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About a month ago eHarmony updated their homepage with a new look and feel. Gone is the rich dark blue background and the picture of couples as seen here on the top right. eHarmony has used this general layout and colors with a number of different couple pictures for about 2 years now and has decided to make a change right before the holidays. I think this is a good thing since a number of other popular dating sites are using very similar background colors which I found tended to blend all the sites together and didn't make any one in particular stand out. I find most sites (not just dating) tend to make a fairly major change to their layout once every 2 or 3 years.

In its place as you can see in the screen capture on the bottom right of this article you will find a warmer color scheme that contains lighter blues, yellows and browns. The picture of the person on screen is also larger and appears more down to earth. As you scroll down on the eHarmony website the background changes color abruptly but I think this works as it makes each part of the homepage standout. Along with this homepage makeover eHarmony has also updated their advertising with the same look and feel.

Update: Dec. 4. 2012

It looks like I wrote this article a week to soon. 😊 eHarmony has just updated their homepage again on the US site a few days ago (Canada is still using the older one). The color scheme is very similar to the last update but the message has changed slightly. The title of the page now reads "From single to soul mate" and it then mentions eHarmony's 29 Dimensions of matching. Since Dr. Neil Clark Warren is in charge once again at eHarmony it looks like they want to get back to the core of what eHarmony was founded on. Also instead of one single photo of a person, the homepage now includes 8 to 14 photos arrange like an album with actual eHarmony members. If you put your mouse cursor over the photo a card slides up and includes details of who the person is matched with along with a quote. It looks really good and I think the simpler look will help eHarmony attract more members.

For more information on this popular dating site known for its in-depth matchmaking, you can read our eHarmony review.

It's one of the first questions you answer when joining an online dating site: What's your occupation? It's also one of the first questions you're asked when meeting someone: So what do you do for a living?

We all want to know how our dates pay the bills, and eHarmony knows why.

An eHarmony study looked into how career impacts romance, finding that what you do for a living has - no surprise here - a major impact on what you look for in a partner.

Last year a different study found that the worst careers for romance were personal finance, law enforcement, interactive technology, healthcare, publishing, mental health, optometry, education administration, fitness, aviation, journalism, business ownership, real estate, and law. The trend was clear: the more hours spent at a high-intensity job, the greater negative impact the career has on your love life.

Career addicts striving to achieve work-life balance should look for partners who have very different professions, says the new eHarmony study. Some of the most successful match-ups are:

• Self-employed women with engineers, female business executives with barbers or hair stylists, stay at home moms with dentists, and female doctors with bankers
• Unemployed men with personal trainers, male personal trainers with advertisers, male pilots with beauticians, and soldiers with female business executives

Some professions are willing to communicate with matches from all walks of life, while others are more choosy about who they chat with. The most picky daters are:

• Men who are engineers, analysts, lawyers, web developers, and bankers
• Women who are marketers, business executives, analysts, lawyers, and teachers

The most flexible daters are:

• Men who are soldiers, retired, skilled tradesmen, and students
• Women who are students, skilled tradeswomen, in the food service industry, and in retail sales

The eHarmony study also found that some job combinations are more likely to lead to a date than others. The most successful professional pairings are:

• Male and female business executives dating each other
• Male marketers with female business executives
• Male engineers with female business executives
• Policemen and firemen with female teachers

The least successful professional pairings are:

• Retired men with female administrative assistants
• Male artists with female students
• Male bankers with female administrative assistants
• Male doctors with female students

"When it comes to who's talking to who, most people are looking to talk to someone who does something different than themselves," an eHarmony spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

So I guess that's further proof that office romances aren't the way to go.

To find out more about this online matchmaking site you can check out our eHarmony.com review.

eHarmony Australia is offering a free communication weekend that starts in the morning on Friday November 2nd and ends Monday November 5th at the end of the day.

If you are an Australian single and wish to try a dating site which performs the matching for you, then eHarmony.com.au is a service that offers the features you are looking for. To try it out just create a free members account this weekend and fill out the profile questionnaire. This process will take you about 30 minutes or so and is important because the questions you answer are used to determine what other members will make a quality match for you. Once you have finished with your profile you will receive a number of matches right away. From here you can look at their profiles and pick the ones you feel a connection with. Communication is free with any of your eHarmony matches and no credit card is required.

