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November 20, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
A certain high-ranking official with close ties to the clandestine dating/social-networking industrial complex has forwarded me top secret footage of recently-release video of Eharmony's CEO speaking with Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco.
Bambi Francisco :Have subscriber Acquisition Costs (SAC) gone up for eHarmony?
Greg Waldorf: No.
Dave, talking to monitor: Greg, what's up with the eye roll? Looks like the prompter was up in the ceiling.
BF: Match grew 22% to $80 million last quarter.
GW: eHarmony is growing at about the same rate as Match.
BF: Revenue growth for 2007?
GW: Next year's revenue growth will be most likely due to subscriber base increase, not price increase. Emphasis mine.
Dave to monitor: Bambi, ask him how much of that $110 million is left in the bank.
BF asking her usual questions. How many subscribers?
GW: We don't break out our individual subscriber counts. Many hundreds of thousands.
GW: 14 million signups since inception.
BF: What is average lifetime of a subscribe and how to you value your subscribers.
GW: We value them on trying to make them successful.
Dave: Nice dodge!
BW: applying pressure...
GW: Lifetime value of subscriber is well over $100. We don't break out into months.
BF: What new services are coming next?
GW: Serious R&D. New services for married couples in wellness space.
Dave: Nothing about expansion plans that have been pinging around the blogosphere.
BF: Spark has 26 niche sites. Talks about the network's demographics, pays homage of sorts.
GW: eHarmony relies on an algorithm.
Dave: Wishes he could have coached Greg on that one. That was a giant softball question he totally threw away.
BF: Average subscription price?
BF: I can tell you that 90 people get married every day on eHarmony.
Dave: !!!!!
What did we learn during this interview?
We don't know how many subscribers eHarmony has. Could be 300-700k.
We don't know much about what they are going to do to grow the business.
The CEO refuses to quote how much he charges for his service.
That drove me particularly nuts. How can you not have a price? I hear unsubstantiated reports that they are giving away free and multiple months to people so who really knows except the CFO what's going on there?
Eharmony spent more than $60 million advertising in 2005. It raised $110 million in 2004. EHarmony projected 100,000 marriages on the site in 2005. Looks like the actual number was about 17,000 people.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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October 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Develop and execute strategic plan for website and internet marketing in support of the eHarmony brand. Lead a team of people responsible for driving leads to the subscription website and implementing marketing programs to support enhanced conversion rates. Provide strategic leadership in developing co-marketing and backend conversion opportunities. Support the business development team in managing key strategic online partnerships.
Technorati Tags: eharmony, online marketing
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August 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
True.com has reached the 10 million member mark. In other news, pigs are flying and the troops are coming home.
Members must mean free and paid. And while we're at it, let's be clear, Myspace traffic is not the type of demographic that is shelling out cash at True, so the quality of the database is pretty low. No offense to True members, but after perusing the search engine for a bit, I came away nonplussed.
Bill Tancer, why Hitwise is calling True the #1 dating site for three months in a row? Top 100 sites I can believe, that's what Myspace advertising will do for you.
True has two distinctly different demographics. On one hand, you have the serious daters drawn to the promise that there are no felons or marrieds on the site. This have proven not to be the case, and now the site is filling up with 20-something Myspacers who could care less if the people on the site are verified. What does this mean for people coming to the site and not meeting the types of people they expected?
True is supposedly signing up 1,000 people an hour. 720,000 new "members" a month. In a year they will have more members than Yahoo, Match and eHarmony combined. Who wants to bet this growth-by-advertising-on-stratospheric-growth-social-networks model will fall apart before then?
It would be interesting to compare the traffic and conversion rates of Mate1 traffic with True.com as both are in the midst of a heavy ad spend cycle.
Speaking of eHarmony, the venerable scientific-matching introduction service is six years old and boasts 12 million members. Ninety people get married daily after meeting someone on eharmony. That's remarkable when you think about it.
I think 436 questions is a bit much, and they are giving away cheap memberships so the revenue stream isn't anything near what it would be if they were charging full price to everyone (which they can't), but otherwise, the company appears healthy and the advertising blitz seems to have paid off.
Technorati Tags: eharmony, true.com
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May 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Eharmony has tapped Philip Armstrong for the Chief Marketing position. Based on initial comments in Adweek, Armstrong sounds like he is going to create a social network for eHarmony members. This is certainly a new direction for the #3 Dating site (depending on the day of the month or the stats you pay attention to). Several competitors have launched social networking-type features, results have been mixed to date.
