I personally would never date someone I met on a pay dating site, because desperation is an honest signal of poor quality.
That's the same thing people say about free software. :-)
With that said, I think you may confuse desperation with efficiency. If I were single in this day and age, I would certainly use pay dating sites (assuming prices were reasonable). Not because I'd be desperate, but it widens your network considerably, and you don't have to waste time at bars, clubs, social mixers, etc...
And given the number of colleagues and friends who have met people online -- I'd say the superficial quality at least (looks, jobs, education, humor) seem to be higher than average.
In any case, the article provided no evidence either way. What would have been useful is for them to show proof that women on pay sites are less desireable than women from say, MySpace ;-)
I have met people online, and known people who have met people online, but they were all on okcupid or other free sites; never on a pay site. I didn't say all online dating was like that, only pay sites. A free site does widen your network, but I think the point of the post was that paid sites have mostly dead users and therefore the network is rather small.
V.v. free software, I think the better comparison is between a free dating site and free software; lots of people contribute to make it better. Certainly it's partially true with OkCupid; users do add a lot of the content, writing match questions and quizzes.
A free site does widen your network, but I think the point of the post was that paid sites have mostly dead users and therefore the network is rather small.
But he doesn't argue this effectively. In fact a free site would be worse in this regard -- especially for the scarce resource (women -- who I suspect are often free on paysites, as they are in some nightclubs).
As a female (which I'm not), I'd rather be listed on a pay site than a freesite, if the main issue I have is too many emails from guys.
It almost would appear that desperate women would be on free sites -- since paying a nominal fee for first level filtering would indicate a less desperate act than someone who opted for greater volume, even at slightly less cost.
In any case, I think we can both agree that the blog entry didn't really address in a satisfactory way the central thesis.
I personally would never date someone I met on a pay dating site, because desperation is an honest signal of poor quality. But that's just anecdote.