niiske.com is a free board for personal ads in Estonia. In Estonian the thing is called a täiskasvanute portaal, which translates word for word as adult portal. The site sells nothing and takes no percentage from anyone. An ad is written by the person who appears in it, and it ends with an e-mail address or a phone number, so a reply reaches the poster instead of passing through the site.
Two languages, two addresses
The board reads in Estonian and in English, and the switch in the header changes the address along with the wording. Addresses that begin with /kuulutused/ serve Estonian and addresses that begin with /category/ serve English. The place pages work the same way, /asukoht/ on one side and /location/ on the other. If you click the switch yourself, the site remembers the choice on your next visit.
The category names stay in Estonian in both versions. They are the board’s own labels, and they are the names the adverts were filed under.
What an ad carries
A poster gives a name, an age, a place and the text of the ad, and may add a photograph. The adverts are for adults, and the form asks for an age between 18 and 120. Text that offers medicine, supplements or vitamins is refused.
There is no account and no profile page. An ad is a single entry with a contact detail on the end of it, and the only way to answer one is to write to the person or call them.
Where the adverts sit
The menu is short and the adverts are filed by who is looking for whom. An advert written by a woman lands on the shelf the menu calls naine tutvub mehega, which means a woman meets a man. Adverts from men sit on the neighbouring shelf, and the two remaining shelves are for women looking among women and men looking among men. Anything that fits none of those, massage and erotica among it, goes under Muud, which means other.
Alongside the categories there is a place filter. It lists the towns and counties that hold enough adverts to be worth filtering by, and it narrows whichever shelf you are reading.
The ten day clock
An ad stays online for ten days and is then deleted automatically. Before it appears at all, the poster has to follow a confirmation link that the site sends to their e-mail address, so an advert that is live belongs to someone who can receive mail. An ad can be taken down sooner by writing to [email protected] from the address that posted it.
Ten days is short enough to keep the board current, and it makes the date on an advert worth reading. A posting from last week is a different proposition from one made this morning.
Replying
Write in the language you are comfortable in, and open with the advert you are answering so the poster knows which one you mean. Two sentences about yourself go further than a paragraph about what you expect. If you are writing in English to someone whose advert is in Estonian, keep it short and clear, and let a translation app handle the rest.
The board does not pass messages between people, does not check what an advert claims, and does not hold money. A deposit, a fee or a copy of a document has no place in a reply, and a request for one is a reason to stop.
Before you post or reply
Everyone using the site is 18 or over, and the terms on the English side of the site set out what the board holds about a poster and how to ask for it to be removed. Meet in public the first time, arrange your own way home, and tell someone where you are going. The adverts are written by ordinary people in Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu and the rest of the country.