BOOT up your computer, turn on your camera and make sure you comb your hair. Because in the next three minutes online, you could be meeting the love of your life.

Internet dating may be as old as the World Wide Web itself, but it is fast losing the stigma once attached to it, and becoming a way for tech-savvy singles to find each other. Research firm Synovate found last year that 15 per cent of respondents globally had used an online personal ad or dating service to meet a potential romantic interest.

The biggest international player in the online dating industry Match.com also reported US$348 million (S$495 million) in revenue last year.

And it's no longer a matter of posting your profile on a site and waiting for someone to get in touch, as in the manner of 'traditional' dating sites like Match.com.

Now you can speed date, play realtime games, and chat with prospective partners in your home, or even office, whom you never have to meet in real life if you don't want to.

On US-based portal Speeddate.com, that is exactly what singles do, using webcams, microphones or instant messaging.

One local site, Eteract.com, offers online games such as checkers, pool, even tennis, where Singaporean singles can play together. They can also speed date, form social clubs and chat in virtual rooms that look like bars, swimming pools or even Times Square in New York.

Another site, Who Works Around You (WWAY), locates available singles working in the vicinity of busy executives.

Marriage and babies are in the spotlight again after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong unveiled several pro-family moves at last month's National Day Rally.

Online dating reaches out to a younger segment of the population who are not likely to use offline or face-to-face matchmaking services, industry players here said.

Though there can be pitfalls to online dating, it is 'good because it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it can generate the kind of volume people want', said Eteract's founder Violet Lim.

A meeting place of this sort offers the ultimate flexibility, anonymity and the ease of moving on, if it's not Mr or Miss Right - just the thing for today's time-strapped executives.

It was the lack of pressure and non-threatening atmosphere of Eteract which appealed to real estate agent Teo Yi Shan, 25.

'On traditional dating sites, I felt pushed to date. It can be very scary,' she said.

Instead, her now-boyfriend, computer programmer Victor Chen, 27, fell for her over instant messages and games on Eteract. They realised they worked near each other and decided to meet up for lunch just a few days later.

Singles like this pair are voting with their clicks - Speeddate.com reports 30,000 members from Singapore registered in its database to date, while local sites Eteract and WWAY have about 3,500 members and 1,200 members respectively.

The latter two sites are also aggressively upping their game, with Eteract giving its site a facelift this month and becoming a paid site. In June, WWAY introduced a mobile platform so singles can continue to use its services on their mobile phones while away from their computers.

A new site, Ogywawa.com, lets people buy real drinks for others at watering holes - the old school way of meeting someone new - by sending them coupons via text messages. It will also be launched here within the next month.

It is the Internet's facility for casting a wide net which is appealing.

Logistics executive Camy Koh, 23, said she simply wants to get to know more people, and 'if someone comes along that I'm interested in, why not?'.

Ms Koh chats online with other WWAY members and goes on group outings for dinner and karaoke. It's a 'stressless' way to find a partner, she said.

It has also worked for engineer Koay Yi Ee, 27, who, over a month, dated four men she shortlisted off Eteract, with varying levels of success.

'The chemistry levels were between 100 per cent and zero,' she quipped.

The man she liked the most was a dashing civil servant who did not seem so attractive online, while the one who 'looked my type' online was so boring in real life, she sneaked away on their date.

In a way, Internet dating is backwards - you get to know someone first before you actually meet. Not quite boy-meets-girl-and-hears-violins.

But violins are what everyone wants - whether you find them online or off.

As Mr Chen said: 'As long as I can meet someone special, it's good.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sep 29, 2008.