eHarmony

Online dating services are being used more and more by soldiers, especially those stationed overseas. This isn't to say, the service men and woman are just using dating sites to find love with other soldiers stationed nearby. They use dating sites to meet new singles close to where they live at home in the US.

Both eHarmony and Match.com report that their dating sites are being used by soldiers while they are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. eHarmony also reports that from 2006 to 2008, percentage wise, the number of military personal who are using their matchmaking site increased by 56 percent. eHarmony research psychologist, Gian Gonzaga says:

The life-altering experience of going to war often focuses the romantic mind ... When you are reminded of your own mortality, the theory kind of boils down to, you remember what's most important to you, which is relationships.

The off duty soldiers increase access to military internet cafes and the low cost of the laptop computers has made it much easier for them to cultivate a long distance romance. Military service people also tend to take online dating more seriously and invest a lot of time in online communication than your average online dater in the United States. This means, these type of long distance relationships tend to last much longer and are more meaningful. Online dating is the soldiers only real way to create a romantic relationship with someone while they are stationed in a war zone.

For more on this story, read USA Today.

We just got confirmation that a Free eHarmony Canada Communication Weekend is in the works for this coming Labour Day Weekend. From Friday May 15, 2009 up to and including Monday, May 18, 2009 (Victoria Day) new and existing members of eHarmony.ca will be able to not only review matches for free, but communicate with them as well. As stated in our previous post, FastTrack communication is not included with free weekends.

From our count this is Free Communication Weekend number 17 for eHarmony and as usual this one falls on a holiday long weekend. Last year in May, eHarmony actually had 2 free communication weekends (see Story & Story). So, if they follow the same pattern I would expect a free weekend coming soon for the United States.

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

UPDATE: According to a post at eHarmony Advice, the eHarmony Free Communication Weekend starts May 15 at 12:01am Pacific Daylight Time through Monday, May 18 at 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time. That means those of you in other Canadian time zones will have to wait an hour or more. As example, Eastern Time is 3 hours ahead of Pacific Time so the free weekend would start for you at 3:01am EST.

Here is another story from my draft folder. Back in February, PC World looked at the matching algorithms of attraction and the business models behind some of the more popular online dating sites.

Here are a few interesting statistics which emerged from their review of the industry as a whole:

• For 2009 the dating industry is expected to top $1.049 billion and is likely to grow at a rate of 10 percent.
• It is estimated with free dating sites, at least 10 percent of new accounts created each day are from scammers.
• With paid dating sites, on average 10 percent of members pay for the service and stay for less than 3 months.
• In November 2008, online dating traffic as a whole was over 22 million with males making up 52.4 percent of the total number of visits (females 47.6 percent).
• Average time spent per visit to the top 10 online dating sites in 2008 was 22 minutes and 27 seconds.

A lot of the information mention in the article we have talked about before, so I will only discuss any new details. What we did learn, deals more about the hardware needed to run a busy dating site and the process of matching. For instance (WARNING tech talk coming), eHarmony has over 4 terabytes of information on more than 20 million registered members, each who have completed the 400 to 256 profile questions (eHarmony's profile has gotten shorter over the years). After a user signs up at eHarmony, a 10 Gig Oracle database is used to match you with initially, a few members. Apparently the real matching takes place later when your answers are matched up with thousands of other users who have answered hundreds of questions. The whole process takes almost 1 billion calculations and is done in a batch operation at the end of each day. This is a lot of calculations to find matches for a single user. It also tells me that while the initial database is probably filled with the most current users who are using eHarmony now, the matches which you may be more compatible with, will be given to you in a day or so from the much larger database. To give you an idea of the size difference between the two, the main database is about 400 times larger. eHarmony also says a members actions and outcomes on the site is stored and used to help determine matches. The example given deals with your geographical limit you set when you first filled out your profile. If you say, set it to 20 miles, but the eHarmony matching system sees you are viewing members who live farther away, then your location limit will be adjusted. This is because, eHarmony will assume location of a match isn't a deal breaker for you (so only click on those long distance matches only if you really want to travel).

