DATING ONLINE SERVICES:

Dating online is growing more each year, the easy use, the Internet connection instead of a phone line, and the access to the world, makes the dating issue more popular.

The Russian dating scene: The recruitment of women by marriage agencies may be a way to facilitate women’s access to the Internet. For example, in Riga, Latvia one of the largest marriage agencies in the world, Foreign Affairs, has a franchise in Mystic Café. In the café, women access the Internet to correspond with men who have subscribed to the service.5 Other marriage agencies provide Internet access at their offices so women can correspond with men who pay additional fees for conversations with women. In these cases, marriage agencies  are providing access to the Internet and contacts in the West that may increase the likelihood of women corresponding with or meeting good husbands..

Christian personals: another niche in dating online industry

The Christian personals include large agencies with 1000s of women listed and very small agencies with just a few dozen women listed.  Some dating agencies, the largest ones, included women from almost all of the former Europe countries; other agencies were regional and included only women from one city or oblast. From each of the Web sites, the number of women from each city, oblast and country was entered in the database. A total of almost 120,000 women were counted from these sites. Efforts were made to avoid over counting. There were several dating Web sites that compiled women personals ads  from other sites or agencies. These duplications were not counted..