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Some remain wary, though.
Industry expert and Match.com VP of Romance Trish McDermott has
seen it all before. "The stigma that was initially attached to print
personals," she remembers, "was that you must be a 'loser' to 'resort'
to using newspapers to advertise for a date, and there was so much
uncertainty involved: How would you know anything about the person you
were going to meet? It was scary, and it was kind of a mark against
your ability to get a good date in the real world. Of course, what
happened was that personals became extremely popular. It worked; many
people fell in love and got married... and because of that the stigma
has gone away."
Looking for love in all the right places…
So how does it work? On Match.com, members select a username or
handle that is incorporated into an email address available for use
only by subscribers. The company’s email server strips subscribers’
real email addresses from messages before they are forwarded to their
recipients. This double-blind system adds a measure of security to the
process of online dating, as subscribers need not reveal any personal
or contact information until they’re ready. Members post (and have the
option of hiding) a free member profile that includes text and
photographs. Certain criteria — age, height, body type, religion,
marital and parenthood status, and smoking and drinking habits — are
used to sort out the best matches by percentage, and members can add
descriptions of themselves, their interests, and their ideal matches.
"Everyone I met was nice and normal," says Laura Banks, author of
Love Online, of her own online dating experiences. "I had a couple of
close encounters with men that didn't work out, but they were
reasonable guys. One was a respected author, and another was a
lighting designer — very attractive and literate. Not a geek." Banks
also talks about one online connection that changed her life in a very
unexpected way: "Through someone I met online, I got turned on to
traditional church, which is kind of funny for such a progressive
medium."
Match.com's own statistics tell us a lot about who is searching
the Web for a relationship. The median age of subscribers is in the
mid-30s, the company says; non-paying members and those who log on as
guests are younger. The male-to-female ratio is more balanced than you
might think, too; women account for nearly 50% of Match.com's members
and more than one-third of its subscribers. Gay and lesbian Match.com
users account for 7% of membership, and their numbers are growing,
approaching the estimated 10% of gay people in society at large.
McDermott reports, "Match.com subscribers are well-employed and
well-educated. 62% have college degrees, 53% hold
managerial/professional jobs, and an additional 17% are in technical
fields." Of course, education and employment status aren't absolute
indicators of someone's behavior in social or romantic situations, but
they are among the first indicators of compatibility most people in
any forum seek when connecting with prospective dates or other new
social contacts.
Let’s get serious.
"Lots of demographic information tells us that people who are
using the Internet are college-educated, intelligent, highly
functioning in terms of their ability to navigate both in terms of
communication and technology," McDermott adds. "These are certainly
not what we'd call losers in life. These are people with jobs, people
who can afford computers, people who are in a profession where they're
using computers."
What draws these people to a medium that still makes so many
people so nervous? The same thing that leads to their investing a
small fortune each year in other singles services: They want to fall
in love. The Internet offers them 24-hour access from home or work,
the ability to be anonymous and secure in ongoing interactive
conversations, a level of immediacy newspapers cannot offer, and an
opportunity to screen prospective dates.
"There are over 80 million singles in the
U.S.
alone," McDermott says, "and that number is expected to break 100
million within a few years. Trends in the workplace (issues with
sexual harassment, smaller companies, etc.) make it difficult to date
or find someone at work. Older singles are tired of the bar scene and
are looking for something new. On Match.com, precisely because we are
more upscale than chat environments and because we require a
subscription fee, our members are a bit older. This makes sense
because it is not until people approach their 30s that they become
more serious about finding a relationship."
Finding the right relationship is hard
work. This technology is another tool for helping to get the job done
— and done safely, using the same common sense rules you would
exercise with someone you met at the gym, a PTA meeting or the grocery
store.
More and more people are finding success in their online romantic
searches.
Of course, just as not all marriages end as successful relationships,
not all successful relationships end in marriage. But those of you who
are seriously marriage-minded will delight in knowing that Match.com
has sparked more than 1000 marriages and countless meaningful
relationships. This article as been bought to Mens Network in
association with Match |
