eHarmony

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.

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.

Not as much warning this time around, but we knew it was coming. It is official, eHarmony in Canada and the US are having a free communication weekend starting today, Thursday July 2nd, until Sunday, July 5th, 2009.

For those of you who haven't heard of eHarmony's free weekends, it means most features of the dating site are free to use for new and existing members. This includes not only getting to review your matches, you can communicate with them as well. The one thing not included is, Fast Tracking the communication process.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 18 for eHarmony. The last one was held on the Memorial Day weekend in May.

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

In April we looked at another federal lawsuit which claims eHarmony's matching system is not scientifically proven (see Story). The lawyers for the lawsuit (Lange & Koncius LLP) have now setup a website for people to get more information. You can find the website called eHarmony Class Action Litigation (eHarmonyClassAction.com). Thanks to the unofficial eHarmony Blog for this information.

In my opinion, from all of the information I have read about dating sites, eHarmony probably has put the most effort into their matching system. They have a number of doctors on staff at eHarmony Labs who are experts in their fields of study and whose purpose is to research and improve the matching system. eHarmony spends over $3 million a year at this. While, they haven't released much scientific proof or had many independent studies done (as far as I know), if any dating site can back up their matching system with scientific research, it is eHarmony.

For more on eHarmony Labs, read eHarmony's Love Lab

Last year eHarmony.ca had a free communication weekend, on the Canada Day long weekend (see Story - it ran from Sat. June 28 to Tues. July 1). Some of you were wondering if there is a free weekend coming up this year for Canada Day. As July 1st, 2009 falls on a Wednesday, right in the middle of the week and we have had no official word yet, I have a feeling if there is one, it will be combined with eHarmony.com and the U.S. Independence Day holiday on the July 4th long weekend.

Check back with this story Canada, and we will update it as soon as we get more information about if and when there is a Free Communication Weekend.

Update #1: eHarmony Canada is indeed having a Free Communication Weekend. It starts July 2 and runs to July 5, 2009.

Update #2: For those of you looking for eHarmony.com (the US site ), the free weekend is on as well, check out this story for more information.

In the mean time, if you want some further insight on what makes this a popular dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

Last year eHarmony release a PDF of a summary of the Harris Interactive report for 2007 which showed how they concluded 236 eHarmony members get married every day. According to eHarmony's current Matching Advertisers with Buyers web page, Harris Interactive Research for 2008 still concludes 236 eHarmony members marry every day. From our count it also looks like the profile questions increased by 2 to 258 questions.

On average eHarmony Media of sites receives 3.6 million visitors per month and over 415 million page views with an average visit length of 5 minutes. In March 2009, 34 percent of visitors were male and 66 percent were females with the median age of 35 years. eHarmony Media includes the following categories Singles, Advice, Weddings, and Parenting. The sites included in these categories are eHarmony.com, Advice.eHarmony.com, ProjectWedding.com, Weddingbee.com, Justmommies.com and FertileThoughts.com.

For more demographic information read the eHarmony.com Statistics 2009 Adobe PDF file we have stored locally.

Read our eHarmony review for more general information on this dating site.