It's a lot less work than sending off dozens of messages, dealing with all the responses, and then getting either zero or one date. Too much effort for such little reward. It's much easier in social circles and the numbers are better. If there's four women in a social circle, there's a good chance I can date one of them.
I've never found this to be work. If you're interesting, funny and confident, it's easy to get into a social circle and have people like you. Even if there's no single women in the group, eventually somebody's GF is going to bring their single friend along.
Do yourself a favour and make a female account on an online dating site. That is the only way to see the reality of what women deal with. If she gets 30 messages a day, she has to spend time going through all of them and filter out whatever she doesn't want. When she responds to a few messages, those get buried in the 30 messages that come in the next day. She has to fit online dating management into her daily routine which includes work, friend, shopping, text messages, facebook, nail appointments, etc. It doesn't matter if online men are straight up about it, she's not going to be able to handle the volume of responses she gets. This is why men have to put in more effort when it comes to online dating. How is he going to be one of the 30 men who doesn't get filtered out? He has to make his subject line grab her attention, make his pictures appealing, make his messages worthy of response, and hopefully get her emotions doing something through the combination of everything.
If you have one single woman in a social circle, your competition level is lower and because you're part of the social circle, you've automatically got the approval of everyone else. With the exception of other single men in the group, your competition is virtually non-existent. Picking up the single woman in the group becomes very easy.
You're going to get prizes and turds no matter where you meet women (mostly turds). If you enjoy doing online dating, then all the more power to you. Personally, I didn't like the experience. I'd rather be out having fun with other people while I'm meeting women.