Online dating has become a very HOT topic.

The Los Angeles Times featured a story on how to find the right online dating service which appeared in the IMAGE section.

In the article, Mark Brooks from Online Personals Watch called the Internet the world’s largest bar. I have to agree here.

Read my expert dating advice in the cover story of the Valentine’s edition of  Los Angeles Times.

“EHarmony has [about 250] questions in their questionnaire,” says Julie Spira of CyberDatingExpert.com and author of “The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online.” “Anyone who signs up with eHarmony is truly serious about having a relationship with someone.”

Industry experts Brooks and Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare that let users find out what people are doing and where they are so they can join the party at the bar or restaurant and meet new people.

For those who want to approximate a real in-person date before spending time and money on what might very well be an awkward first date, CyberDatingExpert.com’s Spira says to look to webcams.

“People are so conditioned on the first date to be disappointed that you don’t look like your photo,” she explains. She lists Speeddate.com or WooMe.com, both meet-via-webcam sites with younger clienteles, as success stories because their users tend to be less inhibited and quick learners of the software platform. “With video, what you see is what you get. But the older people in their 40s and 50s aren’t taking the time to do videos. You’re just getting them to join online dating for the first time so it’s like baby steps.”

Virtual sites, such as Second Life, OmniDate.com and Weopia.com, or even gaming sites, such as World of Warcraft (where romances have sometimes sparked between members of the gamers’ playing guilds), are perfect for those who are “gadget oriented” but also add another layer of anonymity, Spira says — something that can be a pro or a con. She says that virtual daters should get real pictures of their suitors before getting too serious.

Spira says it’s also common for online daters to be on several dating sites at once, at least one of which is free. But there might be a lot of abandoned profiles on free sites because “if you are paying $50 a month for an online dating site, you’re going to pay more attention to those e-mails. It’s economics.”

Click here to read full article on the Los Angeles Times

Cyber-Dating Expert

Quite often I am asked to define what cyber-dating truly is. It’s simple. You have a computer, recent photos, and hobbies that you are passionate about. You sign up for an online dating service, create a profile and connect via email and date with the help of your computer.

In order to determine if dating online is for you, consider the following scenarios for successful cyberdating.

• You are single and are looking to connect with another for a meaningful relationship.
• You are looking to get married.
• You are looking to hook-up and have a casual relationship.
• Your friends are not fixing you up.
• You are computer savvy and organized.
• You are considering signing up for an online dating service.
• You hear about others finding love online and you are home yet another Saturday night alone.
• You HAVE the time to invest in finding someone to connect with.

Cyberdating isn’t for everyone. But, it’s a method of meeting a large quantity of people when your dating pool has dried up. There are singles who are now looking for love online, who just a few years ago wouldn’t be caught dead being seen in an online dating site. With all of the publicity of Internet dating, with thousands of thousands of singles who are being successfully matched, it’s a means to an end. Sign up, connect, and retire the online dating profile.

Sounds easy, right? Well it’s not. There are those rare couples you will find featured in the Cyber Love Story of the Week who have met, fallen in love, and sometimes have met within days or weeks of joining their online dating site. I love to spread the news of these happy stories.

Unfortunately, for every one of these stories, there are many more from singles who have had dates showing up that don’t look like their photos, married men pretending to be single, and serial daters who are in it for the thrill and ego boost.

My suggestions for successful cyberdating are as follows:

• Cast a wide net. Not every date will be the love of your life, but you might get lucky and make a new friend
• Take your time. There’s no magic number of how many dates you need to go on. Consider it an adventure.
• Be specific in your profile. Narrowly identify what you are looking for in a partner and the types of activities that you enjoy
• Be honest. Yes, that means tell the truth about your age, weight, and height. If you fall into the common trap of shaving a few years off your age to fit into a search, you are doing yourself a disservice. Come clean in your profile, or at least by the first date. I know of men who have walked out on dates when they found out the woman wasn’t honest about her age.

Try a free trial membership from an online dating service in our Dating Community. Dip in one toe at a time. You might be happy with the results you end up receiving. If it’s overwhelming, take a break and try it again in a few weeks. Looking for a job can be tough and competitive. So is cyber-dating.

Julie Spira is a dating coach and the author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. Visit her at CyberDatingExpert.com.