Kathryn's Blog

The world of internet dating can be fraught. But, for a fee, a ghost writer will rewrite your online profile with the promise of making you more attractive to others. How does it work?

These modern-day cupids are popping up across the internet. They specialise in ghost writing witty, charming, flirtatious messages on behalf of single men and women unwilling, unable or too busy to do it themselves.

“We’ve noticed a definite trend with more and more of these companies springing up- and there is a huge demand,” says Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, a site that tracks internet dating trends.

Clients usually come to these online-dating outsourcing companies because their own attempts to find love in cyberspace just aren’t getting results. Many want to avoid the rejection they feel when their lovingly-crafted messages go unanswered.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says Evan Marc Katz, who has worked as a dating coach since 2003 and runs e-cyrano.com, one of the first of this new breed of companies. “There are a surprising number of people out there who don’t know how to market themselves in an original way.”

He stresses that his clients are not losers, but are typically successful, professional and well-rounded people. So what qualifies someone to set themselves up as a dating expert?

“I did online dating myself for years with great success and I worked as a customer-care representative for an online dating company,” says Mr Katz, who is now happily married.

Every date brings financial rewards for the ghost writers, who compare themselves to salesmen, telemarketers and, in some cases, poets. Some offer their services in a range of languages.

Working for a set fee, the companies interview their clients at length over the phone. Using this information, they then write the initial “sell”, the blurb which online daters use to advertise themselves. Many also provide tips and advice on how to optimise your appeal to fellow daters.

TargetLove offers everything, from basic profile writing for £150 to dating coaches who, for around £90 an hour, will talk the unlucky and inept through every step of the dating game.

Some companies will go so far as posing as their client on dating sites and writing messages to potential partners to arrange first dates.

These tactics have provoked controversy. Critics claim it is a dishonest way to try to find true love.

Major turn-off

“It’s awful. You’re misrepresenting yourself,” says Jared Gordon, editor of A Bad Case of the Dates, a blog that collects dating horror stories.

Not so, insists Scott Valdez, the founder and president of Virtual Dating Assistants (VDA). “We are representing our clients as honestly and accurately as possible online,” he says.

VDA does it all: writes a client’s profile, picks out potential matches, sends introductory e-mails and messages back and forth until a date is confirmed. The company guarantees between two and five dates per month in return for fees ranging from £400 to £800 a month.

It bills itself as a company that “specialises in making the dating dreams of busy individuals come true”.

Most of these outsourcing companies are in America and, though the majority of their clients are American, many have customers as far afield as the UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico and South America.
Scott Valdez Mr Valdez says online dating is a ‘screening process’

Typically, the majority of clients are men. Although it says the proportion of women is increasing, 80% of Virtual Dating Assistants’ clients are male.

Mr Valdez, who previously worked in sales and marketing, compares his service to a direct-marketing campaign.

“Online dating is not a date,” he says. “It’s a screening process and a place to filter through the masses to identify potential dates.”

So what tips can would-be daters expect to hear for their money?

“Be specific. And don’t rely on adjectives. Instead of saying you are spontaneous, give an example of an occasion when you were spontaneous,” says Mr Katz.

The dating website OK Cupid does data mining, analysing their users’ data to look for patterns for successful internet dating. Their research suggests that bad grammar and “text speak” are a major turn-off.

Ok Cupid analysed feedback on more than 700,000 photos of daters. The results showed that daters who smiled or look flirtatiously into the camera were rated more favourably than those who didn’t. And people who used pictures of themselves doing something “conversation worthy” such as playing guitar or scuba diving got more positive responses than those who didn’t.

Have they ever had any complaints from clients? “There was one guy who complained we made him sound too cool,” says Mr Valdez.

Most of the companies are relatively small operations, often employing a team of freelance writers. A number have been forced to take on more staff to keep up with demand.

“It’s like the funeral business - there’s always demand,” says Mr Katz. “It’s recession-proof - people are always looking for love.”