For more about how this Australian matchmaking site in helps singles, please read our eHarmony review.

eHarmony in Australia is offering a free communication weekend that starts Friday the 28th of September and runs until end of day on Monday the 1st of October.

This is a great chance for singles in all parts of Australia to visit eHarmony.com.au and create a profile since eHarmony becomes extra busy during a free communication weekend. Once your eHarmony profile is complete and you have answered the personality questions you will be able to receive matches and view the matches profiles. When you have determined which matches you wish to contact you can then go ahead and communicate with those matches at no cost. This promotion is available to new and existing eHarmony Australia members.

To find out more about what this online dating site in Australia offers, please read our eHarmony review.

eHarmony has announced it's closing the doors on its short-lived sister site, Jazzed.com. Jazzed will be no more on September 18, two years after its launch in 2010.

Years ago, Match.com introduced Chemistry.com, its algorithm-based answer to eHarmony. eHarmony responded with Jazzed, a more casual site that allowed users to freely contact other members instead of connecting only with matches provided by the site. eHarmony hoped Jazzed would be a strong competitor for Match's massive market share, but alas - it seems their dream was not to be.

Jazzed barely managed to get off the ground, despite eHarmony's efforts. The site launched a photo-sharing app last year and was featured on a dating television show called "Excused," but that was the extent of its popularity. After the initial excitement over the site wore off, it never returned to the public's radar.

If you're a Jazzed member, you now have three options:

• Take no immediate action, and continue to use the site until it shuts down on September 18.
• Cancel your subscription before the site closes, and receive a prorated refund for the remaining portion of your subscription. (Users who do not cancel their subscriptions will be issued a prorated refund after the date of closure.)
• Sign up for eHarmony instead, which is offering a discount to former Jazzed users. Use the promo code JAZZEDEH to receive a special rate of $9.95/mo for three months. The offer expires on September 20 at 11:59 pm PST, after which your account will automatically renew at a rate of $29.95/mo.

Upon closure, Jazzed members will not be able to view or edit profile information on the site or access their Jazzed mailboxes. "Any data associated with your account will be deleted shortly after the closure," says Jazzed, "provided that we may archive certain information for record keeping integrity, fraud prevention, enforcement of our terms, or to the extent it relates to a pending dispute."

Unfortunately, that last bit raises a lot of questions for Jazzed users. Exactly what does "shortly" mean? How can data be both "deleted" and "archived?" Does it still exist or not? And if it still exists, what's going to happen to it? How can a site that's no longer active enforce its terms?

What's going to happen to Jazzed profiles? Will the URLs remain active? Will they be sold to other companies? Will they be merged with the eHarmony database? Will the database go offline?

Right now Jazzed seems to be creating more questions than it's answering. I advise all users to keep a close watch over their privacy and data, and monitor the progress of this story as Jazzed shuts down.

2 years ago eHarmony launched a dating site called Jazzed. When it launched Jazzed was free for a time before it eventually went pay (I am not sure when). Back in 2010 we found Jazzed to be a lot like Match.com. The Jazzed dating profile contained about the same amount of information and members could search for their own matches. Unfortunately the Jazzed dating site will be closing next Tuesday September 18th, 2012.

Why are they closing? They never did get the site off the ground and I think very little money was spent in marketing. The site was on our radar to do a full fledge review but we just never got around to it since our visitors never asked about it. I also never saw many ads for the service so we kind of forgot about it (which is saying something since that is all we do around here is talk about online dating. 😉

Overall from a technical point of view Jazzed was a good dating site. It had a solid interface and offered the right tools for finding your match. They even had mobile apps on the iPhone and Android. Maybe if they had marketed the site more this would be a different story, but they didn’t. As a lot of dating site owners know marketing is the hardest part of running a dating site (I imagine this is true for most online services).

To find out more details about the closure you can read the Jazzed FAQ which includes information on refunds if you have an active subscription.

If you are looking for information on another dating site to try please take a look at the reviews on these popular services:

• eHarmony
• Match.com
• OkCupid
• Plenty of Fish