcome :).
Ferns
Created a collar space account almost a month ago, account still not approved yet!
:/. It’s probably worth trying again with a different IP address.
It sounds like a hit-and-miss situation in some cases: For some people, once you go into some kind of dead zone where you are not being approved, you ain’t coming out of there. In the meantime, others are being approved.
Ferns
Yeah I just added a pic on my existing profile and it’s been a week with no approval yet… hotlilnikki19@yahoo.com
Sorry I forgot to put in my name. Nicole
:/. I’m not game to change anything on mine because it might go into that limbo.
Ferns
I know that this site is broken and possibly beyond repair. I have reached out to them, but have had no response. I even volunteered to take over some of the more mundane tasks, but no answer or interest. I am looking to build an equivalent to this site and have sent out inquiries to web designers. If interested you can contact me at spiderconvertible69 at gmail
Hi Patrick,
I created https://subrosr.com. I shut it down however, as I am unable to run it as a business. Feel free to use the contact details on the site.
Can I reach you with the contact information on that sight? Username admin? Thanks
My email is admin@subrosr.com
I am looking for a (perhaps rare) person who is already quite publicly trusted around F/m, has at least a technical background, and who thinks that what exists is a good idea.
The Notes section send to have been removed since Aug 7. I still see the yellow note icon preceding the User name but no way to View
them.
Anyone have a clue what’s going on?
I have no clue. I think this site is much better than any other BDSM site that is available. Yes, I have met many good slaves and subs there as well, but now it is totally dysfunctional. I have written to them many times to see if I could help or even take over the site without hearing a peep from them. As for now it seems to be broken. I tried to replace my main profile pic back in April and it still has not been approved. It used to be that this small change in a profile did not warrant approval, but alas this is not the case now. I am just not sure what is going on. I still remember the old Collarme days, but because of the split up between the owners the name reverted to a backup and we are in the state we are now. Sites like this take a lot of tending and I suppose someone has lost interest, but this is merely speculation on my part. Patrick
So its not just me. Been using CS for years. Great that its free but has always been buggy and slow. Changed 2 words in my profile and now been waiting 8 weeks for it to be approved – if I’d known I’d have left it how it was! I feel bad because I cant reply to messages that were waiting to be reponded to. Alt.com is complete rubbish, Fetlife excellent!
Absolutely not just you I’m afraid :/.
Probably worth trying to create a new one with a different IP address if you haven’t already, though anything on there is a crap shoot at the moment.
Ferns
Perhaps a tumblr reblog post with replies to be used for what one is seeking? Being mindful that tumblr hides pages with nsfw tags so you must be logged in and locate the post without searching nsfw tumblrs.
Nah. That’s the very definition of ‘shouting into the void’.
You’re MUCH better off getting on Fetlife and getting involved on there. Even if it’s not set up for dating, it has millions of kinksters, and local groups you can network with.
Ferns
there is some truth to this. I am not being maliciously moderated after being attacked on cs. All hail the great white whale is set to die a painful death. Half expecting to hear something like major privacy violation of profiles occurs.
But we in the perv community seem bent on not creating our own site, we always seek to use nonsense sites that never do what they say.
Thank you for above information re the Forums, I used to participate daily (especially in the quiz and word games forums) and had great pleasure in doing so, under the Profile pseudonym of TANGELLO.
As you say, without warning, it was no more, and although I sent over 15 messages to Support to find out why, not one was answered and so I closed my account. It was ONLY after reading your ‘report’ today that Ilearned about it. Prior to that I had always thought I had been cut off from Forums for some undisclosed personal reasons I hadn’t been told about. So I thank you for your enlightenment.
Most welcome.
Ferns
cs, never should of survived it collapse from collar me. To suggest CS is the largest of anything other than nonsense is a stretch. The moderators are now out of control cs tendency to member click is showing and it looks like a bunch of hungry predators can’t find prey so they’re attacking each other. It is funny to watch and believe me there will be another porn site to take it place.
ah for the old days when you advertised your perv in the local free paper and got better results
If you know of any free alternative BDSM dating sites that are as big, or at least have a large enough customer base to be useful, please share.
Ferns
This isn’t the first time CS has had issues. Remember CollarMe.com. Was a member of that and left cs with all the talk and fakes. Now back to try but can’t get approved.
Yep, I remember. That was a fun bit of drama :).
Ferns
Hello,
I mad a couple of corrections on my CS profile on October 10th and I’m still waiting for approval.
I agree with the comments about fetlife, great for communicating with “friends”.
:/.
My profile is still active, but if I disappear, I’d hope anyone who I was talking to would be smart enough to look for me on fetlife with the same nick. If not, well, sucks to be them :P.
Ferns
It’s amazing that a post you made back in May has more activity in October than Collarspace itself does. I keep coming back to see if anyone else has had luck there or found an alternative but we all seem to be stuck in the mud, spinning our wheels. Sigh. (Punkwytchtara on the late lamented CS)
Yeah, this is the most active post I’ve had in a long long time.
