"I hope they don't riddle their site with crappy ads and upsells like all their competitors" - I'm not sure about all competitors but I've used both Bussu.com and SharedTalk.com and neither of them have these problems. In fact, the latter has no ads or upsells at all.

Just tried busuu.com again and it's showing me ads for taps and office chairs - just what I'm looking for on a language learning site!

I didn't know about sharedtalk.com. Looks like it's made by Rosetta Stone. The sign up form is like a mortgage application. Why does a language learning site need to know my gender, birthdate and address?

I think gender and birthdate are important information for selecting a suitable partner. For example, I prefer to speak to females around my age, rather than males or females who are much younger or older, as I find it more interesting to chat to them. It doesn't ask for your address, just your country and city (I'm pretty sure city is optional), again information that is often useful when picking an exchange partner (for example, the Spanish spoken in Spain has certain differences to that spoken in Mexico - usage, accent, slang etc).

I didn't realise Bussu showed ads since I use Adblock but I agree that the ad they are showing you would be annoying.

No need to worry on that account. We're dedicated to keeping it the kind of site that we like to use, and crappy ads and in-your-face upsells aren't part of that. :)