General News

The chief executive officer of eHarmony Inc, Gregory Waldorf, talks with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox about the dating service.

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.

Gregory mainly gives a brief overview of how eHarmony works and how members need to be honest with themselves so that the matching algorithms will work and give them highly compatible matches. He also talks a bit about the current recession and the boost of members eHarmony has seen. Over the last few years, eHarmony has seen a yearly increase in members of about 20 percent. Waldorf also further discuss what the company is most proud of, being responsible for about 2 percent of marriages in the United States each year. This works out to about 236 eHarmony members a day.

Most of the information we have heard before, but one interesting point Gregory Waldorf said is, what their researchers found really important is starting with a pool of compatible matches. With the matches given to members, eHarmony research indicates that these singles give that particular member the best chance of having a long term relationship. From there members can figure out if they live in the right place or have a job that interests them and that they have that " right amount of special click" (his words not mine).

If this online dating service interests you, read our full eHarmony review for more information.

Revenue for IAC as a whole fell 9% to $336.6 million. The reason given for the drop was the difficult advertising environment for which one of their main assets, the search engine Ask.com faced. They also cited the sale of Match Europe for the lower revenue numbers.

Overall revenue for Match and the other dating sites was down 13 percent to $81 million due mostly of the sale of Match Europe as mentioned before. When you take Europe and People Media out of the revenue equation, overall revenue was up 5 percent.

Here is the complete IAC Q3 2009 Report. For more information on the dating sites owned by IAC, read our Match.com review and Chemistry review.

Related Story: Match.com Second Quarter 2009 Financials.

California Superior Court Judge Ann Jones rejected eHarmony's attempt to dismiss a class action which deals with discrimination against gays. The jury trial is set to start February 1, 2010 and will take place in the Superior Court in Los Angeles. The Judge found that eHarmony had not presented any law that allowed the company to refuse to serve gays and lesbians at their main eHarmony dating site. The lead plaintiff in the class action is graduate student Nate Cardin. He attempted to use eHarmony in 2006 and when he could not and asked why, he received a form letter explaining that eHarmony is only for heterosexual relationships. Nate filed a class action in 2007 and is represented by the civil rights law firm of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Brayton Konecky LLP and the Law Offices of Jeremy Pasternak.

eHarmony did recently disclose that they had received over 3,000 email complaints from people who had visited eHarmony to find a relationship with someone of the same sex but was denied service. Previously eHarmony had made a deal with the New Jersey Attorney General and had opened up the dating site Compatible Partners to serve gay singles (see Story). This class action argues that eHarmony does not give "equal treatment of patrons in all aspects of the business".

The social dating site Zoosk, with its widely popular Facebook application has reached a member base of over 40 million people. Last month the Zoosk dating website combined with its Facebook application had 12 million unique visitors.

Zoosk was launched back in 2007 and has grown strong recently on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and BeBo. With Zoosk creating a dating profile is much easier than other dating sites as it will pull information from any of the social networks you are using. Zoosk's target audience is 25 to 35 year olds who are looking more for a short term casual relationships. Zoosk offers a premium subscription for $25 a month. The site also has a virtual currency called "Zoosk coins" which allows members to buy virtual gifts and other subscription upgrades.

Zoosk expects to end out the year with $18 to $20 million in revenue and it is currently experiencing a $30 million run rate.

For the full story, read TechCrunch. We also expect to have our in-depth Zoosk review up soon for both the dating site and the Facebook Application.

In March, Chicago Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart sued Craigslist for allowing pimps and prostitutes to use their classifieds service (see Story). Since then Craigslist has faced mounting bad press about their Erotic Services category and the famous "Craigslist Killers" which used their site to stalk their victims. With the mounting legal troubles Craigslist has changed the requirements to post an ad in their Erotic Services category. Users must now pay a fee with a credit card and provide a working phone number.

Last week Craigslist caught a break, U.S. District Judge John F. Grady dismissed Tom Dart's request to force the web site to eliminate its erotic services category. The federal judge stated that Sheriff Dart cannot sue Craigslist for the conduct of its users.

For more on the story, read NBC Chicago and to find out more about this classifieds website, read our review of Craigslist.

The American Association of Retired Persons or AARP, is the largest organization for people 50 years and older in the United States. AARP recently announced that they have a new love and relationships expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, who is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and has more than 35 years of experience in researching love and relationships. Dr Schwartz is also Perfectmatch.com's relationship expert and helped oversee the design of their automated matching system.

As part of her new duties at AARP, Dr. Schwartz will be writing a weekly online column called "The Naked Truth" at the AARP website which will cover a number of topics related to relationships, love and sexuality. She will also contribute to other online resources with videos, online chatting and blogs. This content will be both for educational and instructional purposes.

To find out about the dating site Dr. Pepper Schwartz is associated with, read our review of Perfectmatch.com.