Eharmony members either love or hate not being able to browse profiles, the duality is clear, there is no middle ground, at least for the members I've spoken with. It remains to be seen how they respond to people wanting to add them to their Pal list, rate their photos and spam them, all common to the current crop of social networking services.
Eharmony is going to have to do things differently, or risk alienating the current members and who knows how new recruits will react to the new feature? Perhaps an opt-out option is in order. How will this affect the marketing strategy? Remember when Match had a social networking feature? I'm talking 3 years ago, but, join me in the chorus, they chose not to market the capability. Can you imagine where Match would be now if they did?
What is the elevator pitch for, "We're going to be like MySpace, for older, serious singles who really just want to get married instead of being force-fed the latest 20-something trend of which we most likely have no understanding of or interest in."
Eharmony spent more than $60 million advertising in 2005. No doubt a good portion of the 2006 budget will have to go towards explaining what social networking to members.
No word on how eHarmony's plans will be affected by Yahoo's social networking patent.
Technorati Tags: eharmony, social+networking
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May 10, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 Managing company growth and keeping top brass happy and in place may be more difficult than finding your mate on the interweb. eHarmony is going through CEO's like I go through free drink tickets at networking events. They're on their third one this year. SiliconBeat, gets to the story a month late after I mentioned it here.
Any chance of a near-term IPO have probably been squashed with the recent goings-on at the profitable online dating service. Eharmony is making over $100 million in revenue each year, remarkable for a service many thought was doomed from the start. Lazy daters are driving the membership, turns out serious daters are tired of browsing and searching profiles and will gladly pay to have someone else (in this case a database server) do the heavy lifting.
Founding investor, Greg Waldorf, has been installed as interim chief executive officer while the CEO search continues.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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April 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Jaynie M. Studenmund, President and Chief Executive Officer, has stepped down after less than three months on the job. Previously she was the COO. Board member Gregory Waldorf has assumed the role of chief executive officer. Studenmund will retain her position on the company's board of directors.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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March 28, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Eharmony is being sued for $12,000 by a guy who tried to sign up for the service when he was legally separated but not technically divorced for another two months, a no-no according to the popular relationship service.
Take a look at the fine print on Harmony's terms of service. They clearly fail to clarify the definition of the term married.
2. Marital Status. By requesting to receive matches from the Service, you represent and warrant that you are not married.
Talk about ambiguous. The TOS don't address the plaintiff's situation, technically legally separated.
When it comes to liability and paying up, Eharmony dedicates several paragraphs to the details and particulars.
In my mind this guy actually has a shot at winning. I would be upset if I spent two hours on a profile only to be rejected at the end because of a lack of clarity on the part of the service.
For eHarmony, it's simple to fix and make the problem go away, unlike the legal issues surrounding Match.com's 3-day refund debacle.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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February 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Traffic up 8%, pricing $59, 16,000 marriages, $80 million ad spend. IPO planned. Eharmony has stopped mentioning the number of paying members and instead publishes the number of monthly visitors as the metric. Lame but understandable as their growth has flattened out along with almost every other site in the dating category. Last public figure I read was that Eharmony had 300,000 paying members but that was many months ago.
Eharmony is becoming more blatant about their "acceptable singles" standards. I can understand not letting those under 21 join. But not being able to join the service if you have been divorced more than three times? How are they going to enforce that? They won't match taller women with shorter men either, and don't bother if you're a Log Cabin Republican.
How many married couples will spend $239 on the new marriage wellness program which consists of a 310-question quiz and exercises? That's a lot more than Match's FindBindMind.
Employee Discount: The program seems to work. Dr. Warren took his own medicine and found out that after 47 years he didn't know his own wife thought he wasn't sharing all his feelings.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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January 31, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I just read that over 33,000 eHarmony members got married in a twelve month period ending August 31, 2005.
Dr. Neil Clark Warren:
Soon-to-be-released research has found that eHarmony married couples are significantly happier than married couples who met by any other means. Our unique ability to marry quantity with quality is the reason why eHarmony continues to hold the distinction of more marriages per match than any online dating service.
I wonder what factors were considered in gauging that "eHarmony married couples are significantly happier than married couples who met by any other means?"
Curious to see what the surrounding questions were, because it's common knowledge the the questions that lead up to and follow specific keystone issues factor into the over responses, especially when the same question is asked several different ways.
