Dating Services

An interview with Anupam G. Mittal, CEO Of Shaadi.com is available over at Online Personals Watch (OPW). In the article Mittal discusses how he founded the website back in 1997 when he returned to India for a few months and by chance met up with a traditional matchmaker. In India, traditional matchmakers not only foster a relationship between people looking for a partner but, with their families as well. Family is considered very important in India. When Mittal talked with the matchmaker, he further learned that she had about 50 or 60 people in her network. It was easy for him to see that moving part of the matchmaking process onto the internet would increase the matchmaking pool by thousands.

In the interview Mittal also discusses:

• How Shaadi works from a user's perspective. There are about 75 Shaadi centers across India and one in Canada now. In the United States singles must rely on just the website.
• The prices and services offered by Shaadi and how they differ depending on what country you live in.
• How the economy and Facebook has affected the dating business in India.
• Where Mittal would like to see Shaadi by the end of 2010.

For the full interview, visit OPW and for further information on the top matrimonial service in India, read our review of Shaadi.com.

We got word that there will be a Free Communication Weekend at eHarmony in the United Kingdom (eHarmony.co.uk), starting Friday August 28th to Monday August 31st, 2009. Having this popular promotion and combining it with their big TV advertising campaign going on at the moment, means eHarmony UK members should have lots of matches to review and communicate for free with during the last weekend in August.

There is no information yet of a Free Communication Weekend coming soon for eHarmony here in Canada and the United States but we expect it will happen at the same time or in the first few weeks of September.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service.

The Wall Street Journal in an article called "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots" attempts to find out if some of the statistics are true, in regards to the number of marriages a dating site claims to have generated. eHarmony is targeted because of their claim that 236 members get married everyday (see Story). I believe this works out to 2% of the total number of Americans who got married last year met through the site. Match.com is also mentioned due to stats they released recently (and then pulled) that says 12 couples got married or engaged everyday on their dating site (see Story).

The author, Carl, in a way defends the dating sites published stats when he says that:

One obstacle to further research is that newlyweds are hard for researchers to find. So online-dating companies looking to tout their success as matchmaking yentas have sought novel ways to enumerate marriages.

Less than 2 percent of Americans get married every year. To perform a survey and to get an accurate sample size 1.76 million phone calls would need to be made says Dr. Gonzaga of eHarmony. That would be a costly endeavor, so dating sites are forced to find creative ways to come up with some marriage numbers. The closest thing to an election-quality poll Carl could find was a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, which in 2005 reported from a poll of 3,215 adults, that 3 million Americans found a long term relationship (not necessarily marriages) through a dating site.

Every dating site has its own spin on the dating profile format. In this series, I'll take a look at some of the different profile formats and how you can write your best profile for that particular service. PlentyofFish is a free dating service that has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. It has a very basic profile setup, so it's straightforward to fill it out.

Interests

List your top 6-9 interests here. Why 6-9? The default layout is three columns and you want something even and pleasing to the eye. Three interests aren't quite enough to fill out the box, but more than 9 and it starts to get a little bit like a laundry list.

About me

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making on PlentyofFish is being redundant. In other words, repeating information found elsewhere in the profile. In fact, the profile I chose at random to reference for this article is doing just that. In her statistics it lists her age, height, and location, yet she repeats them again in her profile. This is just wasted space!

This is the internet age, folks. We've been trained to skim and then LEAP to a new page if something seems boring within a few seconds. Save those precious words in your profile for things that haven't already been said.

Your profile is the back cover of the Book of You. Tell that interesting tale that gets people intrigued enough to pick you up, but keep it short and don't give away too much. A little mystery is what make people want to get to know you better!

Even though this says "About me," you will want to write about the type of match you seek here as well. After all, there's no other place in the profile to put it!

First date

What a random choice for a second section. What I'd do here is give potential matches a variety of ideas of places that you'd like to go for a first date. Bonus points if you can keep this section fresh and updated with local events!

For example: "There's a great film festival going on Downtown on Saturdays through the end of the summer. I'd love to go check it out!"

Having a good selection of date ideas puts a potential match at ease. You've done some of the work for them! Instead of suggesting a film festival and wondering if you hate movies, they'll know for sure that you want to go and would enjoy it!

Photos

Be sure your photos for your PlentyofFish profile include a close-up of your face, one full-body shot, and at least two other good photos of yourself. Avoid self-portraits, webcam photos, and group shots when you can and please, please, please, be sure your photos are recent so you are advertising exactly what you look like now.

Good luck going fishing at PlentyofFish! I hope you catch the big one!

For more information on the dating site mentioned in this article, read our PlentyofFish.com review.

eHarmony recently received a complaint in a letter from eRecruitment which stated that the dating site is infringing on their patents. eRecruitment is a job search site based in the United Kingdom that hold several patents which deal with classifying and indexing a website's members personal information. In the letter, eRecruitment told eHarmony to either shut down their dating site or start paying licensing fees.

eHarmony’s attorneys from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe asked Judge Paul Friedman at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to declare that the company had not infringed on patents owned by eRecruitment.

In my opinion this looks like someone who just wants to make a quick buck off of eHarmony. In the unlikely case that eRecruitment ends up successfully suing eHarmony, then all dating sites would be in trouble. Of course we have seen frivolous claims like this before. I forget who the company was but, there was one a few years ago that was attempting to sue any website who streamed video over the internet.

For more on the story, read The Blog of LegalTimes.

Starting Saturday July 25th, when members of eHarmony logged into their accounts, they found a message about a new feature and profile questions. There are 7 new questions which focus on commonalities. The multiple choice questions look at common traits that include things like your approach to money and food, cleanliness and humor. Once completed you can then see how your commonalities compare with other members when you view their profiles. While these questions are part of your profile, they are not taken into account when you are automatically matched with other members by eHarmony. That is what the other 256 profile questions are for.

Be careful when you fill out the commonality questions, as it looks right now, you cannot edit the answers once you have saved them.

To find out more details about this matchmaking service, read our review of eHarmony.