On a flight from Newark to the West Coast not long ago, Jeff Jarvis, author of the book “What Would Google Do?” fell into a conversation with a fellow passenger familiar with his work. But it was not a face-to-face chat. Rather, it started as an exchange of Twitter posts at the boarding gate.

Virgin America also offers seat-to-seat messaging via video screens installed on seat backs.

When the plane landed, Mr. Jarvis recalled, the conversation resumed. “It was as if someone had recognized you and come up to say, ‘hello,’ on the flight.” He said it reminded him of the days when passengers could socialize in airborne lounges, “except now it’s happening digitally.”

The mobile phone and laptop are not just tools to stay in touch with the office or home anymore. As Mr. Jarvis can attest, a growing number of frequent fliers are using their mobile devices to create an informal travelers’ community in airports and aloft.

Airlines and social media providers are scrambling to catch up. Airlines are beefing up their presence on networking channels, and travelers’ groups like FlyerTalk.com have created new applications that allow members to find one another while on the road. Business travelers can use these services to share cabs to the airport, swap advice or locate colleagues in the same city. As Mr. Jarvis puts it, “finding a like-minded person to travel with lessens the chance of getting stuck next to some talkative bozo” on a long flight.

Increasing availability of Wi-Fi at airports and on planes has made the travel networking possible. A survey of 84 of the world’s largest airports by the Airports Council International earlier this year found that 96 percent offered Wi-Fi connections, and 73 percent had connections throughout their terminals. About 45 percent offer the service free; the rest charge an average of about $8 an hour.

More than 10 airlines in North America, including American, Delta and Southwest, are wiring their planes for Internet access, and major foreign airlines like Lufthansa are introducing new technology that will let customers connect on transoceanic flights. In-flight calls are still forbidden on most flights, although several airlines, including Emirates, have been testing calling on shorter trips.

As many as 1,200 commercial airliners in the United States will have Wi-Fi capability by the end of the year, according to Chris Babb, senior product manager of in-flight entertainment for Delta Air Lines. “It’s a much different world than it was a year ago,” he said, noting that on a recent flight he exchanged e-mail messages with several colleagues who were in the air at the same time.

And Virgin America, which has wired its entire 28-plane fleet for the Internet, said about half of its passengers brought their laptops with them and 17 to 20 percent were online at any given time. On longer flights, about a third of passengers go online. Like airports, most airlines charge a fee for the service, usually ranging from $5 to $13.

Some airline passengers may mourn the loss of their last remaining refuge from e-mail intrusions. But the benefits of staying connected became clear several months ago during the eruption of the Icelandic volcano that grounded thousands of European flights. Facebook and Twitter set up sites for stranded travelers, who swapped ideas and offered rides to ferry terminals, and Twitter had its own thread. Based on anecdotal reports, the sites helped in getting information out quickly.

For those with time at an airport, FlyerTalk.com has an “itineraries” feature that allows travelers to post their coming flights in the hope that other “flier talkers,” as they call themselves, may be heading the same way.

Lufthansa said it consulted with FlyerTalk members in developing its own product to help customers tap into social networking from any location. The application works on iPhones and this fall will be available on BlackBerrys. A built-in GPS allows users to find fellow fliers who might be nearby. It also has a taxi-sharing feature that travelers can activate upon landing.

Users must already be members of the airlines’ loyalty program, and Lufthansa said it had added privacy controls for those who preferred to travel incognito. FlyerTalk’s president, Gary Leff, said that while some members had welcomed the service, others were skeptical. “Some of us just like to keep to ourselves” on the road, he said.

For those who want to connect, few airlines can match Virgin America for mingling opportunities. In addition to its Internet service, it offers seat-to-seat messaging via its seatback video screens. It has also teamed up with match.com to create a party atmosphere on specific flights (reportedly at least one couple who met this way became engaged). But there is also the potential for spurned advances and hurt feelings.

