Online dating sites, once growing at meteoric rates - in 2003, revenue growth was 70 percent annually - have matured and settled down, with revenue growth at 5 percent in 2005 according to Jupiter, writes eMarketer. The top five online dating sites, in terms of unique visitors in Dec. 2005, were Yahoo Personals, Match.com, Spark Networks, True.com, and Mate1.com, according to comScore. Yahoo's was far and away the most popular, with 24.04 million visitors, compared with 3.6 million for second-place Match.

Dating sites are now facing competition from social-networking sites; both MySpace and Friendster, for example, offer online dating - for free. But James Belcher, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new "Online Dating: WhoseSpace?" report, points out, "Free online dating sites, be they social networking or other, are not after the same customers as subscription-based online dating sites."

"Free sites are pursuing advertisers. Subscription-based online dating sites, on the other hand, are pursuing serious paying online daters. This seems facile, as losing casual daters to free sites might eventually deprive subscription sites of the potential converts. The fact that serious online dating sites are not only surviving, but in some cases are charging higher fees, reveals that those who want such services will seek them out, and at a price."