Fed: Love abounding thanks to online dating boom

AAP General News (Australia)
12-10-2003
Fed: Love abounding thanks to online dating boom

SYDNEY, Dec 10 AAP - More and more Australians are looking for love online.

The country's internet dating websites have experienced a 93 per cent increase in use
in the last year, according to internet monitoring service Hitwise.

Dating agency RSVP says it has played a part in almost 800 marriages and celebrated
126 births since its launch six years ago.

RSVP marketing manager Melanie Bowman said the agency's membership base had grown 95
per cent in the past 12 months, recently reaching 320,000 members.

While most of the service's users were aged between 25 and 40, earlier this year a
78-year-old woman and 83-year-old man tied the knot after meeting through the agency,
she said.

RSVP says it now facilitates about 5,000 dates per month.

Yahoo's personals site has experienced a similar boom and personals producer Rachel
Watt said the Australian experience echoed US trends.

"People are using the internet more in their day to day lives so they are comfortable
with the idea of meeting someone online," she said.

"They do their banking on line, they do their shopping online, why wouldn't they find
someone to spend some time with on line."

There was a risk that the tall, dark, muscle-bound fighter pilot you had been corresponding
with online would turn out to be a weedy clerk from the Australian Taxation Office, but
these risks were always present in dating, she said.

"You can be standing at a bar and meet someone who tells you they are a lawyer and
it turns out they are unemployed," she said.

"I think there is a little bit of subterfuge that goes on in the dating world - online
and offline."

AAP aj/apw/kbw/cbs/bwl

KEYWORD: DATING

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