Love on Demand

Once upon a time the quickest way to get a date was to join a tennis club and hope you were asked to play mixed doubles before the end of summer.

Not any more. These days, you can get yourself fixed up at the touch of a keyboard button. Just sign up to an internet dating agency, such as SpeedDater or DatingDirect, put your picture and self-promotional blurb on screen - and go trawling for a mate.

Happily, it's not as soulless as it sounds.

All right, so computer courtship may rule out those traditional skills such as eyelid-batting and hanky-dropping but there are still codes and conventions which have to be followed.

The accepted method of showing cyberinterest is to send a brief "flirt" message -the equivalent of an opening chat-up line. The person at the other end can then respond by sending a flirt back with their email address attached. From emails, the next step is text messages, moving on to a phone call (mobile to start with then land line if things are getting serious) at the end of which the couple might - if ready - go the whole way and meet up in person.

Mind you, some impatient souls can't be bothered with all this virtual pussyfootingaround and opt instead for real-life social, speed-dating events.

Frequently, the whole venue will be taken over for the night by the bigger operators such as SpeedDater and The Single Solution who, unlike some companies in this field, have real, bricks-and-mortar offices as well as virtual web-addresses.

At these events you can meet as many as 30 possible partners in 90 minutes - ie three minutes per person - which (in the view of an Ohio University research study) is ample time for two people to decide if they're going to get on. Not that they have to make their minds up on the spot. Each dater is allocated their own index number for the night and, after the event is over, they are emailed by the organising company and invited to enter the numbers of the people they met - and whom they'd like to meet again. If that other person feels the same way, the word "match" comes up on the screen after which it's up to the pair of them how they proceed.
The big advantage of this system is that rejection is post-dated, not done in person - and therefore hurts less. What's more, the person giving you the thumbs-down can soften the blow by ticking the "friendship" box rather than the "dating" box.

Also, if you're not good at the impress-meinthree-minutes stuff, you have a chance to shine at the organised parlour games which take place at most speed-dating events. You can try Lock and Key, where the men are all given a key on arrival, and have to find the woman whose lock fits their particular key. Or perhaps consult the Polaroid Wall which displays pictures of everyone at the event. If one of them takes your fancy you can pin a "flirt" card on their photo.

To help oil the wheels at these events some firms employ "dating hosts" or "flirt coaches". Speeddating is very effective at getting people in the same room, but sometimes they just need a gentle nudge from another human being in order to get together.

No matter how hi-tech our dating rituals become it seems we still can't do without the human touch.