The love of your life may just be a click away.
According to Jupiter Research, with about 21 million Americans spending $313 million for online dating services in the last year, your chances of meeting someone on the Internet may be better than you think.
There are sites especially for certain nationalities, religions and sexual preferences. Some web sites are designed for specific groups of people such as Soulmatch.com, which matches users based on values, spirituality, beliefs and character; singleparent-meet.com which links single parents; and sportsfanmatch.com which connects sports and fitness buffs to one another.
Yahoo Personals is currently the most visited online matchmaking site, followed closely by Match.com, Tickle.com, Friendster, AmericanSingles.com, Lavalife.com and eHarmony.com. Each of these services offers different methods of being connected with other single people.
At Yahoo it is free to set up a profile, which includes a list of characteristics about the person and the mate they are seeking and up to five photos. In order to contact another user, a monthly fee of almost $20 is required.
At Match.com, a very similar scenario takes place. Match also offers a “Total Attraction Matching” system that scientifically measures personality profiles and physical attraction. This company operates more than 30 dating sites in six continents and 18 languages.
Match.com has about 4 million visitors, and services through the site cost around $25 a month.
Lavalife.com is a global company that offers Internet and telephone services for single people to meet. This site has separate categories for dating, relationships or sexual relationships. It also has links for people interested in meeting people of the same sex at manline.com and womanline.com.
At Lavalink, single people can chat privately through instant messages, exchange mail message through the site – like e-mail – and create a free profile which tells others about them, what they are looking for and can include up to 10 photos.
A credit system is used on the Lavalink site, with 50 credits costing about $15. Mail messages and instant messaging sessions cost a certain number of credits.
Many people have heard of Dr. Neil Clark Warren and eHarmony.com through television and radio advertising. This web site is different from most others because relationship expert and psychologist Warren spent 35 years developing a system for compatibility matching.
Users must be looking for a serious, committed relationship, be at least 21 years old, not have substance abuse problems and be emotionally stable. A 436-question personality profile which measure the 29 dimensions of compatibility – including emotional temperament, relationship skills and religion and beliefs – must be completed before payment is even accepted.
EHarmony boasts that more than 6,000 couples have met and been married through the site since its August 2000 launch, and that it is growing faster than other online dating sites with an average of 10,000 new users a day.
Services at eHarmony are $49.95 for one month, $99.95 for three months, $149.95 for six months and $249.95 for membership for a year, but no extra costs are added for contacting matches.
They also offer a guarantee to provide at least the same number of matches for the length of service paid for, such as six matches in the six-month period and 12 in the 12-month.
EHarmony even has guided communication processes where members must move slowly and get to know their match before they can talk on the phone or meet in person, unless both users agree to progress more quickly.
Warren says that most marriages fail because a lack of compatibility and that many people are getting married for the wrong reasons. The 29 dimensions are his solution to finding out if two people are compatible enough to meet and possibly get married.
Although most online dating web sites offer hundreds of success stories, not everyone who uses these sites find a match. Brett Story, 29, did not have much luck finding love online.
“I met a couple of people through an online dating site, but nothing really worked out,” he said.
There are several drawbacks to meeting people you get to know on the Internet, he said.
“You never know what to expect,” Story said. “When you meet someone, you wonder if they are really who you think they are, or if they are anything like what you were led to believe.
“Either that, or you have a connection with someone but they are afraid to meet you. They think you are a psycho or something, which makes you question why they are on there [an online dating site] in the first place.”
As our society get more and more technological, Internet dating may soon be the best way to meet a love interest.
For now it is an option, and we still have the bars and the grocery stores, too.

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