I’m getting all the frustrated people searching for ‘wtf is up with collarspace?!!!’ and ‘why isn’t my profile being approved, whyyyyyyyyy?’ :/
Ferns
i made a small change to my collarspace account a few months ago and its still not approved
Bob
That my friends is because of the over saturation. I might be going way out of geek-line here but while there are good intentions out there in creating a nice dating website the ability to gather enough users to reach critical mass is the problem, unless you turn even more cheesy and manipulative than the competition.
And that is the same reason why great new social media platforms like mastodon can’t seem to get through the noise of twitter, facebook and instagram. The internet used to be a network of websites linking to one and other, now it’s a network of users linked by a few websites and their total dominance on the market is reaching robber-baron-monopoly-levels.
Many months now and I’m still not approved following a minor change to my profile. Sympathies to all you others out there in the same boat. Thanks for helping Patrick but I heard nothing back from the lady you kindly messaged for me.
FWIW, for at least some people, creating a new profile with a different IP address and email worked. I know that some new accounts ARE being approved. It’s 50/50 at best, but it can’t hurt to try.
Ferns
Although FetLife isn’t meant to be a dating site, you could still use it as one. While I haven’t had any luck there yet, (which might be because I’m picky), doesn’t mean it couldn’t be successful for someone else. I did find a really good relationship through CollarMe, (*just* before it became CollarSpace), and so I’m sad that the site is pretty much down the toilet. You’d think with the popularization of 50 shades (despite it being a horrible representation of us), that there would be more kink dating websites…guess not.
You can absolutely find people on Fetlife.
I think when people say ‘it’s not a dating site’, they don’t mean ‘you can’t find partners there’, they mean ‘not everyone is there for dating’ plus ‘you can’t do any kind of search you normally do to find potential partners’ combined with a healthy dose of ‘please PLEASE don’t get on there and spam a bunch of strangers under the assumption that they’re looking for partners’.
But absolutely: yes. I found the cougarling on fetlife, and my last submissive also :).
Ferns
Thank you for writing this . I had a profile for 10 years edited it and then it never got approved . I tried to make a new one and it has been pending for 2 months ! It sucks because I have talked to hundreds of people and some I was close with , now I can’t even say hello .
Same here – I just changed one word!
It makes it so hard to attempt to contact a Domme! I can’t even send a note to compliment their photos or as You said “say Hi”……. Frustration ☺️
It’s funny that I discovered Collarspace relatively recently and became a member there in September, in order for the profile to be approved it took roughly 10 days, and when I updated it in late October the reapproval process took almost a month, so what is being said about the process taking less than 72 hours is definitely not the case, and when this process for certain profiles has taken even longer, as mentioned in the comments here, the approval/reapproval process is probably totally random.
When it comes to such sites in general, I think that there are two categories, those sites created by people who are themselves scammers, and full of fake, and in the very few cases that some look like belonging to real people, inactive profiles, and those sites created by people who truly wanted to cater for people looking to come into contact with others. Each of these sites has its own characteristics, but most problems are common, like lots of scammers, inactive profiles etc. Sites like the cage and fetster, that have been previously mentioned in the comments here, are good sites in my opinion but of limited usefulness if you live outside the US like me ( I live in Europe), as most active members are from the US. As for ALT, I think it’s increasingly falling into the first category, which is a pity, as it used to be a good site, it was there that I first came into contact with the only sincere, serious, and in both sexual and BDSM terms compatible person I have met in the country where I live.
If a new BDSM site would be created, I think that there are two things which demand particular attention, a) there has to be a strict policy regarding how long an inactive profile can be at the site, with them being deleted after a certain time, and b) an equally strict policy regarding scammers, BDSM Singles and their spam/scam policy is a good example to follow.
I am fed up with ALL of them, so I’m making a new one.
You are all welcome to join. Its empty right now just if you join early you get to help plan how it works. So at the end of the day, the site will work the way we all agree.
I look forward to seeing you there.
https://pervirtue.com/?refaqb=2
The biggest thing (as I’ve mentioned before) is fast on-boarding of people. I hope you have a crack marketing plan.
Good luck with it :).
Ferns
I see it is online
nice
it would be great if you could search within the roles like dominant or submissive
Thanks for the suggestion. Ill address this early in the year.
Have a good new year
Hi Fern, i also had the same problem with my collarspace , i would like to recommend a site for you to find humble and loyal sub, try meetbdsm or thehubpeople(fetishdates.ca) its a canada fetish sites but there are alot of sub from the US there. you will definitely find your sub there .
Thank you. I’ll take a look (though I’m not American, so I’m way behind the 8-ball when it comes to dating sites :/).
Ferns
You welcome , i will be willing to help if you are curious of anything you wish to know , please do you know if Collarspace still working or the site is down finally .
Thanks :).
