click here to return to the Online Dating Insider homepage

Choosing an online dating service

The first step in finding a date online is choosing an online dating service. For this experiment I will be using Match.com. Why Match.com? Basically, because it’s the biggest online dating service, so more readers of this blog will be familiar with Match.com than any other service.

Of course I’m aware that Match.com has less than stellar reviews. Currently the average rating is only 2.00 out of a possible 5.00. I primarily see three reasons for the low rating. (1) The review site tends to attract the most disgruntled users. Those who are satisfied have less incentive to take the time to write a review. (2) People go into online dating with unrealistic expectations. For example, going into this as a thirty-eight year old somewhat nerdy male, I might think that I’m going to find a super hot girl in her early twenties eager to hook up with me. That would be pretty unrealistic (and sadly so, but more on this in a future post). (3) The reviews probably do reflect the fact that the dating services are run by money grubbing corporations more interested in making profits than actually helping people meet each other.

The main issue I have with Match.com is that both parties must be paying members in order for two-way communication to take place. What kind of woman is so desperate to meet some guy that she is going to pay to read emails? A hot woman can just walk into a bar and sit there and she’s guaranteed to have eager men hit on her. And get some free drinks at the same time.

But, according to what I hear, women in Manhattan are pretty desperate to find boyfriends once they hit their thirties, due to all the men preferring women in their twenties and a male/female ratio more unfavorable to women than just about any other place in the country. And everyone who lives in Manhattan is pretty rich, so even the women can afford to drop some money to pay for a Match.com subscription.

Soon we will learn if the theory in the previous paragraph meets the reality.

posted July 30, 2005