I met my wife on
LOVE@AOL.com. Yep, Im an online dating success story!
However, the service allows you to restrict people to a certain geographic radius from you residence (I think I put in 50 mile radius). Or at least it did 6 year ago. My wife and I were both living in Houston at the time. Turned out we lived about 15 minutes away from each other.
While I think online dating and similar services are great -hey, it worked for me! I do think that its best to limit the geographic area. Long distance relationships are tough enough. I think the thing that is nice is that you can often check out if the person has similar interests, which I think is an important part of a relationship, particularly starting out. Also, you can start communicating with the person via email, etc., which can often be less intimidating.