Collarspace is still up and functioning (for those whose accounts are accessible at least :/).
Ferns
It is, but, i honestly think I’m going to part ways as much as possible just out of an abundance of caution. I don’t trust this guy handling [i]any[/i] of my data, regardless how unidentifiable it [i]might[/i] be.
Just a thought I had after reading, as I’d known mostly of the details of story but had no idea about the alt.com thing.
Thank You
I really miss Collarspace and the opportunity to meet Dominant females to enjoy each other’s kink together. I do like submissive females also, but my real place in life is to serve a very professional yet sexually dominant female and her female friends! Love a committed relationship! Yours, Bob – East Tennessee
it had been month nobody approves me op collarspace now is a dead site
It’s an absolute joke. I’ve given up on it and gone back to attending munches and events. As someone openly trans, but not yet transitioning it’s hard enough to find playmates without websites being basically a useless mess. Corrected some grammar and spelling on my profile in June 2018. Still locked out.
Thanks for this – had been having fun exploring on CS, then my profile got unapproved…finally got approved again, but then it went back to unapproved a couple of days later, right in the middle of a couple of interesting conversations, so I guess I looked *very* rude! Just hope somewhere else springs up…
I don’t think I’ve ever had CS/support ever respond to me – not ever! I’ve been locked out of two profiles on CS. My third one just got approved. I direct anyone I think has potential to my FetLife profile. I realize FetLife is not the same as a dating site but it is so much more reliable.
Very new site. Only dozens on there now, but word is not yet out. They don’t edit your writing. They approve quickly and the creator is responsive. It appears he is in UK, but America is finding it.
BDSM acronym.
http://www.BigDogSmallMonkey. com
Likely not being taken over… the ALT.com link is when a site signs up to be an affiliate. For every user who signs up on that site, CS will make money.
i just met someone..and things were getting interesting..changed my pic
now i can send or receive messages..i just ran across this page..and now i know this is an ongoing problem.. :(
It’s definitely not just you and it is absolutely ongoing.
I can pass on a message if you like.
Ferns
If you could just give Qosseeker my email … can you tell him I’ve been unable to contact him due to the problems going on at cs..I’d be very appreciative.
Done. I should have asked for your nick over there, but presumably he will be able to figure it out.
Ferns
Thanks for this thread.
I changed ONE category in my CS profile of 10 years plus a few weeks back and it just hung in moderation ever since.
This morning I go look at it and the being moderated warning had disappeared. I assumed that my profile had been approved again. No. They have refused it and are expecting me to read their rules to figure out why.
I will now copy all my information off there and close down my profile. It is a waste of time being on there anyhow. But where to go?
Just some feedback and also a reply to bob:
Launched my site
https://pervirtue.com/?refaqb=2
in April. Already some 60 souls on it, a little slow for my liking but its picking up.
Your support in signing up and being active would be appreciated.
Apologies I should have mentioned that..(wheresmyking) thank you bunches..
Fern..is it possible you can leave my screen name for Qosseeker..
Wheresmyking
Thanks again… I’m not sure if he thinks it’s spam or whatever.
I did that, yes. He read the first one at 6/13/19 9:14 AM and the follow up (with your nick) at 6/13/19 10:00 PM (I think that shows my timezone (Sydney).
Just to say, I’ve done this a few times now, and the recipient has NEVER come back to say ‘hey thanks :)’ (and he didn’t either), so maybe they DO think it’s spam (even though I am perfectly clear about what happened) :/.
Ferns
I have been here more then 10 years. I changed one photo and now been stuck in limbo waiting for approval for weeks!
Same with me! I changed a few things in my profile — minor tweaks to spelling and grammar, and now I cannot communicate with people!
Welcome to the club!
Yes. I thought it was spam.
Thank you. For your help and this site. Greatly appreciate you!
Most welcome :).
Ferns
cs has definitely become useless, I close my profile down
it’s a pity, but they kill it deliberately.
Your profile is in line to be reviewed and will become visible to other
users if it is approved. Profile approvals are currently taking an extended period of time. We are working to shorten this interval.
For a month now!
About 6months now for me having changed just 1 word in my profile! Young female sub friend applied to CS weeks ago and still waiting too!
My profile has two cartoons on it which they keep using as an excuse not to allow my profile to be used by me to contact others or for others to contact me.
But my profile continues to be on their site giving the impression of an active user.
There is not means to delete these two cartoons. According to my profile settings they two images do not exist. Technically it says that there are no images attached to my profile when I try to remove them. But there they are on my profile.
My journal exists on there. I cannot add to it even if I wished to. More importantly, I cannot delete any journal entries.
So I am stuck in an endless loop.
I have today changed my profile wording saying that I am no longer looking. Whether that change gets approved or not time will only tell. I have hidden the profile now – for what good that will do.
I have asked them to close my account and delete all contact information.
I waited..I had messages sent and I’m finally back on CS.. just to be catfished…it was an amusing experience..I had quite a few laughs.. Que Sera Sera..