“Seat-to-seat chatting could lead to a negative form of social networking,” said Jeanne Martinet, a social commentator who writes the missmingle.com blog. “What if someone spots another passenger doing something annoying?” she asked. In the past, that person might have simply suffered in silence. Now, Ms. Martinet said, “It would be tempting to message them, ‘Can’t you get your big feet out of the aisle?’ ”

Porter Gale, Virgin’s vice president of marketing, said there were safeguards against abuse and that a passenger could simply turn off the messaging function. And she said that offering Wi-Fi access had benefits for the airline, like the ability to resolve a customer’s problem before a flight lands.

A passenger once sent an e-mail message to the airline from his seat, saying that he was not pleased with the sandwich he had just eaten, she said. A customer service representative on the ground sent a message back to the plane, and shortly thereafter, she said, the passenger was served an acceptable substitute.

This can work against the airline, too, as Virgin discovered when a New York-bound flight was diverted and some passengers sent out messages venting their annoyance with the delay.

Dear Carolyn: I have been with my boyfriend for seven years. We began dating because I asked him out. I was the first to say, “I love you.” I was the one, after two years, who brought up moving in together. He had no children and wanted a child, but I am the one who brought up children: My daughters were adults when my boyfriend and I had our child. In seven years, I seem to have been the only one making decisions about our future.

So I refuse to bring up marriage. I wanted it to come from him, I needed him to want it, and I waited very patiently. I find myself becoming very bitter that this man obviously does not want to marry me. I know he would if it became an issue.

I do not want to break up my family. I want to be in a relationship knowing the other intends to spend the rest of his life with me. We split expenses. He has a financial cushion; I struggle paycheck to paycheck. I was a single young mother and struggled all my life. He lived with his mother for the majority of his life and has managed to invest and save.

It is not about the money, though I do feel as if we are two separate islands. I feel so very lonely. I feel like I would be happier without him, but what cost would my child pay for my happiness? My boyfriend and I rarely argue and get along quite well. Our child is happy and content. It is only me who is miserable.

Carolyn says: I get why you’re miserable, and why you pinpoint your boyfriend’s failure to merge your “separate islands” as the source of your misery.

But I can also argue that you’ve brought misery upon yourself.

You say your boyfriend didn’t put any moves on you, didn’t volunteer I-love-yous, didn’t pine to live with you, didn’t take the initiative to have a child, and (theatrical throat-clearing here) didn’t even leave his mother’s nest to go out and feather his own.

So how, exactly, did he become someone in your mind who would ever initiate anything?

ORINDA, California – An inter-racial couple found each other 6 years ago through a dating website.

Filipina Rhoda Mae Sancho, 35, and American Rick Vincent, 50, found the love online.

Sancho was born poor in Bacolod City. She was only a high school graduate, unemployed and desperate to get out of the country. She saved P20.00 a day to go an Internet café with the goal of finding true love online.

“Kahit mahirap ako, tinitiis ko talaga na maka-Internet, makatagpo ako ng mabait na Amerikano, makapunta ako dito para maiahon ko rin ang pamilya ko sa hirap,” said Sancho.

In 2004, she found Vincent through a dating website. Vincent is a millionaire stockbroker from the Bay Area who was ready to start a family.

A few months after their first online chat, Vincent flew to the Philippines to meet Sancho and her family for the first time.

“Pinangkra ko talaga siya, sabi ko ‘I’m so sorry. I cannot speak too much English kasi I’m only high school graduate. Sabi niya, ‘It’s okay. I understand what you’re saying.’ Sabi ko, ‘Thanks God!’” Sancho recalled.

For Vincent, it was love at first sight. Because he fell in love with Sancho, he also felt the need to help her and her family out of poverty.

“I knew that if I wanted to marry a Filipina girl, I had to make her parents happy.  That’s what I did my first trip. I brought my mother-in-law 2 boxes of See’s Candies,” said Vincent.

“Parang hindi ako makapaniwala na lahat ibinigay niya sa akin. Yung gusto ko lang mahalin niya yung anak ko kasi lumaki siyang walang tatay,” said Sancho.

