Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Facebook, as many people know, is a social networking site for keeping in touch with the people you know, and for sharing things with those people. I've found that it strengthens the weak bonds I've had with people I've met a few times and gotten to know, and has re-united me with people from my past whom I regretted not keeping in touch with. There are still people who haven't joined—I should just send them an email—but for those that have I've found things out about some of them that I really should have known anyway (including a pregnancy) and some I don't want to know much about (relationship details).

The above ad sometimes appears in my Facebook News Feed. It's fairly clearly marked as a sponsored ad, and while a little too close to looking like information about my friends for comfort (and why on Earth would I want to share an ad I didn't seek out?), the site has to make a dollar, and they do that through advertising. I see a problem with this, however: why can't the above ad have at least something to do what it knows about me? Facebook seems not to be aware of the fact that I'm in a relationship, something I explicitly told the site! It's a little shocking that here are in 2007 with contextual ads being all the rage and the website that has the most personal in both qualitative and quantitative can't figure out my status. I'm tired of facebook thinking that I'm tired of being single, especially when it knows I'm not single!

I hear a lot in the press the experiences of people who have had success with online dating—that is, the sites where you set up a profile, buy "credits" and then search for local people you think look attractive based on that profile then contact them. Just as a general impression, though, the same people that are successful with online dating (successful defined as physically meeting someone at least a few times as the result of the communications happening on an online dating site) are the same people who are successful in offline dating. That is, people who are willing to smoothly and unproblematically "make the first move" in a physical setting, i.e. extroverts.

As I say, that's a general impression, and I hear a story or two of nice, shy people meeting online, getting together, and finding that their personalities are compatible for a romantic relationship. Online dating doesn't seem very well suited for the people that most need to get out of the house and hang out with friendly members-of-the-sex-they-prefer. The stories are few and far between, though, so I wonder, those that consider themselves shy, what have their experiences been? I'm more interested in the guys' perspective, but I'd also like to hear about the shy girls' experiences.