Today, July 15, 2019. I notice that the “New Members” window is no longer functioning. Could this be the last sign that CS is about to go dark? I, for one, am making sure my few contacts on CS know how to reach me in other ways.
Thanks for that update: Same for me. I’ve updated the post with this.
Ferns
Gah.
I haven’t been on CS in a few years. Actually thought about getting abck on recently and just haven’t have the time spoons.
Is a sad. Is a very sad.
*sigh*
Ugh, this is terrible.
Collarspace and earlier Collarme was remniscent of the old web that was more wild and free, more community managed. More risque but warmer and friendlier in some sense.
Alt.com looks like a porn site, with clearly fake pictures to draw in curious newbies with too high promises. Fetlife while good is too restricted and more a community than a dating and chat/discussion platform.
And that forum was funny, despite all its downsides
…and now the “nearby users” button has disappeared.
Surprised no one mentioned The Cage or Humbled Females. Second one is submissive female-dominant male only though.
Two weeks and counting for profile approval on Collarspace. Clearly they want to drive traffic to Alt.com. It’s expensive there and 90%+ of the Dommes are phonies. They want to kill Collarspace. It’s always about the money. Bayshore Software Technologies, Inc. in S.F. had the Collarme trademark. An Eric Grossweiner was the original person registering the company. https://www.corporationwiki.com/California/San-Francisco/bayshore-software-technologies-inc/42551213.aspx. Greed rears its ugly head again. So goes America.
Thought it worthwhile providing input to the thread. Created a new profile 5 weeks ago and still no approval. Site functions seems ok, no errors. My question is why 7 weeks on average to approve a profile?
I created a new profile on there longer ago than that and STILL not approved either!
Don’t you get it? Alt.com has taken over the site and wants people to give up trying to get their Collarspace profile approved. They want people to go to Alt.com and PAY!. Why would they be eager to have people be on a free site when they can make $$$$$?
I can appreciate that. Its just strange that apparently SOME people have had success in opening new accounts or editing existing ones.
Thankyou for writing such informative content. I really liked it and appreciate your effort in writing such wonderful content. I will really appreciate if you can help me with how do i delete pof account?
Greetings!
I’m lining up here to say “Thank you all!” for the information – I came across this thread when I only was thinking about to register on Collarspace, and found it very informative to already know beforehand about such grievous problems.
It did not discourage me though.
I registered nonetheless, to see if I am lucky with my profile, and by now my profile became visible and I am happily connecting to people there.
Currently it seems you have to wait about more or less 6 weeks until your profile will be visible. While waiting, I changed again here and there some details, and of course every time I had edited something, even if only a typo, the profile got pushed back to the end of the waiting queue.
So once I stopped to tweak around there, 5 weeks later, I received the first message of someone contacting me, I had become visible!
While waiting, I already could access the chatroom there, this might be an information interesting to those who cannot contact anyone in there.
It is an IRC-based chat, you first need to allow Java script, but then you are in some kind of a lobby, and see online people who are also in the chatroom listed to your right.
Clicking on a name, you open a private chatroom with the person – so maybe those who cannot reach their friends and similar, might like to check in that chatroom if a friendly person of the community would help you out with contacting your friend to meet up with you there.
This IRC chatroom can even be accessed when you cannot access your own account (yes I tested that), using for example an IRC app which will connect you with the right settings to the room, as if you’d be on with your own account.
Still being new to the community there, I am quite surprised I found a lot of levelled people with good standard there… yes there are also the typical scammers, illiterate and strange people you find everywhere else too, but of all the pages I checked on so far, I am for now quite happy with collarspace… well, communication in messages is really challenging since punctuation and special characters or specific words, links etc are strangely censored, but well.
Anyway, thank you all again for this thread, I hope my addition here might help another one who stumbles over this problem – patience is the key, the chatroom is accessible as workaround, and albeit CS has been said to be dying, my own impression and experience right now is different.
Cheers!
Thanks for the update, this gives me a bit of hope!
I have been on CS for years, including when it was still CM, and recently I decided to refresh my profile, and create a new one, and they are both stuck in validation-hell.
I wanted to try and modify something, to see if it helps, but I guess you are right that it would juts move them to the end of the queue.
Along the lines of what you write,the community is still great on there, we just need to be able to access it ;)
They appear to be truncating passwords to 14 characters.
I had a very long password a long time ago and in 2018 I stopped being able to login. I had assumed my account had become locked or something so I abandoned the site.
I randomly had the idea to attempt logging in with the first X number of characters of my pw and sure enough I was able to login when I entered the first 14 characters of my password.
***
It is bizarre that this site is actively trying to discourage people from using the site.
I can’t figure out how to change my location either… I seem to recall they had an account page where you could set your zip code, but I can’t find it.
Is there a good alternative for collarspace does anyone know?
