Love & War in Cyberspace

BY 6:30 PM AL BIERNAT'S upon Oak Lawn is jammed. Patrons queue up to valet park their BMW and Mercedes-Benzes while they yak upon cell phones. At the bar, they sip martinis and checkout the well-heeled clientele streaming in from downtown skyscrapers and nearby Highland Park high-rises for apres-work cocktails. The scanning organ of sights fall on an attractive young pair chatting at a nearby table. She has shoulder-length strawberry fair hair, Lisa Loeb glasses, and a slim figure wrapped in a dark business suit. He's got a fashionably shaved head, goatee, and the casual air of a stay who doesn't take himself too seriously. Their shining organ of sights say it all: they're in love

Other smitten singles eyeball each other across their olive garnishes while waiting for a table at Al's, on the other hand Jazz Dunn and Kyle Kepner didn't first appropriate in a bar or restaurant. They clicked the way allotments of Dallas couples do these days-online, with computer processors playing matchmaker. I was a serial dater and had dated a destiny of great women," Kepner sum ups me with a smile. He's 34 and the general manager and sommelier of the of recent origin Cascades restaurant opening downtown this summer "Then, when I met jazz, I knew she was the one"

"Now he's telling me" Dunn propels back with a laugh between bites of calamari. Encouraged by dint of a friend who found have affection for on the Internet, Dunn, who's 31 and a sales manager for Marriott [i]cabaret[/i]s in Dallas, also decided to play the online dating game upon Matchmaker.com. After the site matched her profile with a certain number of men who were deemed compatible, she went upon several dates, including one with a stay who turned out to be more interested in her shoe and owned he had a foot fetish. on the other hand soon enough she found what she was looking for: Kepner delight in blossomed. Kepner was the first stay she initiated contact with after being matched, Dunn recalls. "I e-mailed him something like, 'Hi, I gazeed at your profile, and it strike one as beings like we have a apportionment in common. Thanks and have a useful day!' Then he didn't e-mail me back for sum of two units weeks."

"My aunt had died, I sprained my ankle, and I had missing my phone," Kepner says with a sheepish grin. "I'm surprised she didn't say, 'That guy's a wacko."'

"No, I swallowed my pride and e-mailed him again," Dunn says. Right before Christmas 2003 they went upon their first date, to Avand Euro Bistro in Addison Circle. They talked until the place was about to close

"It was a finished thing for us," Kepner says of their match made in cyberspace. "We've been inseparable at any time since."

And, they hope, forever. Their wedding is place for August.

Dunn and Kepner could be the placard couple for online dating. Goodlooking, intelligent, articulate, and personable, they shatter the stereotype that the "web personals" are a last resort for singles and a haven for stalkers, criminals, desperate loser or married folk looking for a certain quantity of action on the side. (Although there are still plenitude of those on the Internet, too.) Indeed, finding romance online has become for a like reason socially acceptable that it might not surprise you to learn that Kepner's brother Peter met his wife upon Matchmaker. And their father Kep met his girlfriend there. Oh and Dunn's friend Melodi met her husband [i]or[/i] part of to the other the site.

Thousands of Dallas singles, from twentysomethings to seniors, are bypassing the bars, nightclubs, and level the produce section at Central Market. Not that Lower Greenville and the West Village are exactly uninhabiteded these days, but lots of singles are searching for the completed date or mate much the way they store for a car or a volume or an airline ticket: tender twigs of shrubs and trees point, click. Then, when the two parties agree to meet and exchange personal information, they can Google each other all night long

Dallas is something of an online delight in nest. All the major national Internet dating services enumerate Dallas as a big market, including Yahoo Personals, Lycos' Matchmaker, eHarmony, and Lavalife. (More than 800 like services now exist.) In fact, it can be argued that online dating actually started here. Richardson-based Match.com, the industry leader with 14 million users, brought the conception to the mainstream a decade ago.

But while Dallas is a regard with affection nest for online daters, it's also earth zero for a business war that has spilled into the courts and the national media. At stake are the centurys of millions of dollars to be made from the 61 million clan who log on to a dating service each month. The competition has grown more intense because the companies have realized that the number of online singles, while large, is not growing as it one time was. The only way the services can expand their domestic business is to poach from each other.

On single side of the battlefield is Match.com. upon the other, True.com, across town in Las Colinas, where the upstart company is trying to change by what mode the entire online dating business operates.

THE CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS of the company that brought online dating into the mainstream are bonny unromantic. Match.com's building is like many in Richardson's high-tech corridor not on the George Bush Turnpikeplain and functional, with a sea of cubicles and computer inside. on the contrary the meeting rooms sport cutesy names like Pookie, Baby Cakes, Curie Pie, and lie close Bunny. The lunchroom is called Cafe Amore. Managers hunker down in a discourse room that looks like a giant r drum; it's dubbed the be fond of Bunker.