WALL STREET JOURNAL -- Apr 3 -- In 1995, Matt Frassica, tired of singles bars and set-ups by friends, tried his hand at dating online. There he met, and later married, a woman who also liked long walks in the rain and homemade lasagna. Then the fairy tale ended. Frassica said he realized he was gay, and the divorce was official last year."We avoided getting to know the real person," says the 34-year-old corporate recruiter in San Francisco. "All we knew was the profiles of each other." (His ex-wife confirms that.) More than a decade after the Internet revolutionized dating - about two million Americans met their spouses online, by one measure - the sites face a new challenge: keeping these couples together. The emphasis on marriage and marriage sustenance is what these sites say they need to do to continue to expand their business. After double- and triple-digit growth in some recent years, spending on online dating rose by just 7 percent last year, according to a report by the Online Publishers Association, a trade group. The report shows that for the first time since 2002, music and video downloads surpassed online dating as a top revenue-maker on the Web. (Adult entertainment probably trumps them all, according to some market researchers, though figures are difficult to track.) A recent survey by Jupiter Research says serious daters - those seeking long-term commitments - are 63 percent more likely to pay for online dating than other daters. The quest by dating Web sites to keep passion alive is all the more urgent because demographic statistics would suggest that the first wave of divorces among online daters is just now beginning. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit research organization, an estimated two million married Internet users in America met their spouses online - that is about half the total number of people who married last year. FULL ARTICLE @ AZ CENTRAL