General News

The Consumerist has a post regarding eHarmony and their divorced policy. In it they talk about a woman who was separated from her husband for 7 years when she signed up to eHarmony. She took her time and filled out the hour long profile. At the end she was informed that she would not be able to join since she was not actually divorced. After a year and when the woman got her divorced finalized her daughter wrote to eHarmony for her to see if she could reopen her profile so she didn't have to spend another hour to fill it in again. eHarmony's response was:

Since you are divorced, please reply with the county and state of your divorce proceedings, the name of the judge, and the date your divorce was finalized. We hope you understand that this information is very important in order to protect the integrity of our matching process. Once this information is received, we will be very happy to reset your Relationship Questionnaire for you. You will need to retake the questionnaire so that we can accurately assess your relationship needs and provide matches who are deeply compatible with you.

First off I must say is I do applaud eHarmony for sticking to their guidelines and allowing only people who are not married or separated. Other dating services could learn from this and it is what makes eHarmony one of the top spots to go if you are looking for a serious long term relationship.

In my opinion eHarmony does need to make a few changes to make things flow more smoothly. First off all, one of the first questions they ask is if you are single, separated or divorced. If this is a deal breaker profile question for eHarmony, then it should stop the user from entering further information at this point. They should really have all the profile deal breakers up front so people don't waste their time filling out a profile that eHarmony will ultimately deny. This just makes potential members angry.

The other thing I didn't like from the eHarmony customer service response was that the woman had to provide proof of the divorce. Why can't they rely on her word? On everything else she wrote in her profile they trust her about. Plus if a new member says they are divorced, you don't have to go out and prove this. I'm all for verification of profile information but I think they should allow her to change her status and maybe for these type of issues have a verification logo or something for the profile. Just like how some sites are doing for photos. If she needs to prove she is divorced then all divorced members should have too.

After checking out eHarmony profile creation again I notice that eHarmony Canada still allows you to continue the profile creation if you select you are separated. eHarmony.com has improved on this and now has your current relationship status on the home registration page. If you select separated or married, the browser changes and asks you if you want to learn more about eHarmony Marriage, a service from eHarmony that helps married couples with advice on how to improve a struggling marriage. This is a much better way to go about it than telling you after you spent the time to fill out the profile.

Read our eHarmony review for more information about this online dating service.

I had to create a new Yahoo! Personals profile the other day and found out a few interesting things. In step 3 of creating a profile there are 3 privacy options in regards to making your profile searchable. The options are:

1. Make your profile searchable only on Yahoo! Personals
2. Have your profile visible on both Yahoo! Personals and partner websites.
3. Do not make my profile searchable. Only people you contact will see your profile.

Point 3 is not a bad idea but I don't see many people using it unless they are singles who are over loaded with too many messages and winks from other members. I guess, it also allows singles who may be a little unsure about internet dating and want some privacy since it lets them only initiate the conversation and profile viewing.

I was surprised at point 2. I didn't realize Yahoo! Personals had partner websites. I don't remember ever running across a dating service that has been powered by Yahoo! Personals. Here is the example they give on how your profile will look on a third party dating website. From the example it looks like they hope to partner with other sites that offer other different types of listing (jobs, apartments, etc...) or maybe news and entertainment services.

The other interesting fact about point 2 (if you read the fine print) is your profile may appear in search engine queries. I don't think Yahoo.com is doing this now (at least not when I search) but who knows what the future may hold. Of course they could be referring to other search engines and not their own. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with my dating profile appearing on partner sites but I am not too sure about having them come up in search results. Maybe they should of included a forth point to allow for a search engine option.

Perfect Match has released a new Facebook application called "What's Your Personality Type?". This application is based on Perfect Matches Duet Total Compatibility matching system and allows users to find out their own personality types to help find out who they may be compatible with on Facebook. These personality types include Romantic Impulsivity, Personal Energy, Outlook and Predictability. There are 7 true and false questions for each type to answer before you get your results.

As far as Facebook dating applications are concerned, it is fairly simple and doesn't allow you to access your account on PerfectMatch.com or its members. If the application becomes popular I could see Perfect Match putting more effort into it. Right now it is just more of a marketing tool for their main dating site.

For more information about Perfect Match, please read our review.

A press release from Dating DNA just announced an online dating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For now it only seems you can browse profiles, categorize them and add them to your favorites section. There is no communication yet. The iPhone uses the very capable Safari web browser, so the interface is clean, and well organized, very much in tune with Dating DNAs main website. The web pages of the iPhone web app have been reorganized from the main dating site, to fit on the smaller screen of the iPhone. I would think this should work on other Smart Phones but, I was unable to test this (do to not owning one!).

Dating DNA has other applications that allows access to their dating members through MySpace, Facebook and craigslist. I haven't tried any of them as of yet but, I did check on Facebook and there are currently only 56 daily active users for this application.

Dating DNA is a free online dating service with the goal of connecting members of the popular social networking sites together. Since their service is free they rely on advertising to pay the bills. Having multiple platforms (the main website, the facebook app, etc..) to develop cannot be cheap. Online dating is such a competitive market and the social networking sites are flooded with dating applications right now. Most of them having very little users. It will be hard for Dating DNA to find the marketing dollars to promote to singles of these networks what they can offer.

I probably get close to 200 emails a year from owners of dating and related sites who want me to promote one thing or another. Only a handful ever catch my interest and the website "Why was I Dissed?" is one of them. It is a well designed website that offers 2 services. You can get dating advice by Dr. Craig April, a licensed psychologists in Los Angeles and (this is what caught my eye) you can try to find out why someone who you where talking to online just stopped with no explanation. Receiving advice about dating online is nothing new and their are many websites that offer this service but, finding out why someone stopped answering your emails, this is the first time I have seen this.

How does it work? It is pretty simple. You start an Investigation in which you give a few details about yourself, including your name, age and gender. You also choose the type of relationship you had and explain in more detail on how you know the person. You also include the persons email address and name with whom you where in contact with (they call them the Avoiders). From here WhyWasIDissed.com will attempt to contact the Avoiders through email. Here is a quote from the website:

After beginning your investigation, FREE OF CHARGE, we will contact the communication avoider with your investigation case number. They will be asked a series of personalized questions accompanied with multiple-choice answers and fill in the blank options. Once they’ve responded, we will let you know the results immediately.

If no response is forth coming WhyWasIDissed.com will then send a second email. If no response is heard within two weeks it is then assumed the Avoider will not.

When someone stops responding to your emails you are always left wondering why? Will a third party service work as a mediator to find this answer out? I'm not sure but, it is an interesting idea. The Avoiders may feel more comfortable explaining themselves in a structured manner but then again, they may be horrified that a third party knows about a failed relationship. As mentioned in the quote, Investigation are currently free but the website does say only for a limited time. I'm not sure when they will start charging and how much. IMHO WhyWasIDissed.com should keep it free since they are already charging for dating advice. I think the "Why was I Dissed?" service, could possibly be made into a great web viral marketing tool for the dating advice part of the website.

There have been a bunch of posts about the new dating service IntelligentPeople.com. The twist here is you must take and pass an IQ test before you can join the website. IntelligentPeople.com is designed for singles who score in the top 15% of the population in terms of IQ. Potential members will have the option to take the test only twice. The IQ test is made up of multiple choice questions and image pattern recognition testing. It is designed to test logical intelligence while minimising educational or cultural biases.

This is an interesting idea. With most other dating sites the only real way to gauge intelligence of their members is to view how well their profile is written and what education level (high school diploma, college degree, etc..) they have . Both of these are not a real indication of intelligence and only education level can be searched on.