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The Internet has special appeal for Baby Boomers, an impatient lot used to getting their way. 
According to JupiterResearch, 15 percent of Internet users between the ages of 45 and 54 browsed dating sites last year—almost as much as the average online user.
Internet dating is quick, it's efficient. Boomers searching for same-age partners can comb through sites like PerfectMatch.com (63 percent are 35 to 60) and PrimeSingles.net, a 50-plus site whose membership grew 39 percent in 2005. "As people get older, they definitely start dropping a lot of the look requirements they have in their mind," says Joe Tracy, publisher of the Web-based Online Dating Magazine. "They're more successful at finding what they want, and that's why they do well with personality sites that match them; it's easier for them to skip over the players."
At "compatibility sites," where people are matched by the results of personality tests, there's who a race to lure boomers who can pay the heftier membership fees. Chemistry.com, a new brand from Match.com, and eHarmony.com have both hired social scientists who they hope will make their questionnaire-to-romance algorithms more credible. Over at Chemistry.com, anthropologist Helen Fisher has been pondering this: "Fifty percent of personality is based in genetics, brain chemistry and hormones, so maybe we are attracted to somebody not only because of all of the social and psychological reasons but for chemical reasons, too."
Better loving through chemistry with an assist from technology.
Source: The Boomer Files, Newsweek, Feb 20, 2006
