Dating Services

It seems that the dating site Shaadi.com is becoming fairly popular with British Asian singles. The Guardian in the UK wrote an article about the dating site and included several success stories and a few not so successful ones. No dating site is perfect and when I see a article written which includes information about what the site may be lacking or has problems with I tend to give it more weight than a story that is all positive.

Shaadi.com now claims 15 million people have signed up for their service since the website launched in 1997. Currently they have 5 million members using the site at any given time which generates about 300 million page views every month and 6,000 new profiles a day. This dating site:

is tailored to the typical criteria of traditional matchmakers, with questions about family values (traditional, moderate or liberal), profession and even complexion.

Shaadi's search engine allows members to be incredibly detailed about the type of person they wish to find or be matched with.

To find out more about this India dating and matrimonial website, read our review of Shaadi.com.

Opps, we made a mistake. Originally this post had stated that eHarmony US and Canada were having a free communication weekend starting today August 28th until August 31st. It looks like we were incorrect. As reported 2 weeks ago the eHarmony Free Communication Weekend is still on (as of right now) for the UK and Australia (see Story). We do expect a free promotion to come soon for the US and Canada, if past experience is any indication. Most likely Canada's will be held on the Labour Day Holiday weekend (Sept. 4th-7th).

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service in the United Kingdom and Australia.

I am glad to see eHarmony responding in their official blog to an article titled "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots " from the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article examines some of the marriage statistics released by dating sites like eHarmony as well as the methodology used to calculate such statistics. We talked a bit about this topic as well, a couple of weeks ago when the original WSJ article was published (see Story).

The WSJ article didn't look to kindly on the stats released by dating sites, and for the most part I agree with the author. The public does need to know how these statistics are generated. Of all the dating sites mentioned in the WSJ article, "eHarmony stands out as among the more careful ones". This is not exactly a glowing report for eHarmony so, they decided to post a response on their blog.

In the eHarmony blog post they go into further details on how they calculated that their dating site was responsible for 2% of marriages in the United States, from the 12-month period ending March 2007. Most of the information we already knew about from a previously released PDF file titled "eHarmony | Harris Interactive 2007 Marriage Metrics Number of eHarmony Marriages" (see Story), but the post does flush out a few more details. What this blog post does show is, eHarmony is trying to be as open and transparent with their research findings as possible. I think the name "Open Communication" may indeed be a good choice for the official eHarmony blog.

Here is the full eHarmony response to the Wall Street Journal about how they calculate their marriage statistics. For further information about this dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

On this day in the year 2000, eHarmony launched their dating service.

Happy 9th Birthday eHarmony!

To get a history of eHarmony from an employee who has worked their for 8 years, check out the eHarmony Blog and to find out why this is such a popular dating site, read our eHarmony review.

CheckedProfile.com is a new service designed to allow people to have their photo's and email address verified. They soon plan to have 5 levels of verification which will allow people to verify Name, Age, Country, Phone, Address and Net Worth. Only the first level is available now and prices range from free to $99.99 USD for all levels of service. CheckedProfile is aimed at people who use dating sites and social networks. The problem of profile and photo dishonesty is not new and there are already several other companies offering similar services which we have talked about before (see Story).

The way CheckedProfile works (at least for the level 1 photo verification) is you create an account an upload the photo you want verified. The service then gives you a custom alphanumeric code which is unique to your picture. You then need to put the code on a piece of paper and take a picture of yourself holding the paper. This new photo then is uploaded to CheckedProfile. Once verified (by an actual person) you will then get your original photo back with a verified stamp integrated into it along with a code. People interested in you, can now visit CheckedProfile.com to type in the code from the photo to verify that the photo has indeed been verified (along with any other information).

As with most of these type of services there are a few holes in the verification process that if people wanted to, they could circumvent. For one thing, a scammer could just steal someone else's photo that already has been verified and pass it off as his own. A scammer could also mock up a photo with the verified information, it may not pass the test when someone checks it on the website but I bet not everyone will understand that they need to do this. The last problem I see is, someone could just get their good looking friend to do the process for them. While CheckedProfile's verification process is not 100 percent it is a step in the right direction. If they improve on the verification methods maybe it will become one I would recommend.

Visit CheckedProfile.com directly and for more services designed to help you succeed in dating, take a look at our Dating Profile Help category.

A couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about eHarmony's seven new profile questions which dealt with common traits and interests (see Story). Last week eHarmony posted a bit more information about this feature called Something to Talk About. As the name suggests, this feature is designed to highlight what each profile has in common and to help matched couples by breaking the ice and giving topics of conversation. When you view a match and if you share some common interests, you will see these interests appear in the area titled "Something to Talk About".

For more on the feature, visit the official eHarmony Blog. Tto find out more why this is such a popular matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.