ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, a reader of any mainstream national publication or local weekly could not
have helped but notice the ubiquitous personal advertisements that saturated their back
pages. Today, these same personal advertisements have migrated to the virtual pages of the
World Wide Web. A casual glance at the content of online personal advertisements suggests
that their writers solicit readers for a variety of reasons, including friendship, a long-term
relationship, and casual sex; however, dating dominates the virtual landscape. The vast
majority of online personal ads are written by people who want to date as a prelude to a
satisfying long-term relationship (Brym and Lenton 2001). With an estimated 2,500 dating
websites in operation entertaining approximately 40 million visitors each month (Sullivan
2002), internet dating is now a popular and vital part of the process by which people seek
and find intimate partners.
