Online Dating

We found this PDF file on eHarmony called eHarmony | Harris Interactive 2007 Marriage Metrics Number of eHarmony Marriages, which explains the facts behind their findings in which 236 eHarmony users get married every day. Of all the popular dating sites on the web today eHarmony is definitely one of the more trusted dating sites. By releasing the facts behind their claims, it helps improve eHarmony's creditability even more.

To find out more about eHarmony, please read our review.

Bill Tancer of Hitwise released a book recently called "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters". For those of you who don't know Hitwise monitors the internet and compiles anonymous statistics for clients on how often web sites are visited, how they are found and the demographics of the person doing the surfing. There are many companies that do this type of work with Compete.com and QuantCast.com being some of the other popular ones. These 3 statistic sites of course usually don't see eye to eye and the data they release every month never fully matches. What it does though when you compare the statistics is give you a general idea on how websites you are interested in are performing.

One of the topics the book covers is online dating. Of the top 10 dating sites it lists most of the Male to Female ratios hover around the 50 percentile mark with the most notable exceptions being the gay dating sites. eHarmony also has a much more uneven Male to Female ratio of 38% to 62%. What I was surprised at is the average age range of eHarmony visitors. Bill pegged it at 25 to 34 years of age. I had thought eHarmony members tended to be older than this. Match.com members average age according to Bill is between 35 and 44 which I would see as being more reasonable for eHarmony. eHarmony also appeared 7th on the list behind such dating services as Adam4Adam and DateHookUp. While these are popular dating sites, in my view and research eHarmony receives many more visitors. With this ranking issue found with his online dating facts, it puts into question the rest of the statistics.

Now QuantCast monitors eHarmony directly through a business agreement, you can trust their statistics for this site much more. Bill's book and Quantcast do pretty much agree on the gender ratios and age ranges for eHarmony. For the month of August 37% of the visitors where male (which makes 63% female) and 40% of the visitors where between the ages of 18 to 34. 38% of visitors fell in the age range of 35 to 49 and 20% were over 50.

QuantCast also had another stat which was interesting. 16% of visitors used eHarmony through a business internet connection. With the way companies monitor their internet connections these days, I wouldn't be doing this.

eHarmony announced today that they have partnered with AOL Personals (which is in BETA). They will be offering their matchmaking services to American Online visitors along with dating and relationship advice through the “eHarmony Boutique”. The interesting thing here is AOL already has a partnership with Match.com. On the AOL Personals homepage both dating services share the same space. AOL tells visitors to use the Search for a Match option (which is powered by Match.com) to give you complete control over your searches and to use the Get Matched option (which is powered by eHarmony) to receive matches to compatible singles. I would be surprised if Match.com was happy about this new eHarmony partnership. They already have a sister site called Chemistry.com which competes with eHarmony directly.

Young people (and some older ones as well) need to remember that whatever you post on the internet will then be available forever. It doesn't matter if it is a text message, a picture or a video, it most likely will be replicated on other websites. Sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are extremely popular and some postings on these sites have ended up haunting people. More and more, employers, police and institutions are using these sites to see how people they are interested in, are behaving. A few court cases have even used pictures from these social networking sites as evidence in criminal court. You of course also have to watch out for your camera happy friends who like to post pictures on the internet. You may not have posted it but sites like Facebook still let you link pictures of people with their member accounts.

Just remember posting a picture of yourself doing something funny may seem like a great idea now but, will it still be funny in 5 or 10 years when you are trying to get hired for an important job?

For more insight on your privacy and internet posting, plus examples of legal cases where pictures from the internet are used, check out Canada.com.

eHarmony won Silver in the Customer Service category for the 2008 Gartner and 1to1 Customer Awards. Gold went to Overstock.com with Bronze being received by Cricket Communications. You ask, who is 1to1? Quoted from their website:

1to1.com is a personalized Web site developed by Peppers & Rogers Group to help people interested in CRM and one-to-one marketing find information and resources to create more loyal, profitable relationships with their customers by treating different customers differently. The site is built around the four-step IDIC methodology of Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. - identify your customers, differentiate them based on value and need, interact to learn more about what they need and then customize your products and services to meet their needs.

eHarmony is a client of 1to1 Media and it is nice to know they are taking an interest in customer service to help not only the company's bottom line but to improve the overall experience of members at eHarmony. Too often dating sites rely just on FAQs and Help sections built into the website. Paying customers need more than this. Emails and calls to customer support need to be tailored to the member. Dating Sites should be exceptionally good at this since they already have a lot of personal information about the member and hopefully they keep track of the members usage pattern of the dating service as well. Simply substituting a members name in a stock email doesn't work anymore, people are smarter than this.

See the complete winners and category list Winners here.

For more information on eHarmony, read our review.

Markus Frind, CEO of Plentoffish.com, blog has a post today called Lots of changes lately…. In his post Markus mentions 5 interesting points he has noticed in the dating industry. I think he may need to add another point to his list. The reason for this is he also asks the question:

Here is a question for everyone what are the best merchant accounts to use?

Merchant accounts are used by websites who offer paid services or goods to process credit cards, online cheques and debit cards. Markus has hired a few people lately and is obviously working on something. I wonder if he is planning to offer a paid membership that has some added benefits? Maybe he is adding some other type of dating related service? He hasn't given us any real hints. The merchant account could even be for a whole new project which isn't even related to PlentyOfFish.com.

Has anyone else heard any rumours?

Comment below...