AfroIntroductions

AfroIntroductions: African flair in the world of dating 

One of the world’s leaders on the online dating scene, Cupid Media, has added AfroIntroductions to their offer, as a part of the relatively new trend of ethnic dating. Promising to connect their users with African singles around the world, they strive towards being the number one website for people of African descent. The site’s advertised status is quite extraordinary, but does it really live to everyone’s expectations? Stay with us, and we’ll shed some light on all the particulars of using this service. We’ll warn you against possible scammers and help you make the most of your AfroIntroductions member experience.

Who actually uses AfroIntroductions: Members overview

2.5 million users worldwide have registered on this website since it was founded. The gender ratio favors men with a 2:1 proportion. The site receives most of its traffic from the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are reports on a considerable number of fraudulent user profiles originating from Nigeria. We’ll discuss the safety issues in more detail later on. Member activity is another point of disagreement. 

AfroIntroductions claims to be a vibrant community of active members, with more than 2,000 logins daily. But some users have voiced their concern with low responsiveness of supposedly active members. They found it hard to initiate a meaningful conversation and only came across scammers trying to lure them into transferring them money. 

Although the danger of being defrauded can never totally be avoided on online dating platforms, AfroIntroductions do their best to weed out imposters by removing profiles without personal details. There is no security check in the registration phase which lets everyone sign in quickly and easily. It seems to invite con artists of all sorts, but failing to provide a genuine photo or to complete a profile later arouses suspicion in the site’s Fraud Prevention Team. This can lead to a profile being permanently removed. All member photos are subject to thorough inspection and can take up to 48 hours to get approved. One can’t use celebrity pictures or upload profile pics on which their face is not clearly visible. 

Some more details on the registration process

Signing up is simple and straightforward. As with all dating services, users must be over 18 to register. AfroIntroductions offer two alternative ways of registering: via e-mail or using a pre-existent Facebook profile. The latter option is easier to use, but it entails creating a link between the two accounts. Thus, people you meet on AfroIntroductions can possibly access your Facebook feed. 

To be on the safe side, register using a newly created e-mail address and use it for online dating only. Choose a password which has at least six characters long and combines letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords serve to ensure that only you can gain access to your dating profile and they can’t be shared with anyone. Should a person ask you for your AfroIntroductions password, always suspect fraud and report this user to the Fraud Prevention Team. They will take appropriate action to remove that person’s profile from the site and prevent them from soliciting money or doing anything else to threaten your safety. 

In the initial phase of registration, you are asked to provide a few basic facts about yourself such as your gender, age, and first name. AfroIntroductions starts giving you possible matches based on those few elements. To make the matching process more specific, we encourage you to add more personal details on yourself and your prospective partner. Filling in a detailed personality questionnaire can be demanding and time-consuming, but it adds to your profile’s authenticity. Do it when you feel up to it, and your efforts will be rewarded with more accurate matches and increased chances of meeting someone perfectly suited to you. 

Contact making options for Standard and Premium members

Messaging between Standard members is not enabled on this site. Standard members can only send Interest and communicate with Premium members. So, to exchange messages, at least one of the parties involved has to be a paying member. Gold and Platinum members can text everyone without limitations while video chatting is only available for those on the Platinum membership plan. 

Like all the sites belonging to the Cupid Media Group, AfroIntroductions offers a chance to add Cupid tags accentuating your best personality features to your profile. These act as keywords in searches performed by other users with your profile popping up every time a particular Cupid tag is entered into the site’s search tool. Common tags used by many users include ‘beautiful,’ ‘attractive,’ ‘honest,’ ‘reliable,’ and lots more. 

Chat rooms provide a further communication opportunity for Premium members. Centered on a chosen subject, they facilitate getting to know people with similar interests. Once you meet people whose ideas you like in a chat room, you can continue your conversation by private messaging and possibly even start dating. 

How a completed profile on AfroIntroductions looks like

AfroIntroductions invites you to fill out a comprehensive questionnaire covering most areas of life that are potentially important to find a romantic partner. Questions are divided into several categories including physical appearance, habits, worldviews, preferences, etc. Completing your profile is not a prerequisite of using the site’s features, but it does make you stand out and appear more serious about finding a mate on this platform. 

Empty profiles with just a few personal details have ‘fraud’ written all over them. If you wish to be taken seriously, invest some time and effort into portraying your personality as you can best. Questions provided by AfroIntroductions basically serve as prompts, so a new member would not forget to mention something really important about him/herself. 

