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If you had asked me two years ago about MySpace and Online Dating, I would have enjoyed telling you a story about a woman from San Diego who contacted me, in Portland, befriended me, and managed to convince me she was pretty cool, intelligent, fun and good-looking. Suffice to say when she came to visit, and insisted on getting a hotel room of her own, I was fine with it, and it turned out to be a life-saver when she was actually not cool, going through a bad breakup with a long-term husband and multiple business co-owner, and about 10 years older and 40 lbs. heavier than any of the photos she sent.

As they old USENET saying goes: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." I told everyone that MySpace should change their name to MyStalk and that I couldn't believe how many people seemed to be using it to try and hook up, and esp. hassle or otherwise take advantage of women. That's one of the main reasons you can not only block people, but you can make your profile "Private" now, and need to know the person's name or email address to even ask them to be "Friends".

Since then, I've come round in my thinking, as two people I know who met through MySpace are getting married very soon. I spent a second 3-month stint trying Online Dating on such sites as "American Singles", "Yahoo! Personals", "Nerve.com / The Onion Personals" and local free weekly newspapers, and had nothing but awful experiences.

There are several reasons for my complete change-of-heart on the idea of dating and MySpace being a good thing:

1. MySpace, unlike other Online Dating sites, is free. And it offers most of what the Online Dating sites do: posting pictures, talking about yourself, writing up your favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc. and even blogging and other things. There's really not much the other sites offer other than "matching" you with other people, which I've found doesn't work at all on any of the sites I've listed above. So why pay for them when MySpace is free?

2. MySpace is, technically, a place for people to meet and get to know each other based on similar interests, tastes, etc. An Online Dating site is specifically for people who are "on the hunt", trying to seek out friends (rarely true), relationships and marriage.

So MySpace is very much like showing up at a party at your friend's house and hanging out talking to people you find interesting, and if one of them is attractive to you and the feeling is mutual, you might hit it off, trade email and/or phone numbers, and become

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