Here's a guide to some key strategies for finding your match in cyberspace. Find the Site That Fits Thousands of matchmaking sites have sprung up in the past five years, but as in other Internet categories just a few players have gathered critical mass. Most leading sites have millions of total registrants, though their active participants generally number in the hundreds of thousands at any given time. Join an online discussion . Indeed, members of most sites aren't just playing the field when they go online.
Larger sites offer features that create full-scale communities oriented to finding a date.
On these sites, advice columnists pontificate and dating magazines riff on such topics as dealing with ex-girlfriends, cutting an unpromising prospect loose and how a man should respond to being asked out by a woman. Some sites are even moving offline by hosting in-person singles events at art galleries and music festivals. Some of the best extras available make users take a long look at themselves. It has homework, too, with such activities as ranking the character traits of one's past five dates. The workshop asks visitors to rate themselves, too, and then gently reminds them that if their own scores are lacking, they might want to lower their expectations.