Filmdirector here… I did create an excellent alternative, but it did lock up because of new PHP and MySql versions 2011 when I had over 28.000 members before any advertising…
http://www.eepassion.com/
You can read little more about it below…
If anyone knows a way to create an account at Collarspace in late 2019, I’d love to hear about it.
And IIRC, Alt.com is like trying to force you head through the neck of a toilet: your only reward is the risk of drowning or inhaling turds.
I’ve worked out how to access the Collarspace account create page – hint; it’s hidden – and so in the near future I’m going to be ruining my future hopes by being honest and optimistic in yet another way.
Hooray for Christmas, and holla to all you social media type folks ……
In case the tab to create new CS accounts is not working (which it hasn’t in over a month now), you can still use this link to create new accounts…
https://www.collarspace.com/bdsm/register.htm
But good luck; 9 out of every 10 accounts made is rejected. The wait is typically well-over a month, and even when new accounts are approved, they are often unapproved only days later.
Well, I’d like to thank (the wonderfully persistent) Ferns and the folks here for the heads up. Had discovered the backdoor register page (thanks anyway Alyssa!) but it sounds like the entire site is now nothing but a fickle funnel for Alt.com.
On the bright side, after spending hours on my profile I don’t need to actually post it. A relief of sorts.
Chin-chin, my fellows!
hi everyone out there, i thought it was my end that collarspace stopped working , because i updated my profile and its still waitting to be aproved…And now when i make a new collarspace profile it takes me to alt web site and i know its not free so i dont want to join……. is there any other BDSM web ssites that are free and dont have to pay for it?
please contact me at
midnite4two@yahoo.com and to send me links to sites that are free in the bdsm
thank you ……..Lisa
I came across something significant here and I thought I should share it…
Ever since CollarSpace began to get REALLY bad with the the profile approval rates (which are VERY slim and VERY rare), I been looking for COMPLETELY FREE alternatives that are similar to CollarSpace. I tried all the similar sites, but of course money is always involved…which I do not want to deal with.
In some blind luck, I came across a post on reddit about a new site someone had made called CollarAge.com, which is COMPLETELY FREE. So I took a chance and tried it out.
Users will need a valid e-mail address to sign up. The website will then send an e-mail to verify it is your e-mail, and send you your password.
(You do NOT have to use your “real” e-mail or name…you simply need a valid e-mail JUST to receive their verification link and their password. I would suggest just going to mail.com and making a quick “joke” e-mail account that you wouldn’t typically use; just write down the e-mail and password and use it just to sign up. I use mail.com all the time for things like this…takes not even 5 minutes, and you can use a fake name if you want.)
So, after you get the e-mail verification sent to you, and your password, you make a username and add pics and write a profile…and get INSTANT APPROVAL. Let me repeat that: INSTANT APPROVAL. I was blown away by this, especially after the days of instant approval on CollarSpace are long gone.
I have been quite busy of these last few days, so I have NOT had time to really delve into the site that much. It is a VERY BASIC site, similar to CollarSpace, that is simple and easy to use, with simple search features. There ARE people on it already, and we should spread the word on this. From what I saw, nothing annoying like the other sites…no flashing adds, no regular ads, no movie clips, no apparent bullshit. Just a straight-up profile list of doms, subs, etc.
Again, INSTANT APPROVAL of profiles. AND instant approval of pics.
http://www.CollarAge.com
collarage is easy to use, totally free, and it needs more people so spread the word. Size does matter. They could use a lot more members and CS is now just a shill for Alt.
An interesting development (noticed on Jan. 3rd) with the CollarSpace site…
An e-mail address is required in order to sign up. HOWEVER, the typical situation of where the site e-mails the person and then has to click a link does not occur. Rather, CollarSpace just sends out a generic “Welcome to CollarSpace” message, with no action required.
Seems as if they are collecting e-mail addresses now. Just use a made up one, or a “burner” e-mail from a site like mail.com.
For those unaware, CollarSpace has intentionally hid the link to sign up. For anyone interested here it is:
https://www.collarspace.com/bdsm/register.htm
For some unknown reason, some “new” profiles are beginning to finally appear…these are profiles created back in August-Dec. of last year, now finally being approved.
ALSO, sometimes profiles are “approved” but are not made public. You will be able to send and receive messages, but the profile is hidden, with no way to unhide it. Who knows if this is a glitch or not.
ALSO, some of these approved profiles become unapproved only days later. No explanation of course is given.
This made me laugh so hard :D.
‘Random weird stuff is happening randomly. Then randomly unhappening.’
Cool cool.
Thanks for the update :).
Ferns
In addition to the direct link provided above for registering, when you click on the Support link at the bottom of the page, the Support page gives direct join link that is a little different than the one above:
https://www.collarspace.com/personals/register.htm
Instead of /bdsm, it is /personals. I am going to try this one and see what happens.
