SKIRMISHER

TechCrunch recently profiled 13 dating sites that give it to you more-or-less free. If you’ve been hungry for love and looking for it in all the wrong places, like fastfood urinals and public parks, search filthily no more.

The current explosion in dating sites, which has no “detectable” long tail yet, is mostly inspired by the sheer amount of cash generated by established sites like Match.com and Yahoo Personals.

Here, Michael Arrington talks more about the cash:

Online dating is big business, drawing about 4 million U.S. Internet users daily in June 2006 (and 25 million monthly), and they spend a daily average of nearly 17 minutes each on these sites. That adds up to a lot of page views - almost 4.5 billion per month (source: Comscore). And that doesn’t take into account the billion-a-day Myspace page views, which many people argue is basically a very large dating site. All told, at least 15% of U.S. Internet users visit an online dating site each month.

The two largest dating sites are Yahoo Personals and Match.com, respectively, with a combined 9.3 million monthly visitors. Both allow free browsing, but to communicate with other members you must pay a fee. Match.com charges $30/month for the basic plan; Yahoo’s fee is $25/month. Both sites also offer premium plans that attempt to help you find a compatible mate.

My generally crappy self, however, tells me to chuck all the dating sites, tread the road less travelled, and give my Diggs to Irish blogger Damien Mulley’s “How to use Google to get a girl and get laid.” Now that is priceless.

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