In some cases, the Internet has helped to maintain relationships begun in person.

Stefanie F. Bailey '97 met her boyfriend four years ago when she was on an exchange program in Sweden.

Bailey and Frederick exchanged occasional letters at first. But when Frederick sent her his e-mail address, their relationship reached a new plateau.

The two started to exchange several e-mails per day and talk on the Internet.

"I don't think we really would have gotten together if it hadn't been for e-mail," Bailey says.

Just Friends

Friendships can form over the Internet in some unusual ways.

Before coming to Harvard this year, Rachel I. Mason '99 received an e-mail from a random student in New York who had seen her name in an article about the action she had taken pertaining to proposed government cuts in the National Science Scholarship.

Mason says she responded to the e-mail and the two began e-mailing regularly.

"We are probably going to meet one another someday," she says, but not having met him "adds to the mystique of the whole thing."

Manson, who already has a boyfriend, says the student is "just an e-mail buddy."

In another case of a friendship starting through a random e-mail message, Matthew L. Bruce '96 says he and Catherine, a law student in New Zealand, have gotten to know each other after she e-mailed him because his home page on the World Wide Web had caught her attention.

Catherine had been looking at the home pages because her best friend was about to start her first year at Harvard Law School.

Bruce and Catherine began e-mailing back and forth, and Catherine, who is coming to Harvard in January to visit her best friend for three weeks, has arranged to meet Bruce then.

Internet games provide another good way to meet new people.