My own match.com story is a bit less than fulfilling. I had a few dates, but it always felt like a huge slog, wading through tons, and tons of crappy cookie cutter profiles. Everyone I ended up meeting, though, was a normal person -- most were there just because they were too busy with school or work to be as active as they'd like, but wanted to meet people outside their regular circle of work/schoolmates.

Even if the social stigma against online dating has decreased, it doesn't make that much difference when you hold that stigma yourself. When I was participating (I'm not, anymore, having been found by my current girlfriend offline at an icerink) I was embarassed, and felt like a loser for having to "resort" to it. Logically, I knew there was nothing wrong with it, for all the reasons in the posts above and more, but the battle in my head wasn't so simple. Low self-esteem was part of the problem, which fortunately resolved on its own as I got more involved in the dating world. Now, I wouldn't give it a second thought -- I'd jump back into online dating in a heartbeat: it's just one more place where I can meet people that have similar interests.

I have one good friend I met online at match, who is getting married this spring to a guy she met through match. Another friend is getting married this summer to a girl he met on LavaLife. The friend that introduced me to online dating got married a few years ago to a guy she met online, who is the antithesis of what she would have picked from the off-line dating pool. It's becoming a very frequent 'how we met' story among people I know.

That said -- don't give up on off-line sources. I know just as many people who met their current partners in the off-line world while they were doing the on-line thing (often as a result of taking some sort of classes).