Marsha doesn't want to be known as the woman who used a dating service.

The 29-year-old Jersey City resident felt even more uneasy about the potential pool of guys that she would meet through a dating service.

But after 10 six-minute "speed dates" she had a list of potential suitors.

"There were a lot of surprises," said Marsha, who did not want to give her last name.

Like other minorities, many Asian-Americans feel pressured to marry within their culture. But meeting potential dates can be difficult when ethnicity is a factor, even in areas with large Asian-American communities.

Marsha was always open to dating people of any background. But as she got older, she thought more about how a non-Chinese-American would relate to her culture, her heritage and her family.

"I didn't have requirements for who I dated," Marsha said. "But with people who are Asian, I relate better about deep-rooted things I usually don't think about."

As a recent immigrant population, many Asian-Americans believe that marrying within their ethnic group is important for maintaining cultural identity, said Kyeyoung Park, a professor of anthropology and Asian-American studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.

"We are living in a very racialized society," Park said. "People believe that if you marry the same-race person, there is shared cultural background, and the marriage will be less complicated. But nothing is guaranteed."

Love, marriage and ethnicity can become further muddled for Asian-Americans trying to find a mate who shares a similar balance between their Asian heritage and American lifestyle, Park said.

"The way Asian-American men and women grow up varies a lot," Park said. "All people do not retain the same parts of their culture and values."

Not all Asian-Americans make ethnicity a priority when it comes to finding a date. It's just that when they do, the avenues to find a like-minded counterpart can be difficult.

"The bottom line is that second-generation Asian-Americans, once they have graduated from college and started working as professionals, there are limited resources to meet other Asian-Americans," Park said. "In California, there are social settings, but once they graduate from university, they are scattered."

Enter Click2Asia, an online dating service that caters to Asian-American singles across the country.

Pierre Wuu founded the Los Angeles company in 1999 as an Asian-American Web site that was intended as a portal to other sites and services. But after the Internet bubble burst, Wuu had to reconfigure the company in 2002.

"We looked at the hot trends based on the 21-to-40-year-old demographic and knew that meeting other single Asians was a key driving force for the market," Wuu said. "I thought it was a hot area, and I thought, 'We gotta get into this right now and be one of the first.'Ÿ"

Wuu said the service exploded and now has a nationwide membership of more than 125,000.

There are plenty of bigger online dating services, but Click2Asia distinguishes itself by catering to each segment of the Asian-American community instead of treating it as a monolithic whole, Wuu said.

"Our site filters searches down to 20 Asian ethnicities," Wuu said. "People can look for a Korean or a Vietnamese or Chinese. They can look for people that speak the language."

Besides its Web-based service, Click2Asia organizes parties, speed-dating events and other functions.

Before a recent event at a club in New York, about 100 singles - 50 men and 50 women - with fresh haircuts and some with way too much cologne dangled around the fringes of conversation untila master of ceremonies kicked the speed-dating into gear.

Every six minutes, a new face was greeted with forced smiles, an awkward handshake and nervous chuckles. But every now and then, anxiety was replaced by comfortable giggles and an arm tossed around a shoulder.

Sometimes, all people need is an excuse to break the ice, said Gordon Eng, who organizes functions for Click2Asia in New York.

"If people go to a lounge with friends and see someone across the bar, they might be too nervous or shy to talk to them," Eng said. "With speed dating, that is what they are here for and what they have to do."

And it's working. The organization hosts a speed-dating event every six weeks and has consistently drawn about 100 people to each, Eng said.

"Speed dating is not as bad as some people make it sound," Eng said. "People who go are pretty down to earth and just interested in meeting new people."