A quick update on this. I tried earlier today to make a new account using the link with /bdsm and apparently it worked because when I tried using the same user name with the /personals link, it said the name was already in use and I was able to log in with it and edit my profile and look around the site. I can’t message anyone yet because that requires a confirmed profile, so we shall see how many days or weeks that takes. lol
Over the past week, many new profiles have appeared/been approved. No idea why this would happen NOW after all this time. However, there’s a noticable change: face pics on new profiles are rare…usually chopped off or just bodyshots.
I would advise anyone attempting to make a new account to NOT include a face pic…this just may improve one’s chances on getting their profile approved. Who knows.
Profiles created in August and September are now finally being approved…although VERY slowly. But for every 20 profiles made, MAYBE 1 gets approved. MAYBE.
I suspect that, whoever is in charge of approving new profiles, that masses of new profiles are simply rejected, due to the large backlog. This, of course, makes the job of having to approve new profiles much easier.
SOMETIMES, a profile that was made and rejected can get approved on the second attempt. Simply try updating the profile again after awhile; perhaps the person forgets, then approves it at a later date.
SOMETIMES, and this is VERY RARE, a profile is approved on the same day or a day later. SOMETIMES, but this is rare. These are typically profiles with no pics or those with blocked out faces.
What doesn’t make ANY sense here is the lack of communication…nothing is posted on the site explaining ANY of this. It is simply a wait-and-see process involving much mystery and bullshit.
I meant to come back sooner with an update, but I had my profile approved just under three weeks after I created it. Submitted to be approved on Jan 31 and approved on Feb 19. I did not include any pics and I kept the description text that requires the approval fairly short and as basic as possible, while still saying something about myself. There are very few active members where I live, so I wonder if the approval time is affected any by location? Maybe people in high population cities get approved faster and people in places with few active members are put at the end of the list?
B Arthur – from everything I’ve seen there’s one person “stuck” with this job. Collarspace is the result of a feud between partners – if they were romantic or not I’m not sure and frankly don’t care. The “winner” of the feud kept the site, but the “loser” did the coding, I think, along with damn near everything else that was useful for the users. Then when Trump came along with his sex traffic ideas, everything that worked had to be done manually. So we have one person reading all the new profiles, the revised profiles, trying to figure out if they’re legit, still legal, and then maybe approving them.
What pisses me off about the whole thing is that whoever this person is… why not just sell the damn site? Why hang on to it? In spite of the obvious problems it’s still the most successful of its kind. Sell it to someone who can upgrade and hire a staff. Just… bloody hell. FWIW I can access the site and read profiles, so at least I can make a “wish list”, when and if I can finally send messages. I expect that to be sometime in September (if I’m lucky).
Clicked on the “Join the Community” button and was sent to the alt.com page.
Fetster.com is another up and coming free site. Good user search and groups
For those unaware, CollarSpace has intentionally hid the link to sign up. For anyone interested here it is:
https://www.collarspace.com/bdsm/register.htm
Thanks. I put that in one of the (many) updates to the post, but never hurts to repeat :).
Ferns
Fantastic discussion! The only thing I can add is that I submitted a new profile today searching for a slave. It’s 1 paragraph long, barely any punctuation (what’s the point?) and no photos. If ever there was an “easy one” to approve, that’s it. I’ll update when / if it’s ever posted. Maybe it’ll give an idea of an average wait / time?
It took 10 days. As of March 15th I’m on. I’m frankly shocked it didn’t take much longer! Wish me luck – I’m going hunting.
Hi Ferns. Reading this certainly explained a lot to me. I had an error in my Collarspace profile (listed Ethnicity as Other for some reason) and tried to correct that. My account went into a no-sending messages until its approved status, and after 4 weeks I finally sent support a nasty message asking why so long to fix something so minor. Their response was to disapprove my profile. I have tried three times since to re-register and each time my profile is disapproved.
I have friends in there that I have now lost contact with, so I completely agree with your recommendation to develop alternate ways of contact.
Do you perhaps still have an account on Collarspace? I am trying to reconnect with one in particular that got cut off from me thru this, and am looking for anyone still in there that could possibly send her a message. (Desparate times call for desparate measures). If you can or would, please message me back. Thanks so much again for the information and any help you can give.
It’s incredible – they have denied my profile for an account I’ve had for a decade. Something happened that wiped out all of my matches and emails. They won’t reapprove it.
I made a different account and tried to use the work “Spank” and it got approved, but they removed the letters “Span” because something is wrong with the system so it kept saying I enjoy “King” so I updated it to say OTK instead and they *rejected it*!
So now I’ve created a new one and put in very different text that is much shorter – fingers crossed? They are definitely encouraging people to go to Alt.com
Hi. I can report that it’s much easier to get a profile updated nowdays. I just waited a couple of days. The site is still a mess, words like form and com get censored so bigger words like reforming and commanding get messed up but its slightly better and more active. Though still fishy as always, and I miss the forums that made it easier to connect with folks.
