When Charlie Kunkel first saw Jamie (a pseudonym), he was instantly attracted to her. He loved her sweet smile, her sarcastic sense of humor, and her open, caring personality. Nothing could stop him from trying to get to know her better.

“She’s the most insanely beautiful girl I’ve seen,” he gushed, “and she’s smart, too. She knows computers and is into sports and guy things. She’s kind of a tomboy even though she looks like a princess. And she’s just the sweetest thing you’ve ever met.”

So Charlie made his move. He showered Jamie with compliments, charmed her with witty jokes. She gave him her phone number, and when he called the next day, they spoke for almost nine hours, unable to say goodbye to each other as the late evening met the early morning. The late July sun was spreading across Alki beach across from Charlie’s house when he finally ended that phone call and went to bed, only to lay awake waiting for the appropriate time to call her again.

What Charlie feared would be just a summer romance endured, and in the past five months he has rarely gone a day without speaking to “his angel.” Charlie is an expert on Jamie: he knows her favorite ice cream is Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, that she cried for hours after watching the final episode of Friends, and that hanging up the phone on her “pisses her off like nothing else.” Yes, there have been fights along the way, but Charlie believes that he and Jamie are in a committed relationship.

Charlie hopes that he will finally meet Jamie face-to-face over the holidays. In fact, he’s demanding it. “Five months is a long time to get to know someone online before you meet them,” he said. The lovers have been sharing the small, intimate details of their daily lives in cyberspace. Charlie lives in Seattle and Jamie, in Portland, Ore.

They met on Myspace.com, the world’s largest social networking Web site. In Charlie’s bedroom, the currently unemployed computer programmer and video game enthusiast spends several hours each day in an expensive desk chair designed to alleviate back pain during long bouts of sitting. He gazes into 24-inch monitor that dominates the bare, undecorated room, blocking a breathtaking view of the Puget Sound and Seattle skyline. He says he has always been passionate about computers, but since meeting Jamie he has spent more time online exchanging emails, instant messaging, and courting her on Myspace.com.

Charlie is a member of what Business Week has recently dubbed the “Myspace generation,” describing the millions of young people across the country who do much of their socializing in cyberspace. Experts say that the advent of hundreds of social-network sites is creating new forms of social behavior that blur the line between virtual and real-world interactions.

The preeminent social-network site is Myspace.com, whose number of daily hits has surpassed Internet giants Yahoo, Google and MSN. The site, created in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, allows anyone to create a free Web page. Over 39 million Web profiles have been created, most of them by people ages 16 to 34, according to comScore Media Metrix, a company that tracks Web traffic. In July, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace.com’s parent company, Intermix Media, and rights to the site for $580 million in an attempt to reach the site’s coveted demographic.

Seattle resident Julie Raulerson is a new covert to Myspace.com. At first, she says, she was hesitant to sign up; she was intimidated by the number of people who would be able to access her Web page: “I wasn’t going to join Myspace, but everyone I know is on it. And not only that, all of my friends were logging on almost every day and writing to each other. It looked like fun, and I wanted to make a profile, too. I thought I could make it cool and original, so I signed up.”

Registering for a profile requires only a valid email address; any other information a person provides is voluntary and unverified. Many users identify themselves by first name only or create nicknames to conceal their identity.

Once registered on the Web site, users can craft profiles of themselves that can be accurate reflections or the equivalent of airbrushed photos. An “about me” blank space is provided for each user to reveal their personality, as are spaces to reveal the kind of people they have joined the site to meet, their general interests, favorite music, movies, television shows, books and heroes. Users can also post photos to accompany their profiles.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML coding can insert graphics or change the background or font style on their “space.” Because myspace.com is dominated by Generation X-ers, many personal spaces resemble girlie dorm rooms, replete with Hollywood hunks and goofy group party pictures. Many others are decorated like a teenage boys’ gym locker, a sweaty mixture of hormones and energy displayed on screens covered with sports cars and curvaceous, all-but-naked women.

Some Myspace.com users log on to write in their online journals, or blogs, documenting their lives with frank and lively commentary. However, a large majority just post comments informally back and forth on each other’s profiles in an ongoing dialog that is typically in the “how was your weekend? Lets get together soon!” variety.

Myspacers search out new music artists and bands on the site’s plethora of music profiles. Here, an artist can add original music to his or her Web page, and eager listeners can play the music but not download or copy it. A popular feature is each user’s collection of friends, their profile pictures linking all their Web pages together. In some cases, users limit their friends to only people they actually know, but it is not uncommon for a profile to boast links to the sites of hundreds or even thousands of other users.

Sandy LaMorra’s profile has a background of twinkling stars and soft pastel colors. She reveals that she is 19 years old and single, that her zodiac sign is Aries, and that she’s from “somewhere near Renton” in curling script, next to a blurry digital picture of herself that she took with her cell phone camera.

“My space says a lot about my personality,” said Sandy, “the things I enjoy, the places I go, my friends, family, and hobbies. This is a place to express myself.”

The soothing music of one of her favorite artists, Lil’Rob, begins to play automatically when a user views her profile. In her latest blog entry, she describes exactly how the perfect man would make the perfect marriage proposal. There are 109 links to Sandy’s “friends,” and long list of comments beneath that, most of them made by the people Sandy has listed as her top eight friends.

“I heard from my friends that everyone from high school was on it,” she said. “I use MySpace to keep in touch with friends and family, and meet new people.”

Meeting new people is not difficult. A user can search through profiles using criteria such as age or location, or look for people with common interests by joining one of the thousands of different groups.

Charlie saw Jamie’s profile for the first time when he joined a group called Club Vibe Seattle. He sent her an Email message, asking to be added as one of her friends, and the two began posting comments on each other’s profiles. Their comments read like micro-love letters, a publicized documentation of their courtship.

“Have I told you today how amazingly beautiful and sweet you are?” Charlie recently wrote Jamie. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think that, you know? What can I say? I see something cute and I immediately think of you!”

“God, you are so very hot!” Jamie responded. “You made me melt when you told me to come home to you! You make me feel like a princess! I love you!”

But, says Charlie, it’s not a fairytale romance yet. It’s still just an online relationship, and Jamie does not seem to share his wish to meet in person. “She’s scared,” Charlie explained. “We were supposed to meet once or twice, but she backed out.” Charlie said that he and Jamie spend hours each day on the phone and online, on Myspace.com, and he hopes they’ll meet this winter. But as time passes, he’s beginning to wonder if their virtual relationship will ever become real: “I told her from week two, the longer we wait, the bigger a deal it’s going to be. I love her like crazy, but it’s been so long now that the buildup is legendary.”