Not only did Vincent become Sancho’s husband on January 2005, he also became a father to Juliana, her daughter from a previous relationship. Juliana is now 8.

Soon, Sancho bore Vincent 2 children—Charlotte, now 2, and Kenneth, now 10-months old.

While they live comfortably in the US, Vincent has not forgotten to take care of Rhoda’s family and relatives in the Philippines.

He now sends 22 nieces and nephews, even children of Sancho’s friends, to school.

He also bought her parents a new home where he plans to build a swimming pool for them.

Vincent said the secret to an inter-racial marriage is the same as any other marriage. 

“I make sure that when she says something, I say, ‘Yes, Hon,’” he said.

“Yung love, walang pinipili yan. Kung nagmamahalan kayo talaga, hindi importante kung sino ka man, kung ano ka man,” said Sancho.

What would you pay to meet the love of your life? Twenty dollars a month for an Internet dating site that lets you wade knee-deep into the dating pool and swim with millions of other singles? Or $1,000-plus for a personalized matchmaker who will do the wading, and weeding, for you?

Over the last few years, a surprising number of singles have been choosing the latter, despite the declining economy. Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, they’re spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to someone else.

“Matchmaking should have been dead by now,” said Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch, a Web site that’s been tracking Internet dating of all kinds since 2004.

Instead, the opposite has happened, he said. Matchmakers not only have survived but are thriving, having been aided and legitimized by the entity that was supposed to have killed them off — the Internet.

Like social networking, which had many dating industry experts inaccurately predicting the demise of paid Internet dating sites, Internet dating hasn’t killed matchmaking, but fed it. In fact, the three go hand in hand, leading relationship-minded singles to ever higher levels of paid service.

Though social networking sites such as Facebook may bring people together and do it for free, there’s no guarantee that those brought-together people are available and looking for a relationship. And though Internet dating sites such as Yahoo Personals do a better job of bringing together singles who are motivated to get together because they are paying to find dates, they don’t always do a good job of sorting out the serious from the players, or even to help individuals select people who are truly good for them.

Personalized matchmakers promise to do just that. Of course, they also charge a higher price — anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000, depending on the exclusivity of the service, the number of matches they’ve said they’ll provide and how willing they are to go the extra mile.

“You’re the therapist, the mother, the best friend, the sister, the nonsexual girlfriend. You have to be everything,” said Patti Stanger, star of the Bravo reality TV series “The Millionaire Matchmaker” and proprietor of the L.A.-based Millionaire’s Club matchmaking service.

“It’s not good enough to say, ‘Here’s a nice girl.’ You get them a girl, they’ll sleep with that girl, cheat on the girl. Then I’ve got to get that girl back. I have to go in and do an intervention and be on call seven days a week. That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Stanger, who charges men $25,000 a year and female “millionairesses” $55,000 for 28 months of unlimited introductions. (She finds her female clients take longer to match.)

Whether it’s hooking up her clients with a personal stylist to improve their appearance or enrolling them in an improv class to get over their shyness, “there are 5 million things to do,” she said. There are more details to attend to with clients: manners, appearance, expectations. “In the old days, it was, ‘OK. I know who I’m going to give you. Here she is. Bye.”’

There are two ways to work with a matchmaker. There are the clients who pay for introductions to potential partners and the people with whom those clients are paired. In many cases, the potential partners pay nothing, having joined the matchmaker’s network for free after electronically submitting photos and personal information through a Web site. Equipped with an extensive database of singles, the matchmaker then peruses the possibilities to determine who might be a match and calls in good prospects for one-on-one interviews that help to further hone the pairing in hopes of a click.

Then comes the big unknown: chemistry. A couple could look perfect together on paper, but they can’t know until they’re face to face.

