Types (Niche)

E Harmony has taken a lot of flack lately regarding their dating site not allowing gay singles to join. The recent settlement about eHarmony violating the New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination has only fuelled the flames. A large number of newspaper articles and blogger posts support the gay activists in which they have the right to use the dating service. Here are a few posts which take the stand on the other side of the argument.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article called EHarmony settlement erodes everyone's freedom. Their main point is, E Harmony just didn't provide the service in which Eric McKinley (the plaintiff of the settlement) wanted, male to male matching. The author goes on and points out this would be like someone suing an Asian grocery store for religious discrimination, for not selling kosher meat

The unofficial eHarmony Blog has a post called From Arjewtino: 7 more lawsuits inspired by the eHarmony case. It is written by a gay author and looks at the case from several different angles. He also pokes fun at the E Harmony case by including 7 sample cases in which other groups of people could sue companies for not providing a certain service.

For more information regarding this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

An article on The Wall Street Journal website reviews the negative side of eHarmony settling the New Jersey anti-discrimination complaint (see Story). The complaint was about same sex matching not being available on eHarmony.

Some eHarmony customers feel

that homosexual activists have succeeded in taking a private business hostage. Why should eHarmony have to serve every type of clientele? Do Jewish dating sites have to serve Christians? Can meat-eaters demand a hamburger at vegetarian restaurants?

These are all good points but are they relevant counter points in this same-sex matching case? It wouldn't really make sense for a Christian to join a Jewish dating site. The site is designed with the Jewish faith in mind and the members who joined it obviously want to find a partner who is Jewish and makes their religion an important part of their lives. If a Christian did join the site, there wouldn't be much there for them, plus there are plenty of Christian dating sites they could join instead. A popular Jewish dating site, JDate, doesn't allow you to select Catholic as your religious background but you can select "Willing to Convert" or "Will tell you later". I don't see this as discriminatory, towards Catholics, as there are plenty of Catholic dating sites to join. If there wasn't then, maybe it would be a different story. An extreme example of this type of thinking, would be going into a Jewish Synagogue and demanding they allow other religions to practice there.

This is a slippery slope. You shouldn't discriminate against race, age, sexual orientation, gender and religion. The question is what is not going far enough and what is going too far? Should we start cracking down on businesses that offer seniors discounts or ladies nights? I don't think so. Should eHarmony have offered same-sex matching? Probably...

Check out the full story at The Wall Street Journal.

Late yesterday a press release went out by eHarmony which informed us they had settled a 3 year old allegation with the New Jersey Attorney General. The settlement was about eHarmony violating the New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination and not allowing a gay / same-sex matching service. Among $50,000 settlement money awarded to the NJ Attorney General Office and $5,000 to the original plaintiff (Eric McKinley) eHarmony has agreed to launch a same sex matching service by March 31, 2009. The new dating site is called Compatible Partners. In eHarmony's FAQ about the settlement they mention that the site will be free to the first 10,000 members who register within one year of the dating sites launch. Compatible Partners and eHarmony will be separate sites, with separate matching pools. If you seek same gender matching at eHarmony you will be directed to Compatible Partners.

The FAQ also points out:

The Compatible Partners site will have a statement posted to inform members that its Compatibility Matching System™ is solely based on research involving married heterosexual couples.

Previously eHarmony has stressed that their matching system was designed to match heterosexual couples and it would not work well with same sex matching. Is this really a win for gay activists then? One other interesting point from the FAQ is, because of the settlement eHarmony has not been found in violation of the law. Basically then eHarmony is being forced to create a gay dating site, not because it's the right thing to do but, because they do not want any more negative publicity. In the end eHarmony really wins. All this publicity surrounding eHarmony and same sex matching will more than pay for the settlement.

On a side note, the State of New Jersey seems to have something against online dating sites. Early this year they brought in the controversial Internet Dating Safety Act.

For more information about this matching service, read our eHarmony review.

On FriendFinder Networks corporate site they are claiming to be the largest social networking company in the world. The numbers they give to support this are:

• 250,000,000+ total profiles in their database since inception (for all websites).
• On average, over 150,000 new members per day.
• Over 10,000 private label social networking and live video sites in their network.

While FriendFinder Networks may be the largest social networking company in terms of number of profiles created, but how relevant are all those profiles. FriendFinder got its start way back in 1996, 12 years ago. I am sure many of these profiles are unused now or duplicates within the same site and across multiple sites. Adult FriendFinder, the largest site in the Network, says on their home page they have over 29 million active members. An active member to FriendFinder is someone with a valid email account who has logged in within at least 2 years. Now 2 years is a long time to be considered an active member but at least FriendFinder publishes how these numbers are calculate. Most dating sites do not. I would consider the largest social networking sites to be the ones with the most number of active profiles. In my opinion an active profile is one in which someone has used it in at least 2 months (and this is stretching it). I'm sure this honour would go to either Myspace or Facebook.

While we are on the subject, why are more and more dating sites calling themselves social networking sites? Sure they have social networking features but the main goal of the site is dating and to match you with a compatible person. If you are not single, there is no point in joining any dating site or the ones that call themselves Social Networks. These sites really should be called Social Networks for Singles.

Here is FriendFinder Networks corporate home page. For more information on the FriendFinder dating site, read our review.

A press release from PlentyOfFish.com takes a look at some of their membership numbers and how more women now seem to be looking for intimate encounters. Currently members on Plenty of Fish looking for long term relationships have a male to female ratio of 55:46. Women looking for a casual dating experience when compared to men is 5 to 1. While men still out number woman, the situation is much better than in 2004 were the male to female ratio was 10 to 1. The release also predicts within a decade the ratio of men to women looking for intimate encounters online will reach 1 to 1.

For more reviews on dating sites that offer casual dating, check our our Sexy Singles Dating Category.

It seems that Shaadi is branching out into a lot of different types of media tools this year. First it was Satellite TV (see Story) and now it is mobile phones. Shaadi Matrimonial has teamed up with Vodafone Essar to launch Shaadi.com on Vodafone. This new service will allow Vodafone cell phone customers to search and view Shaadi profiles without needing the internet. Mobile phone users may also express interest and send and receive messages from their matches.

View the full story at Business Standard.