Love at First Site

May 14, 2001 -- It's a marriage made in cyberspace. She had just returned from working abroad; he was a musician living in Manhattan. In all of New York City, they found each other -- a browser-blessed union made through Match.com.

"I detest the bar scene," says Beth Shair, who tied the knot with Thierry Goyer last year. "When I moved back to New York, I found that most of my friends had scattered. My college boyfriend had married someone he met on the Internet. I thought, 'Why not try it?' It seemed like a good way to meet people."

Shair wrote a brief paragraph describing herself and posted it on Match.com -- purposely minus a photo.

"I didn't want it to be about my looks. I wanted to reach someone on a deeper level," she says.

The next day her email inbox contained 35 replies -- and most of them were indeed on a deeper level.

"I was very pleasantly surprised by the caliber of men who responded -- artistic men, writers, lawyers, consultants, musicians," she says. Ultimately, she checked out 10 of them in person.

"No bad experiences, no lies, no weirdos," she says. "Just no sparks."

Three months later, Goyer's search engine spotted her profile on Match.com. They emailed a bit, met soon after.

"That first date we walked two or three miles," she says. The rest is romance.

Millions of people worldwide are matching and meeting through the comfort of their computers. But what's with these Internet dating sites? How do they operate? Will they bring you long-term happiness or just one-night stands?

Surfing for Love

"Most people say they're looking for a meaningful relationship," says Tom Chapman, founder of SinglesOnline.com. "Others just want to date and have fun. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you meet someone special, that's just icing on the cake."

Chapman met his icing on the cake four years ago -- online, of course -- just before he founded his own dating service. She was a university professor in the Ukraine; he was divorced after a long marriage and not seriously looking. But he immediately was drawn to her photo.

"Photos are really important," says Chapman. "Men are very visual."

Match.com, Matchmaker.com, SinglesOnline.com, and AmericanSingles.com are just a few of the virtual malt shops you'll find online. Others cater to specific religious or ethnic groups; for instance, JDate.com focuses exclusively on the Jewish dating scene, providing "a clean and safe environment to meet others online," reads its splash page. "Contact 1,000 potential soul mates for less than the price of general admission to the movies and a tub of popcorn."

BlackSingles.com offers mixers for members in various cities as well as an online dating service -- and is not just for blacks, founder Michael Brown tells WebMD "Ours is more a networking social club rather than just a dating site, more a community with a dating component."

Sites like WayTooPersonal.com and SaferDating.com provide firsthand accounts of Internet dating, both the love stories and the cautionary tales. On WayTooPersonal, members also share examples of bad ads, really weird responses, and reviews of various dating services.