Eight years ago, an actress (who asked to remain anonymous because of what she believes is a lingering social stigma) went on a date through a matchmaking service for the first time. At the time, the then-38-year-old woman thought getting set up through a matchmaker “was crazy” but worth giving a try because she “was never very good at going to Starbucks and seeing the cute guy across the room and smiling.”

After talking on the phone for 2 ½ hours, the two agreed to meet for dinner. “There was an immediate click for me,” she said.

Four and a half months later, they were engaged. Eleven months later, they were married. They now have two kids and are getting ready to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary.

That actress, it turns out, was part of the first marriage put together by April Beyer, founder of the 11-year-old, L.A. and San Francisco matchmaking service Beyer & Co. Working with 10 to 15 “very special bachelors” per year, each of whom pays her $40,000, Beyer’s talents have since paid off in an additional 29 “I Do’s,” a track record she attributes to understanding what a client needs, not just providing what he says he wants — like a significantly younger woman.

“A lot of times, a man doesn’t know to ask for the woman I give him,” Beyer said. “Matchmakers are not computers. Hopefully our clients are giving us the freedom to be creative and have a bit more latitude.”

That’s a very different idea from many Internet dating sites, which can’t verify all the information provided by their members and which match people based on self-selected criteria, allowing singles to choose their own partners, for better or worse. But increasingly, Internet dating is bringing in a matchmaking component.

In late 2008, Match.com expanded its hunt-and-peck model with a service called the Daily 5, delivering “five matches based on our prediction of which two people would most want to engage in a conversation together,” said Match.com Chief Executive Greg Blatt. In December, the site added yet another matchmaking feature called Singled Out, for “when we have a match with a stronger likelihood of connecting and want to highlight that to our users,” Blatt said.

“A lot of people put their relationships on the wrong course because they select the wrong people,” said Gian Gonzaga, senior director of research and development for Pasadena, Calif.-based EHarmony. “A lot of the things that are powerful forces for initial attraction are different from what makes a relationship successful.”

According to Gonzaga, attraction is important because it gets people into a relationship, but it’s the similarities between individuals that keep them together and lead to more satisfying relationships. It’s that philosophy that’s shaped EHarmony’s extensive member questionnaire and given EHarmony its reputation as the most matchmaker-like of Internet dating services.

If dating is, indeed, a numbers game, then Internet dating sites have the edge. But matchmakers have gut instincts. And for many singles, especially those with more money than time, or more discriminating criteria, or those who, for various reasons, would rather not post a photo online for the entire world to see, that’s even better.

“Women are very attracted to the concept because it’s private. They can’t be browsed,” said Julie Ferman, founder of Cupid’s Coach in Westlake Village, Calif., a matchmaking service that charges $2,500 to $25,000 annually for an average of 2.2 introductions per month and takes both women and men as paying clients.

Matchmaking is strongest among thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings, according to Fermin. Her average client splits the difference at a median age of 46 and makes at least $50,000.

“If you’re having a hard time making rent or saving for your kid’s college education, I’m the first one to tell someone, ‘Don’t hire a personal matchmaker,’ ” Fermin said.

But if they do have money, Fermin is confident she can help. In 14 years, she says she’s formed the beginnings of more than 144 marriages.

Not everyone’s a believer.

“What smooth James Bond character with a great personal image is going to write a check to meet somebody?” asked L.A.-based dating coach David Wygant. “These men are looking for women they’ve never been able to get in their lives. They want the 27- to 31-year-old even though they’re 46 to 65. And the women, they can tell you they’re in it for love, but they’re looking for guys with money. This is not love. It’s a gold digger looking for a guy that wants eye candy.”

“Nothing is better than opening your eyes and flirting with the people in front of you,” Wygant said. “People need to get out of fantasyland and think somebody else is going to do it for them.”

