Online romance may have shed its stigma over the past couple of years, but until now the electronic process has been only a little bit faster than its off-line counterpart. Finding out whether your latest suitor is a loser could take days, if not weeks, when you're merely bouncing e-mail back and forth. What if you want to sort the wheat from the chaff right this minute? Isn't the Internet supposed to be about instant gratification?
Enter Love.com a new service launched last week by America Online (which, like this magazine, is owned by Time Warner). Not to be confused with love@aol.com which is run by Match.com for AOL subscribers only, Love.com is the first dating site to use the free software known as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). More than 50 million people use AIM regularly to chat with friends and co-workers. Many have it open on their desktop the entire time they're online.
Like Salon.com the New York Times and a lot of other popular websites, Love.com uses a personal-ad system created by a company called Spring Street Networks. Spring Street ads tend to be more cerebral than their equivalents on Match.com or Yahoo Personals because they ask questions like "What was the last book you read?" and "What was the worst lie you ever told?"
When you've located a personal ad you like, Love.com tells you whether its creator is online and using AIM at the moment. Click once, and the object of your attention will be sent a request for an instant message (which he or she can safely refuse, since Love.com masks your real AIM user name). The two of you could be virtual-speed-dating faster than you can say, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard."
Love.com is free only through Valentine's Day. After that, AOL says, posting an ad will still be free, but if you want to IM someone, you'll be asked to pay a monthly subscription fee. The amount hasn't been determined yet, but it's likely to be comparable to Match.com's $25 a month or $100 a year. Regular Spring Street sites charge you just $1 anytime you want to initiate an e-mail correspondence. Since Love.com trusts users to verify that they are 18 or older and AIM is officially available to anyone 13 or older, parents of teenagers may want to be extra vigilant.
Whether the additional cost is worth it depends on your view of dating. If you prefer to go slowly with one potential paramour at a time, you're probably better off on another Spring Street Networks website. But if you like playing the numbers game--and if the idea of being instant-messaged by strangers at random moments in your workday doesn't put you off--then it might make sense to take advantage of Cupid's AIM.