PerfectMatch.com (which has 5 million members) has a lengthy profile as well when compared to most other dating sites, but it still only takes about half of the time to complete when compared to eHarmony's. For their dating site, Perfect Match uses 5 web servers and a number of SQL server database servers. A number of other servers are also used to handle messaging and marketing needs. According to the company, PerfectMatch.com's matches happen right away, there is little to no delay.

PlentyofFish.com is also mentioned and the article. According to the author, POF wants to keep things simple when it comes to the profile and searching. The thing is, POF does have a Chemistry test which for some reason is not mentioned. Plenty Of Fish also has been promoting this fact lately due to their new Serious Member paid membership. Serious Members must take the chemistry and personality test to qualify. Hardware wise, we learned that Plenty Of Fish uses 3 web servers, 5 messaging servers and 5 database servers. Their database of user information is 200 GB. For the year the total cost to operate is only a couple hundred thousand dollars with the majority of the money spent on bandwidth.

For information on some of the dating sites mentioned here, read our eHarmony review and our Perfect Match review.

After seeing the Lindsay Lohan spoof TV ad (see Story), I decided to post some of the other higher quality eHarmony mock commercials I have found online. The only one I am missing is the parody commercial from Saturday Night Live called Me-Harmony.

Here is one called eHarmonize:

Here is one from The Daws Brothers called Lowered Expectations:

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

Here is 3 separate skits from the television show MadTV:

For a more serious look at this online dating service, read our eHarmony review.

The Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony Profile video which we reported about here, received almost 1.8 million views in 24 hours when it was posted April 13th, on Funny or Die. Since then, the video has had a total of over 2.8 million views. Her self-parody has gotten her press coverage beyond the normal gossip newspapers. ABC and The Wall Street Journal even took notice.

eHarmony is enjoying the free publicity. An eHarmony spokesperson noted:

We appreciate that Ms. Lohan recognizes eHarmony is the company that single people turn to when they are serious about finding a great long-term relationship ... Her parody of our advertising gave us a good laugh

The video is more about Lindsay Lohan poking fun of herself, than eHarmony. In her own way Lindsay is actually endorsing the dating site. By this I mean, when people watch the video they will wonder, if Lindsay thinks the dating service will work for her (with her screwed up life), then it must work for anyone!

For more information on this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

eHarmony has gotten into legal trouble again. Lynda Kelly and Miranda Soegi of California have initiated a federal class action lawsuit which claims that eHarmony does not have a scientifically proven system for matching members. Lynda and Miranda believe eHarmony have been misrepresenting the services they provide. They feel they did not receive the service they had paid for.

eHarmony have kept their matching algorithm a closely guarded secret while other sites like Chemistry (see Story) may slowly begin allowing us a peek inside. eHarmony has patents on their matching system so their multi-million dollar investment should be protected if they ever wanted to release more information about it ( U.S. Pat. No. 6,735,568 and 7,454,357). Check out the comments here for more of a discussion on eHarmony's matching system, including some comments from matching experts like Helen Fisher.

I don't think this lawsuit will get to far. eHarmony has been sued before so I am sure their Terms and Conditions have been made air tight by their legal experts. With dating sites that have a scientific matching system, I think what members get confused and angry about is, how loosely the matching algorithm gets applied. I have a feeling that the longer you are on the dating service, some of these sites (to enable to send you more matches) may lower the requirements for a match. Another thing members have to realize is the matches you do receive on these type of dating sites are from both free and paying members. Usually paying members can reply to you, free members cannot.

Misrepresentation is a problem on the internet in general. How many websites are you on in a day that claim to be the biggest or most popular? You will also find a lot of sites that claim to be free, while in fact they are not.

For more information on the story here is a copy of the legal complaint in pdf format.