Online Personals Are on the Rise

By Jayde Johanssen

No doubt, you've seen it on the silver screen. You've heard friends talk about it. Maybe you've even thought about taking the plunge yourself. The fact is online personals have become incredibly popular.

Online dating and online personals are simply the consequence of this lovely thing we call the internet. The World Wide Web brings us humans closer together than ever before. With the explosion of email and instant messaging and Twitter and blogs, it's only natural that people would eventually use these tools to find true love in the online ether.

And while in its infancy taking out online personals and hooking up with strangers across the ether was looked upon as, well, weird, today it's a norm. Millions of people, young and old, across the world, are joining up and logging in to find their true love connection through the world wide web.

The whole system is a work of genius. Charging a membership fee to allow singles to browse personal profiles is pure gold. Today the online personals industry is booming.

Popular dating sites like Yahoo Personals and eHarmony have seen their membership rates more than double. Online dating has definitely made it in the mainstream market. Back in August of 2003 over 40 million people visited an online dating site. Today that number just keeps growing.

For those who aren't familiar with online personals, here's a short rundown. An online personal is basically a profile, similar to your Facebook or Myspace profile. Usually people include information about their personal interests, their physical attributes (height, weight, eye color, etc), race, religion, smoking and drinking habits, a short blurb or description of themselves, and a sentence or two about what they are looking for in a mate or partner.

Users contact and connect via site based messaging. Most online personal sites also have a system in place for users to express interest without actually saying anything concrete, e.g. winking or poking. The idea is that users can browse through profiles, find someone that tickles their fancy, contact them and eventually meet up, face to face, for a real date.

Users of online dating sites are sold on the idea of finding their one true love on the internet. For many people, online personals are simply easier. It's more targeted, precise. Whereas, offline, you go to a club and mingle, hoping that someone at that particular place and time will prove to be date-worthy, online, it's not so ambiguous. Online you simply take a few minutes to browse through profiles and you choose the ones that look appealing. It's easy as pie.

Just maybe your soul mate is looking right at you from behind your monitor.

There are downsides to online personals, undeniably. A lot of people have a propensity to lie about certain physical aspects. They make themselves skinnier, younger, or older, taller, etc.

But these types of fisherman's stories can usually be rooted out easily. For the most part, online dating works wonderfully. People really can meet their one and only on the net.

About the Author:

Powered by Blogger