The Open Personals Story

When it comes to online dating and online "dating", you name it and I've used it. I've found everything online, from true love (yes, true story) to things better left unsaid. I'm old and old-school, I go out often and often meet real people in real life. But sometimes, that person isn't at the same place at the same time as me, so finding each other online works. 

Over the years, I've spent a lot of hours trying to meet genuine people on classifieds sites such as CraigsList and I've spent a lot of money trying to meet genuine people on dating sites such as RHP and I've spent the entire cartilage on my left thumb trying to meet anyone on apps such as Tinder. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. They all have their place. Classifieds sites such as CL had so many fakes and flakes but also genuine people. I met a lot of people there, some are still friends — I had a beer with a couple of them this week.  

I liked BackPage as a personals site because I didn't need a detailed profile that needed to say everything about me for all time. I liked Craigslist as a classifieds site because I could post for what I wanted right now or multiple posts for different things that I was looking for. And, it often worked. I liked that too.  

Then, oh my word, a single piece of US legislation with the best of intentions is passed and no more CL classifieds! What's a person to do on a Friday night? Go out? Watch Netflix? Read a book? Nope. Use my IT skills to build my own personals classifieds site. Open Personals. Open to anyone (as long as it's genuine). Open to anything (as long as it's legal). Simple. Cheap. Genuine.  

I wanted a site that would be all the best bits of CraigsList without the bad bits. I didn't want to be ripped off to view fake profiles. I didn't want to pay to receive bot messages. I wanted people to be able to post for what they want and, hopefully, be found by people looking for what they're posting for. So I sat down and built Open Personals. It's the only genuine Australian only personals only classifieds only site. It's for me and people like me, people like you. 

I got pretty good at posting for what I wanted and even better at spotting scams, fakes and flakes. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I learnt a lot. I learnt a lot about what was good and what wasn't about finding someone online. I've tried to build that into the site and will keep improving it. But for now, it does what we all need it to do.

So go, register, post, reply, meet the person (or people) you're looking for online!