That is, of course, easier said than done. And the thousands of singles using hundreds of matchmakers — ELove, It’s Just Lunch, the Millionaire’s Club — seem to prove it

Spring is coming, and a young man’s thoughts turn to ... you know. Apparently, old men’s thoughts turn to the same subject. According to an article to be published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, 67% of men ages 65 to 74 said they had been sexually active in the past year, compared with just 40% of women in that age group. Everyone knows young men think constantly about sex, but many guys remain interested in sex until they are almost dead: more than one-third of men ages 75 to 85 said they had sex in the past 12 months, compared with just 17% of women in that age group.

Some of this surely has to do with Viagra, which makes it easier for older men to be interested in sex. But the disparity in sexual activity between older men and older women isn’t entirely explained by the 1998 release of the little blue pill. One set of data presented in the new paper — taken from the National Survey of Midlife Development, involving about 3,000 adults ages 25 to 74 — was collected in 1995 and 1996. That data set shows that 62% of men ages 65 to 74 reported sexual activity in the previous six months; only 36% of women in the same age group did so.

These differences matter because having a healthy sex life is strongly associated with having a healthy life, period — and also a longer life. Scientists aren’t sure about the causal relationship here. Sexually active people tend to be healthier, and healthier people tend to be sexually active. It could be that the fulfillment of sex gives you a health boost, or that being more fit makes sex better — or, more likely, it’s a little of both.

What we do know, from this new paper, is that if you are a 30-year-old male, you can be expected to have sex for 35 more years. The authors — Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau and researcher Natalia Gavrilova of the University of Chicago — call this measure your “sexually active life expectancy,” or SALE. A 30-year-old woman has a SALE of just 31 more years. (The study also finds that men and women who stay healthy and in good shape gain extra years of sexually active life in older age, compared with their peers in poorer health.) But women live about five years longer than men, so when you do the math, all this means that women go approximately twice as long without sex as men before they die.

Older women also enjoy the sex they do have far less than older men. Married women ages 57 to 64 who haven’t been divorced or widowed report having about as much sex as married men in the same age group. But while 77% of partnered men in that age group say they are interested in sex, only 36% of partnered women report the same interest. These figures suggest that a lot of older women may be having sex when they don’t really want to.

Lindau, the lead author on the paper, is cautious about drawing strong conclusions from this variance. “It may be that women are more likely to have sex for reasons other than fulfilling pleasure — or that they are more interested in giving a partner satisfaction,” she says. “Maybe they lack the agency, or maybe they feel marital duty, but our paper doesn’t provide an explanation.” (See how to prevent illness at any age.)

It’s a shortcoming in the paper that the journal itself notes: in a British Medical Journal editorial accompanying the paper, Texas A&M University professor Patricia Goodson says that while Lindau and Gavrilova’s new SALE measure might someday prove a useful tool for gauging an aging population’s medical and public-health needs as they relate to sex, it “sheds no light on the intriguing — and still poorly understood — question of why, even though they enjoy fewer years of sexually active life, many women do not perceive this as a ‘problem.’ “

Another problem the editorial doesn’t mention: the paper is based on self-reported data, and although the authors note that self-reported information about health is usually highly consistent with objective health data, reports of actual sexual activity simply cannot be objectively measured. Even so, the paper does confirm a large difference in sexual interest among older men and older women.

The reasons for the male-female sex disparity among the elderly may not be clear, but the paper shows that the problem in sex quality seems to worsen with age. Still, there is a silver lining for older women having bad or unwanted sex: men tend to die younger than women. Also, it is men’s increasing physical and health problems that are most commonly cited (by both men and women) as the reason sexual activity declines later in life.

The new paper raises more questions than it answers. When interviewed, Lindau avoids making any sweeping social commentary. Instead, she notes that as a gynecologist, she gets a lot of questions from older patients about whether their level of sexual activity is normal. “And I haven’t had the data to give these women answers,” she says. The new paper is a start.

Worried that the 27-year-old man making $70,000 as profiled on an online dating service isn’t so young or taking home that much cash?

Chances are he’s telling the truth if the site is geared toward long-term relationships.

But if he’s lying, he’s probably a people pleaser—the type of person who’d try to put himself in the best light even if you’d found him offline first, according to a University of Kansas researcher.

