Well, you haven’t met me yet. 
I believe it does, but I focus mainly on “in last 24 hours” folks, so I can’t be sure. But even then, they could just be browsing the market. I’ve had a couple different girls reply, as much as a week or two after I wrote them, saying that they were sorry for the delay, but they’d just signed up. FWIW, YMMV, etc.
Myspace and OKcupid rule. The rest aren’t worth wasting your money, at least in my experience and the experiences of other people I’ve known. eHarmony seems to be the absolute worst if you’re under 35 and not Christian.
How old are your parents? I could be older than them. Not likely, but possible…
Late 50s, although I admit that most people on MySpace seem to be under 35; my friend is likely an exception.
myspace is pretty sparse if you’re over 35. (I did meet one woman from myspace but she’s in her late 20’s.) OKCupid is even worse in that respect.
wasson, I wouldn’t waste your time on someone who hasn’t logged-in in over three weeks or so. Their account probably isn’t active anymore.
I agree with the poster who said that emails will sometimes peter out for no reason. That happened to me a few times on match even when they made the initial contact.
I don’t use online dating or hook-up sites too much. But every experience has I’ve had has been a good one.
I’d much rather meet someone face to face. In fact when I’ve met guys on the Internet, the less said in the emails and phone calls the better. I feel you don’t really get to know a person until you’ve met each other (in person).
Well, we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversay last August. 
LIke others have said, online dating is an introduction service, basically; email or chat a few times, then go meet in person (meeting in a neutral place like a coffeeshop, of course). It’s the face-to-face meetings that tell you if there is anything happening between you or not. Send emails to anyone who interests you, chat with anybody, go out and do meet-and-greets with people who seem compatible; just think of it as a crash course in dating school. The more you date, the better you’ll get at it.
My buddy and his new wife met on eHarmony. Both were under 35. My buddy is an atheist.
I’ve been online dating for years now, off and on. I recently got a free weekend from e-harmony ($60 a month is a bit much for me, so I took advantage of it), and have been chatting with one man for a couple of weeks.
It is incredible the amount of things we have in common and how similiar we are in terms of our goals and values. We are both very excited to meet (Monday), and if that goes well, I can totally see a long relationship from this. It sounds crazy, but it’s really unbelievable how we have seemed to click. Maybe it is better, the way they send people to you instead of you going through profiles and choosing out of hundreds. We’ll see.
I tried both eHarmony and another site whose name has slipped my mind. Both offered matches based upon rather pitiful ~20 question “match questionaires.” The results I got (which were few and far between) were not at all what I was looking for.*
I then tried OkCupid. OkCupid allows you to answer over 2000 questions and select the answers your ideal mate would answer in addition to how important the question is to you. The matching system is much, much more realistic, and they do it all for free. I met Seren through OkCupid last November, and we’ve been together ever since.
*I’m 25 (and was looking for someone in her mid-twenties), so part of the problem could be that the majority of people on these sites tend to be older, whereas OkCupid seems to be populated by a much younger crowd.
My last online dating experience ultimately ended with this pretty shiny wedding ring I now wear
It is no different than conventional dating though in that it still takes time and you may have to sift through alot of duds before you find “the one”.
Good luck!!
Thanks for the tips, everyone. What do you make of this?
I emailed a girl who I seemingly had a lot in common with. 2 days later, she sends me a “wink”.
Is this because Free members can only wink? Can she still read my emails if I send her my email address or something? How else can I contact her if she doesn’t pay up?
You can’t. Match has figured out that people were doing this, so now you can’t even see who winked at you unless you’re a paying member.
Write her again, but if she doesn’t figure this out – well, then she’s not smart enough to date a Doper, so no loss.
You’re right, most people don’t reply. If they see your profile and decide that, for whatever reason, you’re not “their type”, they probably won’t bother replying at all. One out of every three isn’t bad, though.
You’ll probably e-mail with a lot of people you’ll never actually meet IRL, and many of those you do meet in real life you’ll never see again. I don’t want to be a downer, it’s just that some people expect great things instantly. Although that can happen, it’s not usually the case.
I had a lot of fun using online personals. I met a few duds, but most of the guys I actually met in person were fun and we had good times. Sure, not every date was magic, but most weren’t painful or awkward, either.
After about a year of using a couple of different services on and off, I met my now-husband on Yahoo!Personals. 
Okay, so, if she’s NOT a paying member, she’d be contacted saying I emailed her, but not the contents of said email unless she pays up. Right?
But free members can wink? Is there an easy way to figure out who is paid and who is not?
No, she’d be contacting saying that she got an email – but no who it’s from.
Yeah, it sucks.
twicks, who was curious enough to cough up the $30 to see who emailed – dammit.
But free members can wink? That seems… well… what’s the point? If this particular girl didn’t know I emailed her, and won’t know even if I email her after the wink, it all seems kind of silly to wink as a free member at all. Different folks, different strokes I guess.
Thanks for the explanation about the stuff paying members can see vs. non-paying members. This particular girl is pretty smokin’ hot, so I hope she ponies up the cash to email me.
She can see winks – so you could wink back, then email.
Well, never done it myself, however my GF has a perpetually single friend who lives on Match.com, MySpace, and so on. She’s a little “off” and has a habit of stalking guys she likes who just aren’t that into her. Basically just being a poster child for why you shouldn’t put your personal shit online.
Just tried that technique, but since I emailed her in the last 30 days, I can’t wink. So, this is dumb.
Yeah, putting my personal shit online may not be the best strategy, but I don’t want to date another friend (since that turned out so terribly), and I don’t want to date someone from work (which could potentially be worse than the friend thing), and I don’t want to meet a chick in a bar. So I don’t have a whole lot of options.