Back when I was single, I was reasonably satisfied with JDate, despite being not terribly religious, although my thought at the time (being a graduate student living in central New Jersey) was that the JDate population nearby me was dwarfed by the population in New York. No big surprise, but if you're Jewish and living away from a critical mass of Jewish people, your mileage may vary. At the same time, I was underwhelmed by match.com and Yahoo Personals. You had to wade through a lot of drek to find what you were really looking for.

From speaking to people who are still doing the dating thing, there seems to be a split. The snarky high-brow people seem to favor nerve.com (which handles personal ads from many of the alternative weekly newspapers, salon.com, and so forth). The younger set seem to be all about myspace.com and/or facebook.com. Really, it's all about figuring out where your desired demographic tends to go, and then playing the numbers. From the women I've talked to, they tend to put up their ad and immediately get bombarded, forcing them to slog through a lot of poorly written letters. Thus, as the elgible bachelor, it's your obligation to be sufficiently good at writing to stand out enough for her to click on your profile, which likewise needs to be sufficiently well produced, both in terms of the text and your photos.

(And, for all the dating I did online, I met my wife because we're co-workers.)

EDIT: I just realized that Laura is going to be coming at this from a lady's perspective (duh!), although I suppose all the same advice applies. From women I've spoken to, if your profile is vague or whatnot, then you're going to get nothing but vulgar guys who are strictly playing a numbers game. If you're more discriminating in your writing, then you'll attract the guys who are similarly more discriminating (as well as the aforementioned numbers players). Like it or not, you'll have to slog through all the people trying to gain your attention. For a hillarious discussion on this topic, check out this thread on Yehoodi, a swing dancer's web site.