It’s not that [Pay for Play] is shady, since members theoretically know what they are getting into when they sign up (leaving aside the issue of changing the policies after the fact), but it starts to raise questions:

* People want to be networked and meet others with whom to do business, so it makes sense to be listed in the ‘yellow pages’ of the future, which is what these services seem to be tending toward. But if it is a ‘yellow pages’ model, shouldn’t people pay to be listed?
* If it is, on the other hand, a telephone exchange model, certainly the ones making the call (making the search) should pay.
* If it is a dating service model, people want to get hooked up with people meeting their profiled interests and (theoretically) no one else, and therefore, the service should be managing things so that unwanted contact does not happen.

So, it looks like we are evolving some scary, blendo model of business, here. I am free to join, but I don’t have the rights of the paying members who can (in some circumstances) see me when I can’t see them. This inequality is troubling, but parallels other fee-for-rights movements, like paid travel lanes in public highways. But since, in principal, I want to be contacted in some circumstances this should be ok, right? Well, only so long as I am never spammed, and it seems likely that those paying for the paid memberships are more likely to be using the service to sell, sell, sell.