In professor Jeffrey Hall’s survey of 5,020 men and women who belonged to an undisclosed Internet dating site, most respondents indicated they wouldn’t lie. But those saying they were most likely to lie generally gave answers to other questions indicating they were people pleasers, or “high self-monitors.”

Such people have an acute sense of what others like and control their own behavior accordingly for social ends. Because they want to be liked and fit in, these people, whether online or off, may lie about weight, age, income and interests, Hall said.

“The type of people who misrepresented themselves online is the same type of people who do so face-to-face,” Hall, an assistant professor of communication studies and the study’s lead author, said by phone Thursday.

In the study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, respondents were asked to rate on a 10-point scale the likelihood that they would misrepresent their education, income, relationship goals, personal interests, weight and age to a potential date online. An answer of 1 indicated “not at all likely;” a 10 indicated “very likely.”

“On average, answers were close to around 2 for the most part,” Hall said.

Men indicated they were more likely than women to lie in every category except weight, according to the study.

However, the differences between men and women were small, Hall said. For example, men led women 2.01 to 1.83 when it came to lying about education and income. Women led men 3.24 to 2.37 in lying about weight.

The strongest predictor of lying wasn’t gender, but high self-monitoring, Hall said.

“Personality makes much more of a difference in how much people lie,” he said.

Hall wouldn’t name the dating site to which the respondents belonged, but he said that people interested in long-term relationships “tend to be the users that are attracted to this site” and that the site didn’t commission the study.

Hall said it added to other research showing that—particularly for people looking for long-term relationships—the amount of lying is usually small, because people want an anticipated face-to-face meeting to go well.

“Online daters shouldn’t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves,” Hall said in a news release before Thursday’s phone interview. “What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too.”

The study also was authored by professors Namkee Park of the University of Oklahoma, Hayeon Song of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Michael Cody of the University of Southern California.

Online dating isn’t just for the young. In fact, it’s not even mostly for the young.

It might come as a shock to Twitter-happy tweens, but the Web itself is a mere youth: if it were a person, it would just be graduating high school about now. Yet, in a new twist on the old saw that youth is wasted on the young, it’s older folks who are making the best use of the Web when it comes to searching for that special someone.

According to a survey conducted in early 2006, the odds an adult 40 - 58 in a relationship met his or her partner through an online dating service were just 1 in 33.33. For those 59 and older, they stood at an even slimmer 1 in 100. But this situation appears to have changed. Match.com, one of the leading online dating services, reports that 1 in 5 of its members is 50 or older—and that demographic is the site’s fastest growing segment.

A 2009 survey of adults in the UK who had dated in the past year found that the over-55’s were the most active online daters: 1 in 1.61 (62%) of them had joined a dating site, almost three times the rate of 18 - 24-year-olds. These mature singles had an average of 8.2 Internet dates and met an average of 2.4 sexual partners online.

Aligned with this trend, a 2010 US study of newlywed couples found that those who’d met online tended to be older, and less likely to be in a first marriage, than those who’d met in a more traditional way.

One might have expected the opposite—that younger people, more comfortable with technology and the Internet, would be the more active (and successful) online daters. But young people typically have more active real-world social lives, and hence more opportunities to meet people in the flesh. Older singles, by contrast, are more likely to have children, time-consuming careers—and an understandable aversion to the loud, youth-oriented bar and club scene. And as time goes by, older people get more accustomed to using the Internet.

Perhaps the greatest dating challenges await the retired. Today’s seniors are less likely than in the past to be able to count on their grown children to take them in and care for them if and when that time comes, so many single seniors are highly motivated to find a companion. But they have relatively limited opportunities to meet eligible singles. As one retiree active in online dating put it, either you move to an assisted living community with a built-in social scene, a proposition which is often quite costly, you take up bridge, or you learn how to post your profile on the Internet.

Given these choices, surfing for love and companionship seems mighty attractive.