Signed back into my Collarspace account last week after some time away. Made some updates to my profile Was told my profile was in a line waiting to be approved and that the delay in approval was an issue they were trying to resolve.
Three days later I was lucky enough to have my profile approved. But wow, what a shock to then discover that I cannot log into my Collarspace account. And yes, there is no way of contacting customer support unless you are logged into an account.
It’s plainly obvious that either the owners of Collarspace have an affiliate deal with Alt.com and have no interest in building the Collarspace community…. or Alt.com now owns Collarspace and is using the community base as a means to attract new members of Alt.com. They are clearly going to approve enough Collarspace profiles to maintain the Collarspace community as an asset for building the membership base of Alt.com.
So I decided to join Alt.com as a free member. I lasted a day before i closed my account, having be spammed relentlessly with fake accounts.
If Alt.com believe their treatment of the Collarspace community will endear them to the BDSM community, they are having a laugh.
I have now joined BDSM date uk and Collarage. I tried to join Fetster but had issue with the sign up process. Will try again. Yes, these communities are low on members but hey, it has to start somewhere.
What has happened to Collarspace is a great shame. Hopefully another existing site will step in to fill the need or another site will build a new community.
There was a flurry of approvals over the past two weeks, and I thought something significant was FINALLY happening.
Now, only two weeks later, a great majority of those new profiles (including one I made but never actually used), was deleted/unapproved.
These idiots approve profiles, then un-approve them days later.
A user by the name of CocofemFindom was APPROVED, joining the site on April 29th. The “Findom” aspect of her usernames is a clear violation of the terms of service presented when signing up for the website.
So whoever approved that profile is unaware of the terms of service, or they are approving profiles at random.
Morons…
In case the link to create new CS accounts is not working, you can still use this link to create new accounts…
https://www.collarspace.com/bdsm/register.htm
In case this does NOT work (the site blocks proxy I.P. sites like ProxySite.com), just go to the main site (www.collarspace.com) and scroll all the way down (on any page of the site), and click on “Support” in blue.
When the screen changes, you will see “Click here to create an account.”
An alternative to collarspace, a really great alternative would be going back to personnel papers like in the seventies. When you read an add talked on the phone than did a meet up in a bar.
Not a single new female dominant profile approved for a month…
The last one approved was on May 12th. It’s now June 12th.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
I forgot to add that this was in the United States. No new female dominant profiles in the U.S. since May 12th.
Straight up bullshit.
Sex and the promise of sex through the internet is F.O.S…can’t disagree. But the reality in a world were you can get your wife or girlfriend to dom you, you really think a stranger on the internet is going to be a better option…lol
Thank you Ferns!
Unfortunately I found this post AFTER I submitted two CS profiles for updates last week. Both profiles were from around 2015 or so and it’s not cool (IMO) for people to think I’m 5 yrs younger. The only changes made to both profiles were My age and the age range specified in the profile for what I was seeking. So disappointed to hear that I may have lost both profiles simply because I wanted to update My age. :/ I refuse to join Alt both b/c I don’t want to have My payment info attached to BDSM Dating and b/c I don’t like feeling like I’ve been railroaded into doing something and that’s exactly what it feels like CS is doing. I’ve been in the lifestyle since 2004 and honesty and integrity actually mean something to a lot of us old guard folks.
I did a tiny bit of research online to see what else is out there. I’ll share what I found; however, please note that if it got less than 4 stars out of 5 in average reviews I didn’t bother including it here. There are also dating Apps: Kinkd, Whiplr, and KNKI. For Kinkd you have to submit a copy of your ID for photo verification…so that’s out, lol. I’m really wanting an actual website more than an App.
RESOURCE: I found BDSMDatingSites.org which has a list of kink dating sites, some information about what to expect, and star ratings from reviews. Alt was at their top, but F them, let’s just move on.
BDSMdatingonly.com looks like a “kinky Facebook” (I can’t stand vanilla FB and already have FL, so this isn’t appealing for Me)
MatchBDSM.com Again, it seems like they’re trying to take something vanilla and just make a “kinky” version of it. Needs more investigation, lol
BondagePal.com Apparently it has a lot of Ads, but that’s what keeps it FREE and it’s supposed be super quick and easy to create a profile.
BDSMDating Chat.com Looks like another option that needs more vetting
I would absolutely love to hear what other’s experience has been with any of these, or others.
Thank you FERNS for providing a space for us to share our recent experiences with CS and help each other find a better non-paying-customer-friendly site. Personally, I liked the rough around the edges vibe of CS but that may have been partly due to it having been My first lifestyle dating site 16 years ago when it was CM.
Raven, the problem with the sites you mentioned either involves some sort of payment/ID verification (which most do not want, because of privacy), or they are simply too difficult to use. CollarSpace is so mindlessly easy to navigate and use, that’s it’s so appealing to many, and for me this is one of the main reasons I TRY to use it…whenever I can get a profile approved.
