Virtual dating assistants help the shy and the lonely

Washington: If winning dates online has never been your forte, here``s a simple way to find love - hire the services of a virtual dating assistant.

Max Hartshorn, 24, has mastered online dating. He knows exactly how to attract a woman``s attention and uses his talent to ghostwrite correspondence on behalf of single men who are unwilling, too busy or too inept to find a girl for themselves. And whenever he gets a woman, his bank balance spirals upwards. Hartshorn offers online dating service to Virtual Dating Assistants, one of the first full-scale Internet-dating outsourcing companies. For 600dollars, Virtual Dating Assistants guarantees clients two dates a month while the "executive service" package, at 1,200 dollars, promises five dates a month. "I get paid for each woman who writes back positively," the Washington Post quoted Hartshorn, as saying. He added: "It``s very analogous to sales . . . like a cold-caller or a telemarketer. "I don``t care that much if it becomes a date or not." ANI