The men paying Facebook girlfriends

They say you can't put a price on love. However one internet venture now claims to have pulled it off - offering a Facebook girlfriend for just $5.

In the age of social media, it is no longer the most important thing to have a pretty blonde on your arm at a cocktail party.

These days it's all about impressing online - and the pressure to impress in a virtual world has sparked a surge in websites offering to boost your online personality.

One such site, Cloud Girlfriend, promises users the ability to create their 'perfect girlfriend', who will post messages on their wall, giving the impression that they are in a long distance relationship.

Billing itself as 'The Social Network Girlfriend', the site describes four steps to creating a virtual partner, with users asked to 'define their perfect girlfriend' before the site's owners 'bring her into existence'.

It then promises the budding online Romeos they will be able to 'connect and interact' with their new girlfriend 'publicly on your favourite social network'.

Advertised as a 'public long-distance relationship', the creators of the site say it will employ real human beings to act as fake girlfriends.

Co-founder David Fuhriman claimed that Cloud Girlfriend helps users to bag themselves a real girlfriend.

He explained to website Business Insider that women who see posts from a virtual girlfriend will think 'someone else thinks highly enough of this person to date him, so maybe I should too'. But who are these girls? One BBC technology journalist sought to find out and joined a similar site to Cloud Girlfriend, Fiverr - a website which lists things people are willing to do for $5.

Here he met Sophia, an intelligent, attractive 24-yearold.

Speaking to the BBC about being a member of the site, she said: 'It's not a big deal really. It's just easy to do... I just tick 'in a relationship.'

Services that offer an opportunity to create a virtual girlfriend are already popular in Japan, with one Nintendo DS game, Love Plus, selling 100,000 copies within a month of release.

In December 2009, one user even 'married' a character from the game, tying the knot at a ceremony attended by 40 people.