There appears to be no rhyme or reason on who gets approved or not; no explanation is ever given anywhere for a rejected profile. “Dommes” who are CLEARLY “findommes” (and mention it in their profile, or at least allude to it) ARE regularly approved…even though this violates the TOS.
What I just do not get is the secrecy behind all of this. All they need to do is post a SIMPLE and STRAIGHTFORWARD message on the main page as to why – SPECIFICALLY – these NUMEROUS profiles are continuously being rejected. This has now been going on for about two years now, and the entire process of creating a profile is a complete crap shoot.
And even when they ARE approved, many are removed/deleted/rejected only days later.
(And by the way, I am well-aware of the former CollarMe site and the story behind it…no need to be “enlightened” here by hearing that dumb story again.)
The following profile was approved:
PearlJamG
Hetero Female Dominant, 45, Illinois US
“Sorry I made you have an anxiety attack on the way to get french fries. I was listening to Ten and thought of you. Youre such a doll. I hope you know that.”
There CANNOT be anyone actually READING these new profiles before approving them. I am sorry, but this approval process is completely random now.
What a fucking JOKE.
UPDATE: After almost three weeks, one of the profiles I’d try to update was approved; however ALL of My pics were deleted. So, now no one is really looking at it anyway. :( I could see if they would only allow My personal photos and not allow internet images; but they deleted ALL of them. The collarspace people are fucking awful.
And there’s no explanation for any of it anywhere, no specific reasons for it. It’s like a damn millenial “checks on the site” once every couple of weeks and MAYBE approves a profile, MAYBE NOT…
What is the point of the site if they are not going to maintain it???
Because, I guess, it leads people to the dreaded Adult Friend Finder.
My profile was deleted without any explanation, I been on the site since 2009, what gives
Whoever’s NOT approving these profiles is asleep at the fucking’ wheel. Just approve the damn things already. What’s the damn holdup?!
Get someone else to run the site, you moron!
It’s now been over a month since I created a profile on collarspace.com with zero approval received so far. Whomever is behind the website at this time should either pass it on to someone that has a clue about what to do or even better get outside help ASAP to help running it. .
It is broke, dead, kaput….etc
None of this makes sense, because they (or whoever it is, being a single person or a number of them), ARE actually updating the site. Specifically, the tabs on the left hand side are much bigger and spaced out, and some of the font sizes and minor content HAVE been changes over the last two weeks. So there IS an “update process” of the site occurring.
But again, why so many new profiles are outright rejected/deleted/etc. is a damn mystery.
NONE OF THIS MAKES FUCKING SENSE.
Look, you are being censored out of collarspace. I believe a lot of this profile approval is simply that the ass in charged is trying to remove eliments they dont want on collarspace. It is that simple.
Hate to tell you this Youralldiseased, but the last few profiles I attempted were disarmingly straight. Meaning, no profanity, no mention of specific fetishes, nothing to rock ANYONE’s boat at all…extremely vanilla. No pics as well…if that is ever an issue of getting it approved. Simply put, these were very generic, very “safe” vanilla profiles that were all within the terms of service.
Your key words were “ass in charge”, which sums it up.
It’s pathetic.
Interesting? I have been wondering why i could not access my accounts? I had been a member since day one> when it was taken over before Alt, i feel that i was there since the beginning and the person who passed it on (before alt) did something to it? i can’t even lookup and update my profile anymore. I would have to try to make another account and its been waiting clearance since over a year. So i gave up finding a mate who likes getting into the scene. those chats were cool, i remember seeing old friends that we are on Fet (haven’t been their either and since its not a “Dating” site why bother.
but i am on POF and when i posted a funny photo of a bondage bed and told the few ladies that i got over 100 likes on a single homesteaders Facebook group< then it might be a hit,she might get what i mean and laugh.
(still in process)…
Some “new” accounts are finally being approved…from May, June, and July. There’s also been a handful of BRAND NEW accounts, where the “joined on” date is when they actually appear…so someone is approving them (SOMETIMES) the same day.
I imagine there’s an enormous backlog, and to avoid dealing with it, the person approving the accounts simply delete the ones on the waiting list.
They’re assholes.
I have 3 profiles on CS and lately whenever I send a message from one profile it seems to automatically log out and log into another of my profiles.
I’ve no idea what’s happening?
Any ideas?
They may be utilizing some programming involving cookies on your computer, where they may not want multiple users on the same I.P. address.
Try clearing your cookies and seeing if any changes occur. I would also suggest NOT using two of the three accounts; meaning, “save” them for the future, since all accounts may be deleted if traced to the same I.P. address. Just stick with one, until it’s deleted, and then have the others as a backup.
All of this is just speculation involving the I.P. addresses.
There’s software you can get hat hides your I.P. and where you can actually choose different I,P. address for different geographical locations. I use “HideMyAss”, which is a VPN.
Again, the I.P. address issue with CollarSpace is JUST speculation…who knows if they even care over there or not.