While the notion still produces the occasional smirk in this country, online dating long ago went from novelty to big business.
Supposedly the biggest online revenue generator after pornography, online dating is predicted to grow from a $313 million (€243 million) business with 6.7 million users last year, to a $473 million one this year, and then $623 million by 2008, according to Jupiter Research.
Growth has been doubling every year for the two big rivals in this area, Match.com - which has just arrived in Ireland as a partner site on Microsoft's portal site MSN.ie - and Yahoo Personals.
US online research company Hitwise currently counts 844 different web dating services in the United States, up 11 per cent on 2003 - some global players with millions of users and multi-lingual sites, others more localised services or niche players targeting a diversity of dating tastes.
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In fact, online dating has been such good business that even in a small place like Ireland, the discerning single can find a proliferation of local to global sites: from the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaker site (www.matchmakerireland.com) to Match.com (http://match.msn.ie/); from Ireland.com's new service (http://dating.ireland.com/) to MaybeFriends (www.maybefriends.ie) and Irish Soulmates (www.irishsoulmates.com/). There are sites catering to gays and lesbians, those seeking casual flings, and Catholics (www.executivecatholicdating.com).
For Esat BT's RSVP.ie dating site, business has been excellent, says Mr Larry Taylor, web development manager at Esat BT. The site has 20,000 registered users and, between June and September, saw a 35 to 40 per cent growth in revenue, he says, with 50 to 100 users online every evening.
Likwise, Ireland.com editor Ms Deirdre Veldon reports good membership numbers for the site's dating service: "The site has enjoyed huge success since it launched in February, with a membership of over 54,000 already, equally split between males and females. And we're not just talking about traffic volumes - from a financial point of view, our revenues have increased by over 80 per cent in the last six months."
Ireland, while small, is attractive to a global site like Match.com because of its "unique demographic", says Ms Samantha Bedford, Match.com's UK and Ireland manager. With the youngest population in the EU, the Republic has 1.5 million 25- to 44-year-olds, she says, and, by their late 20s, people are beginning to tire of the pub and club dating scene and are ready to look for a serious partner.
While the company doesn't yet have statistics on its Irish users, Match.com has 1.2 million users in the UK, mostly between 25 and 34; 80 per cent of them have a college degree, and 75 per cent have never been married. In other words, they are a generally well-heeled market of ABC1s. She notes that the Irish census data reveals that Irish women are marrying two years later than they did in the 1980s - which suits the offering of a dating service.
The key revenue stream for dating sites comes from getting site users to become subscribers. While most sites allow anyone to create a profile and post pictures (on some sites, these are screened with varying interpretations of tastefulness), and often to receive emails from interested people, most sites require users to subscribe in order to be able to send emails themselves.
Then, memberships are structured to nudge subscribers towards a longer commitment at a lower cost. For example, Match.com charges €24.95 for a single month's subscription, but half that monthly if you commit to six months. RSVP.ie only lets you see the subject headings of emails sent to you until you subscribe - then you get the full content of the message.
While BusinessWeek recently stated that only about 20 per cent of site users for Match.com and Yahoo Personals convert to paid subscriptions (a figure Ms Bedford declined to confirm), the numbers obviously add up for the sites themselves.
In addition, income increasingly comes from add-on services such as text messaging (with RSVP.ie, this can be done directly from one's PC, adding a small revenue stream for Esat BT), real-world singles events with paid admission or, in the case of Match.com, letting a subscriber pay extra to receive emails even from people who aren't subscribers.
Nonetheless, though dating has been a solid market for several years - Match.com has been around since 1995 - internationally, it's less rosy now than before. While analysts predict 19.4 per cent growth this year in the US market, that's a major drop from the three-digit growth some operators have enjoyed.
Layoffs have followed - Match.com let 30 employees go, and changed chief executives this year, while a major rival in the US, True.com, made 90 people - 60 per cent of its workforce - redundant.
But the Irish market seems only to be starting to take off - due to both the late introduction of broadband internet access (better for viewing profile pictures and zipping through profiles generally) and, perhaps, the slower arrival online of the older user. Bad Irish press over what people might encounter online also led to an initial reluctance to visit dating sites, Mr Taylor believes.
But, he says, the last 12 months have seen a significant shift in Ireland over the previous three years, when there was "general confusion in the market over what people should be doing".
"There's a momentum building on the Irish sites, for Irish users. Local services and content will win out over global services, especially when it comes to something like dating," he says.
In contrast, Ms Bedford states that one of Match.com's strengths is its ability to both tailor sites to local populations, and to offer a global service - meaning a large nearby UK dating market on the Irish doorstep.
She believes the industry will now begin to consolidate - and says the company might be interested in acquiring existing Irish sites in future to strengthen its position in this market.
On the other hand, there's no denying that a dating service won't have the most stable user base, given that the whole point is to meet somebody and stop using the service, at least for a stretch of time.
