eHarmony

The Forbes website wrote an article called "The Top Online Meat Markets" which talks a bit about some current online dating statistics and lists the top ten dating sites according to unique visitors in the month of June from a tracking company called Nielsen (more famously known for tracking TV viewers). I wasn't really impressed with the title since they are referring to dating sites as meat markets. The term meat market is not meant as a compliment and it tells me the author is not very interested in the story and doesn't think much of the concept of online dating. He further expresses his point of view in this sentence:

Call it calculating, unromantic and maybe even a bit unnatural ...

For a media company whose authors are suppose to leave their opinions at the door unless the topic calls for it, I wonder how this piece got past the editor's desk.

Opps, we made a mistake. Originally this post had stated that eHarmony US and Canada were having a free communication weekend starting today August 28th until August 31st. It looks like we were incorrect. As reported 2 weeks ago the eHarmony Free Communication Weekend is still on (as of right now) for the UK and Australia (see Story). We do expect a free promotion to come soon for the US and Canada, if past experience is any indication. Most likely Canada's will be held on the Labour Day Holiday weekend (Sept. 4th-7th).

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service in the United Kingdom and Australia.

I am glad to see eHarmony responding in their official blog to an article titled "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots " from the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article examines some of the marriage statistics released by dating sites like eHarmony as well as the methodology used to calculate such statistics. We talked a bit about this topic as well, a couple of weeks ago when the original WSJ article was published (see Story).

The WSJ article didn't look to kindly on the stats released by dating sites, and for the most part I agree with the author. The public does need to know how these statistics are generated. Of all the dating sites mentioned in the WSJ article, "eHarmony stands out as among the more careful ones". This is not exactly a glowing report for eHarmony so, they decided to post a response on their blog.

In the eHarmony blog post they go into further details on how they calculated that their dating site was responsible for 2% of marriages in the United States, from the 12-month period ending March 2007. Most of the information we already knew about from a previously released PDF file titled "eHarmony | Harris Interactive 2007 Marriage Metrics Number of eHarmony Marriages" (see Story), but the post does flush out a few more details. What this blog post does show is, eHarmony is trying to be as open and transparent with their research findings as possible. I think the name "Open Communication" may indeed be a good choice for the official eHarmony blog.

Here is the full eHarmony response to the Wall Street Journal about how they calculate their marriage statistics. For further information about this dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

On this day in the year 2000, eHarmony launched their dating service.

Happy 9th Birthday eHarmony!

To get a history of eHarmony from an employee who has worked their for 8 years, check out the eHarmony Blog and to find out why this is such a popular dating site, read our eHarmony review.

A couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about eHarmony's seven new profile questions which dealt with common traits and interests (see Story). Last week eHarmony posted a bit more information about this feature called Something to Talk About. As the name suggests, this feature is designed to highlight what each profile has in common and to help matched couples by breaking the ice and giving topics of conversation. When you view a match and if you share some common interests, you will see these interests appear in the area titled "Something to Talk About".

For more on the feature, visit the official eHarmony Blog. Tto find out more why this is such a popular matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

We got word that there will be a Free Communication Weekend at eHarmony in the United Kingdom (eHarmony.co.uk), starting Friday August 28th to Monday August 31st, 2009. Having this popular promotion and combining it with their big TV advertising campaign going on at the moment, means eHarmony UK members should have lots of matches to review and communicate for free with during the last weekend in August.

There is no information yet of a Free Communication Weekend coming soon for eHarmony here in Canada and the United States but we expect it will happen at the same time or in the first few weeks of September.

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