Match, E-Harmony, True and Second Life?

Since it is a holiday, I am sticking to the social side of SL rather than the educational side. Happy 4th of July to all of you Americans out there!!! I hope you enjoyed your BBQ's and family fun today as much as I did with my family.

Wow, these past couple of weeks you can really tell it was spring and now definately summer; Romance is in the air. I am hearing of more and more people that have met their current boyfriend, husband or significant other online and I do not mean through traditional online dating services.

I know a colleague who's daughter met her current husband on World of Warcraft (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml) another colleague who is dating someone they met online in SL and a third colleague who has had people interested in her in SL and she was not interested in getting involved.

As a newlywed, I have not been too interested or even open-eyed to the romantic side of SL. However, it exists and may even be the future trend of online dating services. Actually, think about it. SL has the perfect setting for meeting people and setting up a dating service. Wow, the perfect business for SL, so I secided to investigate to see if it had been created yet in SL! Especially since I am a matchmaker at heart!! You will be amazed at what I found. :-)

It does not only exist, but there is a plethory of services! First, I found 13 different groups people could join that are interested in dating (some are even by country and region). I also found locations in SL for the following in less that three minutes:

SL Dating Service, Second Life Dating Game, Dream Date Auction, Dating Cafe, Hope by the Sea Dating Service, Avie Connectors SL Dating Made Simple Service, Digiluv.com Digital Online Dating Service, and finally Skate and Date.

By this showing of dating services, I would say that romance in SL must be big. This is obviously a growing trend and just like other growing businesses and educational trends into SL, the dating scene is here too and evolving along as well.

Now, this just leaves me with a few simple questions for further exploration and discovery? It is possible to get married in SL? It must be since so many places offer services for weddings? Finally, if you are married to one person in RL and get married to another person in SL, is it bigomy? LOL - I was just thinking and curious where the lines of reality and fantasy actually meet, cross and blurr.

Regards till my next post,
Dembe;-)