In any event, 33,000 people is impressive.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
Comments (15)
| Category: Research | eharmony
January 5, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Eharmony has announced the Compatibility Profile, which helps members avoid common matchmaking mistakes by providing insight into potential match's adaptability, passion, sociability and self-image. The new report is based on the existing 436-question Relationship Questionnaire.
Eharmony has also announced Jaynie M. Studenmund as President and Chief Executive Officer.
Until early 2004, Studenmund was the chief operating officer for Overture Services Inc., the pioneer in pay-for-performance search, now part of Yahoo!. During her three year tenure as COO, the company experienced profitable, hyper growth, including growing annual revenues from $100 million to $1.2 billion. Previously, Studenmund was the president and COO of PayMyBills.com, the largest bill management service on the Internet.
[tags: compatibility, eharmony]
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November 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Never one to pass up an attempt to take the high ground, PerfectMatch CEO Duane Dahl calls dating site spammers "hideous solicitors" and goes on to break bread with Eharmony and JDate.
I found this somewhat surprising, as PM usually overdoes it when it comes to distancing itself from competitors.
Press release.
[tags: perfectmatch]
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October 18, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
In the first half of 2005, eHarmony saw a 67 percent increase in affiliate sales from the same period last year. EHarmony uses Commission Junction, a ValueClick Inc. company, for their affiliate management program.
Steve Hartmann, director of online marketing at eHarmony:
It's very important that our brand be consistent across all our marketing channels. With the help of Commission Junction, plus the remarkable enthusiasm and support of the publishers in its network, we've been able to maintain our premium brand image while driving growth in our subscriber base.
Press release
[tags: eharmony]
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August 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
According to the New York Times (reg req's) , instead of waiting for an IPO, Eharmony founders are cashing in on their recent $110 million fundraising efforts.
Supposedly, 116 people benefited financially when the company, which was started in 1999, announced last December that it had raised $110 million. The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers.
This type of deal is happening more often. Pay out some raised capital to executives and early employees, and ease the desire to go public or worry about losing it all.
Who could buy Eharmony at this point? Yahoo is the only company out there with the resources available. Match could, but that money might be better spend fixing their site and attracting new members from cheaper properties.
[tags: eharmony]
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May 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
This Detroit News article states that EHarmony attracted 2.7 million visitors in March, according to ComScore Media Metrix. "The site lags far behind bigger, better-known sites such as Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Personals, which drew 5.9 million visitors, and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Match.com, with 4 million."
EHarmony does the matching for you, and you can't view profiles unless they match you, so what's up with the 2.7 million visitors if only ~300,000 are paying? Are the rest of them reading the advice page, browsing the bookstore or buying friends gift subscriptions?
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May 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Last month's Electronic Retailer featured Dr. Neil Warren of eHarmony on the cover. The text overlaid on his photo says "The Perfect Match" which is an amusing mistake because the article has nothing to do with Perfect Match.
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April 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Did you know that eHarmony accounts for almost 40% of all dollars spent in the online dating space?
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February 22, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Emails to Friendster about their ties to Eharmony and by association Focus on the Family are being answered by Friendster customer service reps who call the well-publicized partnership with Eharmony a "rumor and a hoax".
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February 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
LA City Beat has a good cover story
on the science of matchmaking, the ethical questions and also does a pretty good job of taking it to eHarmony. It's thorough with many not-read-before details, highly recommended.
Bullet points:
PerfectMatch matched 250 singles on an episode of Dr. Phil. They clearly understand get how to reach their audience. I'm enthusiastic in the hopes that this type of marketing and promotion will be embraced by other companies.
Ethical questions: Do these sites have an ethical obligation to guarantee that their tests are proven effective?
A full two screen are dedicated to discussing eHarmony, it's Christian, anti-gay focus and links to Focus on the Family. I get lots of email from people pointing this out, perhaps it will force eHarmony to be more clear in their marketing about they types of people they want on their system. Certainly with all the hype behind the fundamentalist Christians, there won't be any shortage of members for eHarmony.
Marylyn Warren, the company’s senior vice president, is careful to say that eHarmony is meant for everybody. We do not discriminate in any way. That's not true and we all know it but that's what marketing is for. They'll spin this all day long if they have to until people walk away thinking eHarmony is all about lasting marriages.
PerfectMatch, True, and Yahoo! Personals all offer same-sex matching. And yet Dr. James Houran, chief psychologist of True, says his own research shows that gay couples are not seeking exactly the same things out of a relationship as straight couples.
