Looking for Love (Page 2 of 4)

Marketing and advertising play a key role in the survival of online dating, but the sites also excel where traditional newspaper ads and telephone dating systems have not. "One of the first things people notice and care about is physical attractiveness," he says. "Now, with the Internet, people can scan hundreds of photos to find the people who look like someone they would like to date." Some may say beauty is only skin deep, but McNulty has found through his research that physical attractiveness plays an integral role in shaping the dynamics of established relationships — even marriage.

Internet dating definitely has its perks: convenience, relative safety and anonymity, 24-hour availability and a greater selectiveness of whom one pursues and meets. McNulty and Baker say shy or socially anxious personality types may prefer to meet and communicate with others online but are no more likely to use the services than extroverts.

For every advantage, however, there may be a drawback. Robert England*, 41, discovered firsthand the kind of people who may give Internet dating a bad rap. After getting a divorce several years ago, England says he has had a handful of relationships but decided to try Plentyoffish.com after a friend recommended it. "I went on and put on my profile, and in two days, I edited it and said I didn't want pictures of people disrobed, I didn't want to meet up and do them in mall parking lots and if their husband or boyfriend wanted to watch, I wasn't interested. I got some pretty interesting responses," he says with a laugh. The free site, which supports itself by advertisements, facilitated England in finding only one person with whom he felt he connected, he says. "[It] was a miserable failure. I liked her as a person, but the romantic attraction wasn't there and, once you'd weeded out the nuts, you only had four or five people you could even relate to as friends," he says.

England deleted his account with Plentyoffish.com after three months paid to give eHarmony.com a try, with even less success than the other. "Everyone they matched me with was 800 miles away. They looked like good people, but it wasn't practical and I find it hard to believe there'd be no one in a 50-mile radius worth dating or with the same interests," he says.

England says he's finished with dating services of any kind and will continue to find love interests through friends and social settings like bars, which is how he met his current squeeze. "Will it go somewhere? I don't know. We get along really well … that short period of time burned me out on the whole experience," he says of his online dating days. "It's insane because it only takes two or three people to ruin the experience. It makes you think everyone is that way, and it's shameful because I know more about the world than that. But maybe the local dating scene isn't all it's cracked up to be."

One main flaw in the Internet dating service cited by both McNulty and Williams is misrepresentation. People say one thing, and it turns out not to be the case at all. New media forms of communication, such as e-mailing and mobile phone text-messaging “are more ambiguous and thus open to interpretation," says McNulty. "For this reason, I suspect that people may be more likely to 'see what they want to see' in those with whom they are communicating through such means. Some of my past research … suggests such biases may set people up for disappointments down the road when they find out their partners are not who they thought they were."

Williams has experienced this false advertisement pitfall in online dating. "You're selling a product," she says. "People advertise themselves one way, and then it turned out their agenda was completely different and they just wanted to get laid."

This misrepresentation often creates people's wary views of Internet dating, a potential motivator for some to try other dating services like Matchmaker International, says Mike Hollifield, franchise owner of the Knoxville and Johnson City, Tenn., offices. "The latest estimate is that one out of four people on the singles Internet site is married. And it's also become the number one way of cheating in America," he says. "I've already met three people who'd been left by their ex for someone on the Internet, for someone they'd never physically met … I've met over 300 women who've met married men on the Internet."