General News

The Unofficial eHarmony Blog pointed out that there is now a Official eHarmony Blog. The blog is titled Open Communication, and is named after the final step in eHarmony's 5 step communication process. In the first post Pam Holmgren, the eHarmony Director for Corporate Communications, introduces herself as the official blogger. She further states that with this blog she hopes to create a safe and trusted environment where people can learn more about eHarmony. Since July 14, 2009 we have seen 5 posts with no real new information about eHarmony, at least from a dating industry point of view. I hope eHarmony does communicate more about how their matchmaking service works from the inside and doesn't end up making the blog purely a marketing tool.

If you are interested in the eHarmony Blog, then you may also want to know that you can view actual verified eHarmony visitor traffic statistics at Quantcast (see Story).

Click here to visit the official corporate blog and for more information on this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

Christine makes a good point in this article from the Palm Beach Post. Certain profile preferences on dating sites shouldn't be negotiable. This will differ from person to person but most singles would agree that their view on how much they want their potential partner drinking and/or smoking will not change, especially if the person says NEVER. Usually they have a very good reason.

In Christine's case she is a recovering alcoholic and she had told eHarmony that she didn't want a match who drinks. After only a few matches from eHarmony, she received an email from the dating site suggesting she widen her match preferences in regards to drinking, to someone who may have a drink at least once a week. Obviously this would not work for someone like Christine.

I think dating sites like eHarmony which are designed to match singles based on complex matching system need to take into account the deal breakers every person has when it comes to being partnered with someone. For me it is smoking, for someone one else it may be location or religion. eHarmony should realize asking someone to modify a matching preference which may be a core belief could lead to upset customers.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart released a report last Thursday regarding a complaint filed last year against Facebook, by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). The complaint is in regards to privacy and personal information about Facebooks members, in which the report found that Facebook keeps indefinitely, even after an account is closed. This and other privacy shortfalls (including third party access via Facebook Applications to users personal data) will need to be fixed or Facebook may be facing legal troubles.

Facebook released a statement which said that new privacy features are being introduce soon, to remedy any concerns people may have. In 30 days Stoddart will review any actions by Facebook. If she finds that they are not making any progress on her recommendations, then, by using Canadian federal privacy laws under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), she may take the case to the Federal Court of Canada for enforcement.

This potential case may also raise privacy red flags in other countries, which I am sure Facebook does not want.

I bet a few dating sites will also be watching this story closely to see what Facebook does and how the Privacy Commissioner reacts. Most dating sites as far as I know keep users information for a long time as well (see Story).

For more on the story read Yahoo News, and here is the report of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner's findings.

Last week, according to CNET News both Match.com and eHarmony started to use a special updated version of JaJah which allows members to place phone calls without giving away their phone number. Match.com calls this service for its members, matchTalk, which we recently looked at last month (see Story). eHarmony calls their service, Secure Call.

Both phone services from these dating sites require the person who will receive the call to approve of it first. Once approved members can initiate phone calls over the dating site that actually use your own home or cell phone, no special hardware required. No phone numbers are given out and either person can terminate the call and disallow the person from every calling back. It is the ultimate in privacy and security for first time callers.

For more information about these dating sites and their member calling phone feature, review of Match.com and our review of eHarmony.

American Capital Ltd. announced on Thursday that it has completed the sale of People Media to IAC (Match.com's parent company). American Capital received $57 million in cash proceeds and will receive an additional $15 million in the third quarter, to complete the deal. This makes the total sale worth $72 million USD. This is $8 million less than was stated when IAC announced the agreement earlier this month (see Story).

For the full story, read NW32.com.

I heard about a Australian study and paper called "What’s love got to do with it?" today on our local talk radio station. I also see that Markus over at the Paradigm Shift makes reference to it as well.

The data used in the study is from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA) and the paper will be presented at the 2009 HILDA Survey Research Conference on July 16 and 17 at University of Melbourne.

The study analyses a range of factors including the relationship between personality, gender and occupation. The researchers investigated individual and couple characteristics associated with marital instability and found that characteristics of men and women can have quite different impacts on marital stability.

This Australian paper takes a look at 2,482 married couples for 6 years (from 2001 to 2007) and attempts to identify the factors associated with marital problems.

Here are some of the higher risk factors associated with marital instability:

• One partner smokes, and the other one doesn't (the same rule can be applied to drinking).
• Almost twice as many marriages which had a low household income separated (16%) when compared to families who are financially stable (9%).
• A woman who wants children more than her husband.
• If the age difference is greater than 9 years (the man being older), it doubles your risk of separation.
• Men who married under 25 years of age are twice as likely to divorce.
• 20% of couples who had children (either together or from other relationships) before the marriage, divorced. It is only a 9% separation rate for couples who did not have children before the marriage.

This research paper is an excellent resource for dating site owners in helping to create a more accurate matchmaking system. While the data is out of Australia, their culture is not that much different from ours here in North America. For the most part, all of the popular dating sites have released very little information on how their matchmaking systems work. In part, it is because they want to keep trade secrets but they also worry about negative reviews from peers. I also have a feeling, a fair number of dating sites do not have any independent scientific research to back up their matchmaking algorithms.

Here is a local copy of the full paper.