It just so happens that heterosexual and homosexual couples … certainly agree on the recipe for compatibility, but they don’t agree on the relative amounts of those ingredients.
Houran is adamant that his test is the only truly scientific one on the net. True’s test measures 99 relationship factors to calculate an overall compatibility index score between two members, telling them the likelihood that they will get along. Angered by what he sees as his competitors’ lack of scientific discipline, he’s gone so far as to author an article in The North American Journal of Psychology detailing their failings.
Scroll down until you get to the major differences between the philosophies employed by PerfectMatch, True, and eHarmony. Interesting stuff.
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Posted by Dave Evans
I thought this warranted a mention on it's own. From the LA CityBeat article:
Friendster.com, the online networking community, recently partnered with eHarmony, announcing, “Friendster proudly introduces eHarmony.com.” But the company was unaware that its business partner excluded gays and lesbians until informed by CityBeat. Though not a dating site, per se, Friendster allows its members to search for “men, women, or men and women” of the same or opposite sex for dating. “To be honest,” says Jim Scheinman, Friendster’s head of business development, “I have to call and talk to eHarmony about that, because you’re telling me this for the first time.
Unbelievable. The first big deal Friendster does and they don't even hit up Google for the color commentary. Two words, due diligence.
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February 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From a Bella Online:
...They had secured a few financial grants to help get them started and had lined up investors to help them afford the initial launch costs. The equipment and technology alone for eHarmony web site cost more than $3.1 million. They had no clients. When they first opened for business in August 2000, it cost more than $300,000 per month in overhead merely to keep the company going.
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February 1, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
The Spotless Mind says that eHarmony ranks #1 on Alexa's science list. Sure enough, there it is, above NASA. Wonder how they got that ranking?
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January 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Latest deal is three months for the price of one. Is this taken from the existing marketing playbook or a quick attempt to lure new customers which would otherwise sign up for a competitor?
I see that Dr. Warren has a new book out.
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Posted by Dave Evans
PerfectMatch has put out a press release pitting itself against eHarmony. Talk about David vs. Golaith.
From the press release:
...But as both companies continue to build a loyal following, a closer examination of their respective strategies and matching technologies reveals a fundamental difference that could determine which company wins the online relationship race over the long haul.
Duane Dahl, founder and CEO, PerfectMatch.com:
They've spent a tremendous amount of money, but money doesn't necessarily mean success for eHarmony's members. We are gaining ground quickly in part due to their well-documented matching deficiencies and their exclusionary practices...But we never discount the potential horse race eHarmony may give us. With their recent $110 million round of funding on a $350 million pre-valuation, the days ahead will be challenging. With Dr. Schwartz, DUET and our seasoned management staff, we're confident that PerfectMatch.com will not only continue to grow, but will surpass eHarmony. It's definitely not about who can afford the most TV ads. The secret is providing existing and future members better relationships, better support and ultimately, the love they've been searching for.
Dahl does a great job spinning the success of eHarmony into a nice red carpet repeat for his previous success in the online dating space. $350 million pre-evaluation!
The mudslinging over who's got the better compatability/matching system is reaching near-hysterical levels. Mark Brooks is going to do a shootout sometime soon, can't wait to read the results.
PerfectMatch has something called a SmutBot to aggressively screen out inappropriate adult content. I wonder if an application on the server can do the job of the 50 or so people that MatchNet, I mean SparksNetwork, Match and Yahoo employ to clean up profiles?
PerfectMatch is owned by MarketRange, which raised $7 million last summer from Ignition Partners and Mellon Ventures. That's how much SpringStreet raised two summer ago. More here.
Has anyone seen the PerfectMatch infomercial with Josie Bissett and Pepper Schwartz?
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January 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
eHarmony was originally venture-funded to the tune of $3 million by Fayez Sarofim & Co.
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December 22, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Are you sitting down? Pasadena-based EHarmony sold $100M preferred stock to 14 investors including Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures.
Chief Executive Greg Forgatch:
This sends a signal that the venture capitalists who are funding the company have faith that they can have a very successful initial public offering in the next couple of years — or that they expect it to be a very attractive acquisition target. The company has identified 10,000 marriages linked to its service, but believes there are more. A goal for 2005 is to track 100,000 marriages linked to the service.
I'm taking note of that, 100,000 marriages next year. EHarmony plans to use the $110 million for working capital and advertising.
