Singles play the field online, seeking match with 'the one'

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By Megan K. Scott ASSOCIATED PRESS

When it comes to love, Kathleen Hanover is searching for a needle in a haystack. So, to find Mr. Right, she has profiles on at least five online dating sites.

Miss Hanover, who owns a marketing business, figures it's simple math.

"You have to have a big pool of leads to find the percentage who might feel right," says the Dayton, Ohio, resident, 43. "I'm looking for a very specific kind of man."

With 1,400 online dating sites, according to the research firm Hitwise, many singles are finding it easy to cast a wide net, posting profiles on multiple sites in hope of reeling in "the one."

Melissa Galt, an interior designer and motivational speaker in Atlanta, was on four sites at once and compared it to having a second full-time job. One site she used was about "quantity and not necessarily quality." Another seemed better suited to one-night stands.

She subscribed to eHarmony multiple times but had no luck there and didn't fare much better at Match.com, where she struck out enough that the site was willing to give her six months of free membership. Since then, Miss Galt has gone out on two dates with someone from Match.com and says so far, so good.

Neither eHarmony nor Match.com, two of the leading online dating sites, captures information about how many of their members are on other sites. Match.com has 15 million active members worldwide. EHarmony has more than 20 million registered users around the world.

Markus Frind, chief executive of the free dating site Plenty offish.com, estimates that 15 percent of the people in the United States who are active on his site are members of other, paid dating sites. About 900,000 people in the North America and the United Kingdom log on each day.

It makes sense to post profiles on more than one site, says Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch and an Internet dating consultant.

He compares serial online dating to bar- and nightclub-hopping. Someone may go to a wine bar one night and a "Cheers" bar another night. He says people generally settle on one main site and a smaller niche site.