The Beatles said that all you need is love, but these days finding it may require a high-speed Internet connection. An Austin-based company launched www.msusingles.com late last year to capitalize on a growing market of online daters.
For a monthly fee, Mississippi State students can hook up with other State students via the World Wide Web.
White Buffalo Ventures, LLC created the Web site. Owner and CEO Brad Armstrong said the service creates a unique environment for students to meet, but some are apprehensive about online dating services such as his.
“For most, it’s rather hard to meet people in public,” Armstrong said.
Close to 100,000 people are registered on his 101 Web sites aimed mostly at different student bodies around the South and Midwest. MSU’s was created in November 2003, about the same time the University of Mississippi got its own similar Web site. He said www.msusingles.com now has about 1,000 registered users.
To register, students choose answers from several different semi-personal categories such as “eye color,” “drinking behavior,” and “religion.” The site provides plenty of creative answers to choose from, including “unitarian universalist” for the religion category and “dreamy blue-green” for the eye color category.
After members are registered, they can post photos or browse the site’s other registered members. They cannot, however, send or receive messages without paying a $19.95 monthly fee.
“It’s a rapidly growing site because of the affinity the students have for the school,” Armstrong said.
His online dating services flourish in small to medium-sized towns like Starkville, he said, because the opportunity to meet new people in social environments is relatively limited. Plus, Armstrong said, college affiliation is something people carry with them their whole lives.
“It’s something people feel passionate about,” he said.
Armstrong also said online dating lessens the fear of rejection. “You go out somewhere and there are 200 people. How many people is the average person going to go up to and meet? Two or three?”
The service is anonymous and non-threatening, he said. Users aren’t allowed to post phone numbers and other things that might allow users to contact them on their profiles.
Some students, however, said they won’t try the service. “It could be risky because people can deceive,” senior Eric Wesley said.
Wesley said that’s not what stops him from doing it, however. He said he probably wouldn’t do it if it was completely safe. “I’m just used to the old-fashioned way,” he said.
Other students don’t see a problem with it. “It’s a good way to meet different people,” senior Chaz Seyfarth said. “I think it’s pretty safe, actually, to meet people like that and get to know them rather than going out on a blind date with them.”
Gina Yeager, a marriage and family instructor at MSU, said she has researched Internet dating. She said it has its advantages and disadvantages.
“I’m not sure it’s really good or bad; it’s just the newest type,” Yeager said.
She said the possibility to meet a wide variety of people is Internet dating’s biggest advantage.
“You have expanded options. Before online dating, it was limited to your own social circle. If you want to e-mail someone in Russia, you can do that.”
She said women typically benefit more from online dating services because generally about twice as many men register for the sites. More men register for the sites because they are less concerned with safety issues, she said.
A search for 18 to 20-year-old women on www.msusingles.com turned up 44 people. A search for 18 to 20-year-old men, however, turned up 80 people.
The biggest drawbacks, Yeager said, are the safety issues. She said it’s easier to get to know someone’s true character in person. “One of the biggest ways to know people is through body language,” Yeager said. “When you’re using a computer you don’t really do that.”
She also said a significant percentage of people who use national Internet dating services are married.
Whether stigmas are still attached to Internet dating or not, it’s a lucrative business. Armstrong said www.match.com, the big dog of Internet dating, grossed over $120 million last year and has 10 million registered users.
He said he expects to double the number of Web sites he has by the end of 2004.
The Web site is in no way affiliated with Mississippi State University.