EHarmony supposedly converts registered members to full-time subscribers at a rate that's six to 10 times the industry average, Forgatch said. The service has 6 million registered members. A privately held company, EHarmony does not disclose its annual revenue or say whether it is profitable.
The funding spigot is definitely flowing more freely these days, this is not the only big ticket deal I've heard about recently.
More on this monumental event and the implications it will have on the industry coming your way.
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November 30, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Friendster and eHarmony announced an exclusive partnership to bring scientific matchmaking to Friendster's rapidly growing community. As part of the agreement, the companies will jointly launch a co-branded matching service that will combine eHarmony's patented Compatibility Matching System with Friendster's 13-million member community to help Friendster members find love and long-term relationships.
Scott Sassa, President and CEO, Friendster:
We have a great deal of synergy with eHarmony. We provide a network for meeting new friends, dates or business partners with shared interests, while eHarmony provides the safest possible environment to explore deeper compatibility and cultivate serious, long-term romantic relationships. Both companies have built leading online services -- from the ground up -- and we are firmly committed to this partnership to offer our users additional opportunities beyond their circle of friends.
Friendster raised $13 million a year ago and management has been under pressure to figure out how to monetize their members, which skews towards casual daters from the younger crowd. Membership soared as the viral aspect of inviting everyone in your address-book into your circle of friends took off, and now they're stuck with millions of members who don't want to pay for anything. On the other hand, eHarmony draws the older, and according to some industry insiders, religious, demographic willing to pay premium prices to meet their mate.
To make this deal work, eHarmony will have to come up with a value proposition that makes sense to a demographic they have no experience targeting. Reduced pricing, re-branding and a new marketing campaign will be required to get the attention of the younger crowd. The details of the exclusive partnership are not known at this time. It will be interesting to see how the integration proceedes.
Link
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November 5, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
eHarmoney is offering a a 12-part CD series featuring online self-assessments called Finding the Love of your Life. Pricing is $14.95 a month for 12 months or $179.95. Certain dating sites are currently exploring the infomercial angle to pitch similar concepts. Keep an eye out over the next few months.
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October 4, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
eHarmony call centers currently handle over 100,000 customer inquiries each month by phone, email and live chat, and the company projects the number of "customer care" representatives alone to grow by 25 percent by the end of 2004. In response to the call center's extended operations 7 days a week, high volume of communications with members, and thousands of new users who join the service each month, eHarmony plans to open a new 7000 square foot, consolidated call center facility to keep pace with growing customer needs.
Most major dating services have 50 or some customer care reps, many who double as profile reviewers who filter out negative content from profiles. 100,000 customer inquiries seems like a lot to me. Another industry metric to measure?
Link
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September 20, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
A bit about the tech running EHarmony... Custom-built with enterprise Java tools and running on Resin, an open-source application, the site takes the answers to your questionnaire and stores them in a Microsoft SQL database as a "psychological profile." Then, on a nightly basis, using a series of algorithms, it compares your profile with the profiles of all other active users (currently, around 900,000 people are active at any given time) and spits out a list of people with similar tastes, characteristics, attitudes, and values.
Once this process is complete, the site uses SendMail, an open-source e-mail gateway, to alert you to new matches, and you're able to contact these people — and only these people — via an anonymous communication tool back on the site.
Eharmony is up to 4.5 million members, with around 10,000 signing up each day.
Link
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August 30, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
5 million users, with over 6,000 marriages and hundreds of thousands of relationships. Not bad since I heard they only had about 400,000 members last year. Shows you what $5 million in marketing will do for you. Angelique Faul, please let us know how many of those 5 million users are paying customers.
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August 12, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Marylyn Warren, eHarmony's senior vice president, and wife of founder Neil Clark Warren, was quoted saying "When you sit through a 436-item questionnaire and you fill out all the other stuff and you realize every night your profile would be run against 10,000 profiles that have come on that day."
10,000 people is a lot, isn't it? I gather it's total signups, free and paying.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: News | eharmony
June 2, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Reuters UK article covering eHarmony's media expenses, membership stats and ranking information.
In eHarmony's radio and television ad campaign, the marriage counsellor and author is joined by couples who found their "soul mates" with help from his company's compatibility test that asks everything from religious preferences to whether a person is dominant or submissive.
That ad campaign cost the company more than $10 million (5.4 million pounds) last year and is just one example of how eHarmony stands alone in an industry where its competition tries to keep things casual, inexpensive and in participants' control.
