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In this day and age everyone has a Myspace account. Your friends, your family, hell even my best friends dog has a Myspace page. You’d think that this would make Myspace the perfect place for meeting single people, but I’m here to urge caution. Sure Myspace is free, and if you’re looking for a cool garage band or old high school acquaintance it’s perfect, but when it comes to dating, leave internet dating to the dating sites.

Imagine it, you’ve become fairly close friends with a co-worker and eventually one of you walks up to the others desk when they’re on their Myspace account. Naturally one of you adds the other. At some later point you happen to be checking out their page and see quite an attractive person in their top 8. You click on that person’s page and it seems they’re perfect for you. They like the same bands, books, they even have a cool song on their page and some cool artwork as their background. Now you’re forced to make a choice, do you write the person yourself or do you press your co-workers for more information?

If you write them yourself you’re asking for trouble. Maybe this person’s dating your co-worker and they just haven’t gotten to the point where they change their Myspace to, “In a relationship.” Maybe it’s your co-worker’s brother or sister and they happen to be over protective. Maybe it’s an ex of your co-workers. There may not be a right way to pursue things, but writing them without consulting with the person who directly knows them is definitely the wrong way.

So you decide to press your new friend for some info on this gorgeous individual. Now you’re potentially risking your new found friendship for a person you don’t know. The only right answer is, “Yea they’re single and you two would be a good match. I’ll talk to ‘em for ya.” Anything else is an answer you don’t want and could place a little resentment on either side. If they’re nice it would be something like, “I just don’t think you’re their type.” If they know when to shut up it will end there and you’ll be spared the, “She/He just happens to like the more athletic type.” (AKA you’re fat.)

Let’s say you dodge all these hurdles. Your friend gives you their blessing and you actually go on a date with the hottie you saw on Myspace. Great, well you met through a common friend so you’re going to spend some time hanging out with them. If you have a few friends in common expect to see a lot more of them. This is great as long as you’re both on good terms with all of them all of the time and are perfect for each other in every way and get married and live happily ever after. Otherwise every disagreement is a blog your friends read, every argument is a point for friends to take sides, and god forbid you break up and cause a rift through the entire continuum of online friends.

You might be saying to yourself, “OK fine, maybe I shouldn’t date friends of friends on Myspace, but what about people I search for who don’t know anyone I know? Well in my opinion this is less messy than dating in your web circle, but it has it’s own unique problems. If you’re going to use Myspace to search for singles in your area you’re turning myspace into any other online dating site with one huge exception, anonymity. On a dating site no one knows anything you don’t want a perspective date to know. They don’t see pictures your friends post of you on their page, they don’t read blogs you or your friends might post, and they can’t get personal information you or your friends might share about you. Myspace is a potential stalker’s playground.

I’ve dated people I met on Myspace, and I’ve dated people I met on match.com. I can’t say match.com is better or worse than any other dating site but it’s the one I tried and it worked great for me. With match.com everyone I meet has romantic interest, not just too much time at work. At match.com people only know what I want them to know, there’s no fear a co-worker will identify the building I work in from 9-5. On match.com my friends don’t hear or meet any potential dating interest until I want them to, I don’t have potential dates posting things on my page or contacting my friends. At match.com if I don’t want to talk to anyone I click one button and never hear from them again, on Myspace I might have to deal with them contacting my friends, family, and potentially stalking me. Don’t get me wrong I love Myspace, I’m on it almost every day, but I use myspace for friends and family, when I want to try internet dating I go to a site that’s made for internet dating.