eHarmony

eHarmony here in the United States will be having a free communication weekend (FCW) starting this Friday May 28th, 2010 and ending in the late evening of Monday May 31st, 2010. As the name suggests, free communication weekends allow free members of eHarmony not only to create a profile and review matches, but to use the guided communication process to communicate with other members. This guided process allows matches to ask and answer questions so they can get to know each other better. In the fourth step, once you become more familiar with you match you can then go ahead and write your first mail message. eHarmony has found this communication approach greatly increases the chances of a successful long term relationship. Fasttracking the communication process to mail and profile photos are not included in this promotion for free members.

This FCW is happening on the Memorial Day holiday weekend so you can expect eHarmony to be the place online for singles who are serious about finding a long term relationship, to be.

This will be the 25th eHarmony free communication weekend with the last event occurring late in March (see Story). eHarmony waiting almost 2 months before having this free communication weekend.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular matchmaking service.

Singles interested in the United Kingdom Free Communication Weekend, read this eHarmony News Story.

Singles interested in the Canada Free Communication Event which is 10 days long, read this eHarmony News Story.

eHarmony was featured on Nightline last night. In the first part of the video they show an eHarmony research team watching a couple though multiple cameras having dinner. The video then goes on and relates a few facts about the eHarmony dating service:

• The eHarmony profile has 320 questions.
• On average everyday eHarmony is responsible for 236 marriages in the US.
• Over 100,000 babies have been born as the result of these marriages.

An interview of eHarmony's CEO, Greg Waldorf, is then conducted which focused mostly on asking questions about eHarmony's mathematical formula they use for matching members together. The host also asked Mr. Waldrof about skeptics of online dating and how eHarmony convinces them that it does work. Mr. Waldorf points to all of their success stories and by the fact you can contact them directly. Singles interested in eHarmony, can visit their Facebook Fan page to talk to these couples and get any questions of theirs answered. In the last part of the interview, Nightline talks to eHarmony researchers about how they study relationships and what they look for in a successful one to help continue to improve the formula eHarmony uses for matching.

Here is ABCs Nightline Formula for Love video about eHarmony:

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

To find out more about this dating service, read our eHarmony review.

In a bit of a surprised move eHarmony Canada is having a 10 Day Free Communication Event. The event starts today, Friday May 21st and runs through Labour Day Weekend, all of next week and ends Sunday, May 30th, 2010. As with previous free communication promotions, members can review their matches and use the Guided Communication Process to communicate with members. There is no cost associated with this promotion and you will not be asked for a credit card. Fasttracking, Photos and eHarmony Mail are not included for members participating in this promotion.

The longest Free Communication promotion before by eHarmony was 5 days. With 10 free days new members will certainly be able to figure out if the dating site eHarmony is to their liking and in the meantime still be able to meet a lot of compatible singles. Plus, with the May 24 long weekend holiday and the spring season, eHarmony Canada will certainly be a popular place for online daters.

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

The Archived tab is a relatively new feature of the eHarmony communication process. When you know you are not interested in communicating with a Match that eHarmony gives you, just click on "Archive this Match" link. The Match will then be moved from your New Matches section too the Archive Tab. There is also a new auto-archive feature that goes along with the tab that will (as the name suggests) auto archive any Match that closed communication with you. These archived Matches will still appear in the Match Updates list if any one of them updates their profile information or photos.

If you find a Match in your updates that you want to reconnect with because the update renewed your interest, eHarmony does allow you to un-archive any Match to continue on with the guided communication process.

If you want to find out more about this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

Some of you may have notice in the last month or so that eHarmony has added a new feature to their dating service called "Something to Talk About". This feature is designed to help break the ice and to get conversations started between matches much easier.

To setup "Something to Talk About" you first need to visit the "My Profile" tab found when you log into eHarmony. Once on the tab, take a look at the "In My Own Words" section. Here you will find the link "Something to Talk About". Currently there are eleven topics that you can answer one or more questions on. Sample topics include sports, Music, Movies and Leisure. Questions under these topics can be as easy to answer by checking off what sports you like, to actually typing in a short answer.

So when does "Something to Talk About" get used? When you are viewing your profile matches and when a match has also filled out "Something to Talk About" you are presented with a nice block on the right side of the page that shows all the things you and your match have in common.

To find out more about this dating site read our eHarmony review.

The internet traffic audience measuring service, comScore, issued a press release which covered the top growing websites and site categories for February 2010. Since February is usually considered the top month for dating sites (thanks to Valentine's Day) I thought we should take a look.

Traffic to online dating sites in February grew 5 percent to 24.2 million visitors when compared to January. The top 4 dating sites in America for February were:

1. eHarmony with 5 million visitors (up 82 percent) - Read Review
2. Match.com with 3.4 million visitors. - Read Review
3. PlentyofFish.com with 2.8 million visitors. - Read Review
4. SinglesNet.com with 2.6 million visitors. - Read Review

For comparison, other Valentine's Day categories like Flowers/Gifts/Greetings websites saw traffic increase by 7 percent to 32.3 visitors. In this category AmericanGreetings took the number 1 spot at 10.6 million visitors. The e-Cards category grew by 7 percent as well to 23.1 million visitors with MyFunCards.com leading the category with 6.3 million visitors. MyFunCards was up 75 percent when compared to January.