4 million members and 3,000 confirmed weddings,
Membership, which runs nearly $100 for three months or almost $250 for a year, is about 2 1/2 times that of rival services.
During February, eHarmony led the personals category in new subscriptions by grabbing nearly 38 percent of total U.S. subscription sales generated by the top 12 dating sites, comScore said.
Hitwise.com, which tracks Web traffic, said eHarmony was the sixth-most-visited dating site for the week ending May 1, after Yahoo Personals, Tickle (formerly eMode), MatchNet's American Singles, Match.com and Friendster, a free site that introduces friends of friends and was just a hair ahead of eHarmony.
EHarmony says women account for 60 percent of its members and that it is not suffering from the man shortage seen at high-end matchmaking services and other more serious dating outlets. Nevertheless, user data from Hitwise tells a somewhat different story. It said about 73 percent of the visitors to eHarmony's site are female.
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May 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
EHarmony.com Inc. this month received U.S. Patent No. 6,735,568, which describes a "method and system for identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship." Can the elusive art of matchmaking be reduced to equations and databases?
"EHarmony, which costs $50 per month or $250 per year, doesn't guarantee a diamond ring - or even a first date. Researchers reject one in five people who complete the free questionnaire and, according to the index, aren't the marrying type." With over four million users, eHarmony is the Internet's fastest growing relationship service.
Kohonen neural networks, supervised backpropogated neural network, here's a link to the patent itself.
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May 24, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2004--eHarmony, the Internet's fastest growing relationship service, today announced the launch of an extensive new research initiative into marital satisfaction. eHarmony has established a new category in the highly competitive online dating field by the quality of its research into the human dimensions required for successful marriage. Following the recent issue of eHarmony's first patent, J. Galen Buckwalter, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and vice president of research for eHarmony, is now directing the research department in the largest study of marital satisfaction ever conducted.
"eHarmony has the only patented system that matches couples based on scientifically proven research," explained Dr. Buckwalter. "We are aggressively pursuing new studies into relationship satisfaction to continue to improve every aspect of eHarmony's Compatibility Matching System(TM). We know that our system works, but we also recognize that the growth of the company and the enthusiasm of our users provides us a rare opportunity to study relationships in ways that no one else in the field can."
The comprehensive new study will follow selected users from the time they are initially matched by eHarmony.com until they walk down the aisle ... and beyond. "We are excited to expand our groundbreaking research into relationships," said Neil Clark Warren, Ph.D., founder of eHarmony. "A distinguished panel of psychology experts enables us to conduct the most successful research into dating, marriage and relationships, expanding the industry's collective pool of knowledge and the effectiveness of eHarmony's matching, which has already produced thousands of happy marriages."
The most recent study, to be presented by Steven Ross Carter, Ph.D., senior research scientist for eHarmony, at the American Psychological Society in Chicago on May 27, 2004, shows that couples matched by eHarmony's Compatibility Matching System(TM) report greater satisfaction in their marriages than similar married couples married for the same length of time who met through other means. The research project, completed in January 2004, involved 1,347 married couples.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: News | eharmony
April 26, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Eharmony says it rejects thousands of would-be subscribers who indicate they are depressed or have addiction problems.
We wondered how long it would be before a service started filtering potential members based on their personality tests. This brings to question the vailidity of the tests themselves.
Link to LA Times article.
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| Category: eharmony
March 13, 2003
Posted by Dave Evans
The latest craze in online dating is the science of matchmaking. Emode tests your IQ, weAttract gets to the bottom of you instinctual preferences, Colorgenics has a plethora of quizzes and tests, and eHarmony attempts to match people based on a long questionnaire written by Doctors.Yahoo! personals has the strangest personality quiz, while Match.com uses the weAttract system which is actually a fun experience, plus you can share your personality report with potential matches. The problem is that while proprietary systems, patents and PhDs are all very exciting, the questions are not tightly integrated into the service's matching system and the end result is that people don't seem to be getting better matches. Everything in the online dating world is first generation technology, and while the amount of people using online dating services keeps growing, the services themselves are not keeping up with the demands of their users, unless you call a wine tasting a value-added experience. Lots of interesting things are happening behind closed doors at the services, over the next few months we will see a lot of changes in the online dating industry, from new features and functionalities. All I want are better matches, is that so difficult?
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Rumors | eharmony
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