I have definitely garnered my share of dating experience in the last two years.  I find myself full of stories with very few avenues by which to share them, so I decided to join this blog ring. 

I guess I should start by saying that about a year ago, I truly became a woman of the 2000's and did the unthinkable: I started online dating.  I was mortified and did my best to hide it at first.  I secretly signed up for Match.com and didn't tell a soul.  All of those commercials on tv and facebook, along with my coworker's success story, convinced me to do it. 

Accordingly, for my first post, I decided to give you reviews of the various dating sites I have tried:

Match.com
Pros: Tons of people to choose from, and most people have complete profiles with a lot of information about them and pictures to look at.  There are several different criteria you can use to search for people, depending on what you're looking for; you can search based on religion, political views, extracurricular interests, even income (for you gold diggers out there =P).

Cons: (This is gonna be a two-parter)
To my ladies, be careful! A lot of guys on there are just looking to get some tail.  Look out for warning phrases such as "I'm not looking for anything too serious right now," "I'm just looking for friends right now and we'll see what happens."  Also be wary of guys who claim to be old fashioned gentleman and who claim to be really close to their sisters.  They're hoping fake sensitivity will get them what they want. 

To my fellas, you're gonna have quite the opposite problem.  According to all of the Match guys I talked to, it's hard to get girls to respond to your messages.  And even the ones who respond to your messages, won't necessarily want to meet up.  I guess the trick is perseverance - not in a creepy stalkerish way, like continually pursuing a girl who has said that she's not interested - I mean more like if one girl says she's not interested, move on to the next one. 

eHarmony.com  
Pros: eHarmony somewhat matches you up based on the questionnaire that you fill out when you join. Also, eHarmony uses "guided communication" to let you contact people in stages - this helps to control your communication with people to avoid stalkers. 

Cons: Since eHarmony bases profiles on answers to multiple choice questions, the amount of information available to you about a person based on their profile is very limited - it's just a bunch of generic multiple choice answers to specific questions.  Also, not many people are active on there, and not many people have pictures.  Plus, after a while the matching system ignored my questionnaire answers and just matched me with people that I would never pursue, i.e. matching me up with people from Arizona, Washington, and Colorado when I specified that I would like someone who lives within 20 miles of me.  Not exactly accurate matching. Furthermore, since eHarmony focuses on matching people, you are limited to communicating with the people eHarmony matches you with,

Chemistry.com
Pros: A bit of a compromise between Match.com and eHarmony, a bit less structured like Match, but still matches you up based on some question answers like eHarmony.

Cons: Also a bit limited, since it matches you to people like eHarmony.

And there you have it, my review.  Hopefully this can help some of you!