[peterwwillis]

Network, not circle. The term 'social circle' isn't really well defined, so I'll define it as "people with whom you have social interaction with on a regular or semi-regular basis". A social network is anyone they are connected to, and them to them, etc. Your social network is much larger than a social circle. Think six degrees of kevin bacon.

In order to dramatically grow a social network you might only need to make friends with 1 person who is outside your normal social network. For example, if you joined a gym and made friends with one person whom you then played squash with every week, and that person is otherwise unconnected to anyone else you know, now there is at least a plausible chance to meet any of the people in their social network. I'm no expert here, but surely someone at Facebook can give an example of how adding a new friend who isn't in your normal group of friends can drastically increase your connections.

If you can use this social network effectively, you have (I think) a much better chance of finding a lifetime partner than using a dating site, both because of how difficult it is to identify an appealing personality online, and because social network connections are (I think) much better paths to a potential match.