In addition to the profile photo, which has to meet the requirements imposed by the site’s administrators, members can upload more images and arrange them in photo albums. Those can be either public (thus, visible to all) or private with a limited number of people being granted access to them.

Meeting African singles on the go: AfroIntroductions mobile app

With a friendly and visually pleasing interface, AfroIntroductions’ mobile app mostly attracts millennials and those a bit younger. But since it doesn’t require any sophisticated tech skills, it’s quite accessible for an older population as well. Some argue that its design lacks innovation and fresh features to make it stand out from similar apps. But this has proven to be more of a strong point than weakness. It’s possible to use it intuitively without having to be a computer geek to understand its functions. 

AfroIntroductions app is downloadable from Google Play and App Store for free. With all the features of the desktop version, it offers the users an opportunity to continue their matchmaking endeavors even when away from their computers. The ability not to miss out on a single message or another member’s Interest in you by can be reassuring. And a chance to keep in touch with African singles during your morning commute or while on a business trip is inspiring. Nights spent in lonely hotel rooms will definitely seem less daunting when there’s a special someone to chat with before going to sleep.    

Premium membership options: Gold and Platinum membership

As opposed to Standard membership that only allows limited use of the site’s features, Premium membership offers full access to everything. Those upgrading to the Platinum level get the full experience of African dating which includes the services of a translator, should they be required, and all the advanced matching options.

Membership fees on AfroIntroductions

• Gold membership is available from 10 USD a month on a 12 months membership plan, while its costs go up to 29.98 USD when the membership is single-month based. 
• Platinum membership is slightly more expensive, and its monthly prices range from 12.50 USD on a 12-month membership to 34.99 USD when purchased for a single month.

Members can use their credit or debit cards, Pay Pal accounts, or direct bank transfer as a means of payment. AfroIntroductions use advanced SSL encryption to ensure all money transactions are perfectly safe. 

Once becoming a Premium member, your membership is auto-renewed after its period elapses. If you want to cancel auto-renewal, go to the Settings menu on your profile, click on ‘Billing,’ and turn off the ‘Auto-renew my membership’ option. To apply the changes you made, don’t forget to hit the ‘Save’ button before leaving this section of the site. 

Some interesting features on AfroIntroductions

• Cupid Tags: the keywords added to your profile emphasizing your strong points
• Showing interest: if unable to contact a particular user as a Standard member, you can reach out to them by clicking on the ‘Show interest’ button. The other person sees who’s interested in them and can show interest back. In the Activity menu under the ‘Interested in me’ subsection, you can see people who showed interest in you
• Blocking offensive users: there are several ways you can prevent someone from bothering you with inappropriate messages or comments. You can place a person on your Block list by clicking on ‘Block user’ from their profile’s homepage or directly from the Messages folder after you’d received a disagreeable text.
• Real-time communication: live chat and video calls. This is only available to Premium members, while Standard members can benefit from this feature if someone with Gold or Platinum membership contacts them. 
• Verifying your account by uploading a photo ID or sending identity documents to the Administrators by e-mail. A ‘Verified account’ sign will appear on your profile which will add to its authenticity and further emphasize your serious intentions of finding an African soulmate. 

Customer feedback

Bartender (41): This site has a lot of scams, and I would advise everyone to double-check all people who write to them. For the three months of membership, two of which I am a Gold member, I’ve been often contacted by Nigerian scammers trying to con me into sending them money which quite disappointing. It takes time to find real people looking for African dating on this site.

Salesman (35): Thanks to AfroIntroductions I’ve met my future wife! After initial problems with bogus profiles soliciting money or just being rude and offensive in their communication, I managed to meet really interesting women and started dating. I’ve been in contact with Janet for six months now, we’ve met twice in person, and we’re starting to plan a life together. I’m grateful to AfroIntroductions for making this possible. I highly recommend this site to all of you looking for long-term relationships with people of African descent.

General assessment and overall rating of AfroIntroductions

Overall, we would give this site a 3/5 grade. We commend the site’s authors for coming up with a platform that caters to a specific population of African singles. The basic background checking weeds out imposters. But we also find that several security areas need improvement. First of all, we would like to see the profile verification process made a bit more thorough to prevent scammers from applying and increase customer safety. Also, removing inactive profiles would help active members find persons available for online communication and dating, as opposed to sending countless messages to unresponsive parties. 

Plus, introducing some more free features available to Standard members would be welcomed. Otherwise, it doesn’t give them much experience before they buy Premium memberships.

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