Host: What is online dating?
Gloria MacDonald: Online dating is one of the most popular ways to meet people today. In any twelve month period there are 45 million North Americans that will give online dating a try. That is a lot of people.
Online dating started in 1995, so it’s been around for over ten years now and so people are more and more comfortable with it. The good news about online dating is that it’s relatively inexpensive. There are lots of different sites out there. I highly recommend that if you are comfortable getting online dating a try that you try out several different sites.
The good news about some of the very large sites is that there are a lots and lots of people to choose from but that also is, it is a mixed blessing. One of the challenges that the large online dating sites are having today is that because there are so many millions of people on their sites, it means it is incredibly time consuming to sift through all those profiles to find somebody who is appropriate for you.
So, you might try one of the larger sites but I also suggest you look into some sites for specific areas of interest for you. Today, there are sites for just about everything you can imagine. There are sites for particular religious groups, particular ethnic groups. There are sites for people who love to golf, people who love to ski; people who love to ride horses. There are sites for people who love cats and dogs. Basically; just about anything that’s a particular niche, it’s important to you, there will probably be an online dating site for that. So, look in to some other smaller more niche sites also.
Another thing about online dating is more and more sites are coming up with personality profiling tools and questionnaires that you have to fill out. There is something to be said for those sites in that if you have to invest 30 to 45 minutes of your time filling up that questionnaire, the people who are using that site have also had to spend that amount of time. So, there is slightly, there is a slightly higher level of investment in it.
People using those sites are potentially more serious about truly looking to find potential, serious relationship. So, you might not be looking for a serious relationship. You might just be looking to get out there, put your foot in the water and start dating. In fact, online dating is good for that if you haven’t been out on a date for a long time. Maybe you have just recently come out of a long term relationship through divorce or break up, other relationship in some way or maybe a spouse has passed away. If you can get yourself comfortable with the idea of online dating, it’s a good place to start to put your toe in the water and just get out there again.
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