Forget that tech types aren’t known for their social wherewithal and romantic acumen. Most Silicon singles don’t even have time for a candlelight dinner, and they’ve often moved from afar and lack the means of meeting people outside the office. That’s why the matchmaking sites do their briskest business with the men at the nexus of the tech boom. “These guys are loaded with money and they have absolutely no one to spend it on,” says Rich Gosse, founder of the San Rafael-based American Singles.
Instead, they’re spending it on nominal monthly fees to access sites like Match.com and Matchmaker.com. The sites let you post your profile and picture on the Web and sort through thousands of other user profiles. Other start-ups are trying a wholly different approach. Earlier this year, 28-year-old technology recruiter Charles Notley used a site called eCrush to romance a temp secretary at the Sunnyvale-based Advanced Micro Devices, where they both worked. The site sent an e-mail notifying her of the anonymous crush, then brought the pair together in a chat room after she “e-crushed” him back. “I haven’t slept at home once in the last month,” says Notley.
Unfortunately, most guys in Silicon Valley aren’t enjoying the same level of success. Men who post their profiles say they get three to four e-mails a week, while women say they’re deluged with several a day. Lia McDonald of San Jose, 33, joined Match.com after her mother and her roommate both found boyfriends on the site. She got so many responses in her first week that she started replying only to the men with the best writing styles–and the best pictures. “It was pretty easy to weed out all the garbage,” she says. The strategy must have worked; she eventually met her husband on the site, and they now have one child.
Wooing on the Web has its drawbacks. One woman described herself in an e-mail to 40-year-old Chris Tablot as “nice and curvy.” Then they met for dinner. “She must have weighed 250 pounds,” marvels Tablot, the VP of technology at a semiconductor-testing company. “People overemphasize their attractiveness to the point where it’s ridiculous.” (Likewise, women caution against men who describe their body type as “husky.”) Another problem is that the Web knows no geographical boundaries. Alan Kauth, a 37-year-old engineer at Mountain View-based Cisco Systems, says his relationship with a woman from Sausalito foundered over the 50 miles of highway between them. “We just didn’t have the time for all the driving,” he says.
Still, the Web is offering a practical alternative to the bars and bookstores of Silicon Valley. And there’s more good news. This fall, American Singles will hold its “national singles convention” in Palo Alto. Last year’s locale was Anchorage, but catastrophically, the event fell on the first day of hunting season and the women out-numbered the men three to one. This year’s event should draw more guys, unless they’re all in front of their computers.
