Online Dating

eHarmony legal troubles may be over in New Jersey but in California they are just starting. According to a press release another class action lawsuit has been filed and certified by California Superior Court Judge, Victoria Chaney.

The plaintiffs in that case maintain that eHarmony’s decision to establish a separate site for gays rather than integrate its flagship site, eHarmony.com, amounts to an unlawful “separate but equal” policy and the continued marginalization of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

eHarmony's separate site for gay singles is called Compatible Partners, which just launched recently.

An article on QUEERTY called If eHarmony Must Allow Gay Dating, Should Gay Sites Have To Welcome Straights? examines the California lawsuit more closely with some good comments by their readers. The author seems to be on eHarmony's side as he points out if eHarmony must allow gay singles to join their dating site, then sites like ManHunt and Adam4Adman should allow straight singles to join. Some of these gay dating sites do allow heterosexuals to join but most do not cater directly to this type of sexual orientation.

On March 31, 2009 Perfectmatch announced the release of their Love and Money Assessment. It is used to quickly assess your financial habits and values, and help you to determine the ideal economic "profile" of your Perfect Match. With the first major economic recession since online dating has became popular, singles on dating sites now have been wanting to know more about how their matches deal with money. This includes things like spending money on luxuries vs. necessities; how much money is appropriate to save, etc. These types of questions certainly are not romantic but in the current financial climate, it is what a number of singles think about.

“Duane Dahl, CEO of Perfectmatch.com, said that more users of the site today are asking questions to his relationship experts about their mate's finances. Those questions are coming up now at the same point as ones about desire to have kids and talking about past relationships ... What the recession has done is reinforced the importance of finance and money and the effect on a relationship

The Australian media company, News Digital Media, has partnered with Match.com. This partnership will result in the integration of the Match.com.au dating site into news.com.au, Australia's leading news portal. Match.com's main dating site competitor in Australia is Fairfax owned RSVP. This new deal will give Match a big competitive boost against RSVP, whis is currently the largest Australian dating site.

For the full news post, read MediaBizNet. For more information on Match, read our Match.com review.

Well, eHarmony finally launched its dating website for same-sex matches yesterday, called Compatible Partners (a day before they were required too). This was part of a settlement agreement with the New Jersey Attorney General that involved a discrimination case against the company.

The actual Compatible Partners works pretty much the same as eHarmony and, that might be a problem. Compatible Partners uses the same Patented Compatibility Matching System. As stated on the homepage:

The Company's patented Compatibility Matching System was developed on the basis of research involving married heterosexual couples. The Company has not conducted similar research on same-sex relationships.

While I have not finished our review yet, I can tell you the Compatible Partners questionnaire is pretty much the same as the one on eHarmony. One would tend to think that what makes a heterosexual relationship a success would differ somewhat from a gay relationship. eHarmony does run eHarmony labs which is where the research is done for their matching system. It has a $3 million a year budget. I wonder if they currently have set aside any of these funds for researching what makes a successful gay relationship?

At least what Compatible Partners does bring to the table is a gay and lesbian dating site for establishing long term relationships that is not driven by sex, as a lot of other popular same-sex dating sites seem to be.

If you are looking for a same-sex relationship, visit eHarmony's new dating site CompatiblePartners.net. For a limited time they are offering a free 6 month membership (for the first 10,000 registered members).

Stay tuned for our review of Compatible Partners coming soon.

Update: Our new review of Compatible Partners is now online.

Three of the major dating sites offer a guarantee. Here is a comparison of them in alphabetical order.

Match.com

The first one to offer any type of guarantee was Match.com way back in the summer of 2006. It was initially called the "Make Love Happen Guarantee" but has been shorten to "Match.com Guarantee". The way it works is, when you purchase a 6 month membership and if you don't find someone special in that time period, Match.com will give you an additional 6 months for free. To be eligible for the guarantee, during your subscription you must create a truthful profile with a primary photo that is visible at all times. You must also respond to or initiate email communication with at least 5 unique Match.com members for each month of your membership. This email must be sent through the Match.com service and does not include winks or instant messaging.

To find out if you are eligible for the guarantee extension you can check it out anytime on the Guarantee Program Progress Page located in your Account Settings on Match.com. To receive your guarantee you must visit the progress page during the last 7 days of your 6 month subscription. You would then answer the questions related to your eligibility status. If you qualify you can then accept your additional 6 months for free. If you did not qualify, a message will be displayed telling you why.

To find out more on this dating site and their guarantee, read our Match.com review.

I am surprised at the Economist. They posted this article on Thursday about how Online-dating websites prosper in the recession. While this may have been true 5 months ago, it is not the case anymore. They should of really done more fact checking. Take a look at a few traffic monitoring sites like Compete.com and they show most dating sites in February actually stayed flat or lost 5 percent or more of their visitors, when compared to January. February is suppose to be a dating sites most busy month. Granted traffic monitoring sites are not 100 percent accurate but they do give you a rough idea when you take several of them in consideration.

The Economist should also realize that traffic alone does not determine a website success. Revenue and Net Income ultimately determines if any business will survive. Not once is this information mentioned. They talk about OkCupid and how their registered active users is up but no where do they mention how online advertising has dried up in the last few months, OkCupid's primary source of revenue. eHarmony is also mentioned but, traffic patterns do not support this. Plus, there is a huge goof in the article:

eHarmony, a wholesome marriage-oriented site with more than 20m paying subscribers.

eHarmony has had 20 million people register on the site since they launched in 2000, this is both free and paid members. In 2008 we had estimated eHarmony only has about 90,000 paid members at anyone time (see this page for more details).

Another thing the Economist should of considered is, none of the major dating sites have had a press release lately touting the continued growth during the recession. This is another sign things may not be as good as back in November-December 2008, when we saw press releases from dating sites like Match.com, eHarmony and Perfectmatch. This was when they talked about the recession and the increased growth they received.

For more information on the dating sites mentioned in this post, read our eHarmony review and our OkCupid review.