Market for Dating?

Recent advances in modern technology has provided us with great wonders. One of these great wonders has been the personal computer and internet. Starting in the early 1990's and growing expotentially since then the internet has made our lives: more fun, easier to live, and allows us to do more in less time. One unintended consequence might be online dating.

You wouldn't know it unless you watched "To Catch a Predator" but the internet has become a valuable tool for the dating world. With popular social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace people can not only find long lost friends but also make new friends. Although, making friends in the "virtual world" may not seem real or authentic millions of people particpate in online dating. Launched in 2000 eHarmony matches men and women everyday based on questionaires that people fill out. The company has around 20 million users. What I find very interesting is that people will often pay for this service (a monthly user fee). In economics, this would be known as a transactions costs. However, isn't meeting people realtively easy? I guess there might be a burden for individuals who are either too busy, don't want to, or are just too scared to spend time looking for other people. To think that there is a true marketplace for members of the opposite sex is quite interesting. eHarmony reports that they marry around 236 people every day. Simple math tells us that this is over 86,000 couples per year.

The real question though is does eHarmony work better than the convential way of marriage? For instance for many centuries parents often selected possible suitors for their children often leaving little choice for the children. Before the internet people actually had to seek out members of the opposite sex. However, they were only limited to people they knew, friends their friends knew, or other connections. Now people can go online and actually find someone with similar interests. There is no empericial work on whether online dating sites produce "better" marriages than coventential ones. My best guess would be that eHarmony and other dating websites would produce better results because it makes the market more efficent.