Wow, Chris = Congrats!
You are about the only person I have ever heard speak in favour, let alone have this level of success from it.
There are two kinds of site - the paid for and the free. Some of the paid for sites, including Match I believe, were investigated for what I would call sharp practice.
For example, they would generate fake profiles with a really nice pic, just to reel people into using the site.
Or they would misquote their membership during advertising, failing to make clear that their quoted membership base included 'dead' profiles, or those who were not paid members (so cannot reply).
I do not see anything wrong in it at all, but from those I reviewed, there seems to be a theme of there being a higher than average % of both time wasters and the emotionally damaged.
So it is always pleasing to hear of a success story.
I hadn't heard about all of that, but I think any fairly intelligent person has to have a goodly portion of skepticism when it comes to any sort of e-commerce- and especially dating over the internet.
I'll tell you a little about the Match.com experience and make several observations based solely on my limited experience. Match has a number of pretty cool features. I especially liked the customizable search options. You can narrow your search to within five miles of your zip code. I don't know what the UK equivalent of that would be. And, you can select an age, body type(s), and height range. You can narrow your search by occupation, income range, political orientation etc. Match has an internal e-mail and IM system, so you don't have to give out your private e-mail or IM address. Also, Match shows you when a person's last activity on site was, so that eliminates "dead" members. Match has a number of features that egg you toward making contact. You get to see who has viewed your profile and vice versa. There is also a "wink" feature where people who are too shy to message you, for whatever reason, can wink at you to show they're interested. The wink feature is available to non-paying lurkers as well, so it's probably a way to get them to sign up if they want to contact someone who seems interested, or find out if someone they're interested in has a mutual attraction. I found the winkies a bit lame, but I got winked at a bunch when I was still just lurking, and that had a lot to do with me signing up, I guess.
I think that dating in your forties and fifties is probably a lot different than dating in your twenties and early thirties. Middle aged folks don't want to waste time beating around the bush, so to speak. I'm 47, but I got a late start and have kids 8 and 10. I was looking for a woman with kids close to my girls age who wanted to do the family thing. I wrote my bio with an eye toward attracting the type of woman I was looking for. So I emphasized faithfulness, long-term employment, commitment, sense of humor, the fact that I come straight home after work and don't hang out at the bar, that I'm even tempered and don't raise my voice... stuff like that. I got
a ton of responses. One thing I hadn't considered is that tall women are looking for tall men. I'm very tall, so tall girls with their search parameters set to find tall men were automatically routed to me!
It's not very hard to parse people down from their profiles. If your profile says you're looking for a man with "financial stability" and you want to be treated "like a lady" that screams gold digger. If you describe yourself as "highly motivated", you live at the gym, your life is "so full of wonderful friends and family", but you have a tiny sliver left for "that special man" who likes to take walks on the beach, accompany you to the ballet, charity auctions, and wine tastings, well... you're too high maintenance for this country boy. At my age it kind of breaks down like this: Hookers, visa seekers, cast off high maintenance "starter wives" (they have to work out like hell to compete with the old man's secretary), hopeless romantics who want a pen pal, 300 pound potato chip eatin' soap opera addicts who can't get off the couch and are looking for someone to "love them for what they are," empty nesters of several flavors who just want to fu**, have fun, and travel, and single mom's of various stripes. I was looking for the latter.
There's a feature in Match that helps you write your profile. I never checked it out, but I started to think that a lot of the women I saw had used it because their bio's were pretty cookie cutter after you'd read a few dozen of them. The whole "moonlight walks on the beach" and "curl up with a good book" thing started to crack me up. I thought "it's too bad you're not a lesbian, because I could introduce you to fifty other women who are looking for someone exactly like you- but with a penis!" I think that many women are unaware of how the innocuous sounding stuff they put in their bio scares the crap out of men. I never looked at the competition, well, because you can see who views you, but I imagine the men are just as rediculous.
I agree with Nick. I didn't want a pen pal or texty pal. I met a number of really nice women who didn't seem to want to actually meet in person. I would suggest the following approach: two, three, maybe four internal e-mails. Then ask them to switch to your real e-mail address. After about the same amount of regular e-mails a phone call is in order. If that goes well suggest a physical meet up someplace public (so they, or you, can scream for help if you/they are a total psycho). A coffee shop or wine bar is a good option. If everything checks out it's time for a real date. But at this point you have to realize that you really don't even know this person. Thanks to the magic of the internet you've skipped merrily past a process of getting to know each other that normally takes months or years, so it's time to slow things down if you're really interested. I dated Kelly for several months before either of us was comfortable bringing our kids into the equation. That's reasonable I think. OTOH, a lot of people are just looking to screw. Nothing wrong with that, you just need to be clear on what you want. I wanted a long term relationship.
I did meet up with a number of different people, and corresponded with quite a few more that didn't pan out. You kind of have to be willing to put yourself out there. That wasn't entirely easy for me. It did occur to me that if I was a player I could save, and then cut and paste my responses to women and just change the name since the get-to-know-you process is pretty standard, but I don't multi-task well enough for that and it made me feel dishonest.
Well, that's a slice.
Chris
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