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Blowing cyberkisses has become a popular pastime in emerging markets too. In countries and cultures in which arranged marriages are common, sites such as India’s Shaadi and BharatMatrimony, which boast many millions of clients, are a big hit with young people who want to influence how their marriage partners are chosen. And a number of sizeable digital matchmakers, including Jiayuan and Zhenai, have risen to prominence in China. Deepak Kamra of Canaan Partners, an American venture-capital firm that has backed several dating services, including Zoosk and BharatMatrimony, estimates that the industry’s revenues from membership fees and advertising now amount to $3 billion-4 billion a year.

Searching for that special someone

In addition to broad-based matchmaking sites such as Match and Zoosk, the online-dating world has also spawned thousands of niche ones. Some, such as JDate, which is designed for Jewish lonely hearts, and Ave Maria Singles, which focuses on Catholics, serve specific religious or ethnic niches. Others appeal to rather less conventional interests. Vampire lovers can sink their teeth into the profiles on offer at Vampire Passions, while those obsessed with iPads and iPhones can hunt for their iBeloveds at Cupidtino, a dating site for fans of Apple’s products.

The rise of these and other dating sites has been driven by several trends in society. One of these is that people now move around more often for work, distancing themselves from friends and family members who could play matchmakers. Another is that they are living longer, and hence more likely to look for new love later in life. The spread of fast broadband connectivity in many countries has also encouraged people to dabble in online dating.

Academics who have studied the industry believe that it and other forms of electronic communication such as e-mail and social networks are starting to have a significant effect on the ways in which people find love. In a study presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in August, Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University and Reuben Thomas of the City College of New York reviewed data from a survey of more than 3,000 Americans with romantic partners. They concluded that among heterosexual couples who met in 2009, the internet had become the third most common way of making initial contact—behind introductions from friends, but almost on a par with encounters in bars and restaurants.

Yet while looking for love online is no longer seen as an act of desperation, the digital-dating industry still generates plenty of controversy. Its critics charge that sites’ claims of matchmaking prowess are often greatly overblown. Mark Thompson, a former executive in the online-dating trade, now an author, believes that television ads showing starry-eyed couples boasting about how they found their perfect match online should carry warnings that such outcomes are hardly typical.

Dating sites have also been accused of failing to take robust enough action to protect vulnerable users from fraudsters and sexual predators. Last year several elderly British women sent money to American soldiers whose profiles they had come across on dating sites, only to discover subsequently that the profiles were bogus. And there have been instances of rapists using dating sites to prey on women.

A megabit on the side

Then there is the fuss over sites such as Illicit Encounters and Ashley Madison, which have sparked an outcry by matching people seeking partners for extramarital affairs. Outraged critics claim such services deliberately promote infidelity to further their commercial ambitions. In America Ashley Madison, which claims to have 8.3m registered members in nine countries, has been decried as “a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families”. In Britain the Sun, a tabloid daily, labelled it a “vile website” when it set up shop in the country last year. Several critics have also accused it of exaggerating its ability to match cheats with one another, chronicling its alleged failings on websites such as ashleymadisonsucks.com.

Few other dating sites have provoked such a public backlash. But some sociologists, such as Millsom Henry-Waring of the University of Melbourne, have given warning that electronic forms of communication in general—and digital-dating services in particular—are gradually changing society’s conception of relationships and marriage for the worse by encouraging people to view partners as commodities that can simply be traded in for better versions at the click of a computer mouse.

Dating executives retort that although the industry is not perfect, many of the criticisms levelled at it are unfair. They acknowledge that some clients, who typically spend anything from a few months to a year before finding a soulmate or throwing in the towel, have frustrating experiences on their sites. But they point out that the web still offers important advantages over more traditional routes of finding a mate.

One is its ability to create large pools of potential partners that would be hard to replicate in the real world. This explains why online dating has proven especially popular with, for example, homosexuals. Another is the sheer convenience of being able to trawl through hundreds of profiles without having to leave the comfort of your home. Meeting someone via the web is also safer, they argue, than trying to pick up a date at random in a bar. Users of dating sites are typically encouraged to report suspicious behaviour and some sites employ sophisticated software designed to flag bogus profiles.

Online matchmakers also claim their record of producing successful unions is better than critics give them credit for. For instance, eHarmony, a prominent online-dating service, touts the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive, a market-research firm, that concludes it was responsible for an average of 542 people getting married every day in America between the start of 2008 and the end of June 2009. EHarmony claims to have accounted for almost 4.8% of all American marriages in that period.

Such studies, coupled with advertising campaigns playing up the possibility of finding love online, have helped the online-dating industry to prosper. Some sites such as OkCupid and Plentyoffish are free to join and make most of their money from advertising. Others, including eHarmony, which presents users with potential partners using algorithms designed to identify compatibility, charge a subscription. The monthly fee for the American version of eHarmony is between $19.95 and $59.95, depending on the length of a subscription.

Not surprisingly, sites that charge for their services and require people to fill in detailed questionnaires argue that they are more likely to attract those who are serious about finding love. But owners of free sites say that is not necessarily so. OkCupid’s Mr Yagan argues that the size of the fee that most paid sites charge is not big enough to act as an effective filter. And he claims that his own site has a very effective way of demonstrating a person’s seriousness of intent, which involves promoting the profiles of those people who are most active on it.

There has been some speculation that both kinds of business model will be undermined by the rise of free social networks such as Facebook, which make it easy for people to share large amounts of personal information with one another. But Greg Blatt, the former boss of Match and the new chief executive of IAC, a holding company that owns the dating site, says studies conducted by Match show that many people prefer to keep their dating activity separate from socialising with their friends. Zoosk has even cleverly piggybacked on Facebook, enabling its users to import their details from the social network to populate their profiles on Zoosk’s fast-growing service.

Dating sites have also adapted successfully to different cultures. In India agencies such as BharatMatrimony provide remarkably detailed lists of criteria, including religion, caste, income and education, that allow people to make minute refinements to the description of their ideal soulmate. The services also let parents and relatives create profiles on others’ behalf. Once promising partners are identified, they are often vetted by traditional marriage-brokers.

In spite of all this, loveseekers should still approach online dating with a healthy degree of scepticism. For a start, pools of potential partners are often much smaller than the big numbers touted by mainstream sites suggest. David Evans, the editor of Online Dating Insider, an industry blog, cites the example of a hypothetical site with 15m profiles in its database. Perhaps only 4m of these will be “active” at any time, he says—meaning that the profiles’ owners have logged in at least once in the previous three months. Moreover, some services only let people contact paying members, which shrinks the audience still more. And given that most online daters look for partners who live no more than 25-30 miles away, the real pool of potential mates is often tiny.

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