General News

The unofficial eHarmony Blog got a little scoop regarding the possibility of a "Who has viewed me?" feature. SingleGuyInNC noticed the disabled option when it flashed briefly on his screen when he signed into eHarmony today.

If this is a new feature that eHarmony will be adding soon, it should help with the complaints in our user reviews regarding not been able to see which profile has had their member login recently. If some one has viewed you then you know it is an active profile. The only problem is, you still don't know if he or she is a paid member and can communicate with you. Still, I hope they add this feature in. Better yet, eHarmony should just tell us in the profile view when the member has last logged.

For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

Oops, this one was left as a draft article for the last 4 days.

This Press Release on CNNMoney.com is about a poll done for Chemistry.com (conducted by Gfx Roper Public Affairs) which involves controversial dating subjects. Gfx concluded after the survey that America has an open mind when it comes to such relationship topics as premarital sex and same sex relationships. One statistic from the release states:

About eight in ten (79%) single Americans believe that gay people should have the right to find a meaningful relationship and (74%) of singles endorse the idea of gay marriage or civil unions

These numbers seem very high IMO, when you take all of America's view on this topic. Looking closer at the stat you notice that it says "single Americans". This also means younger Americans since the older you are the better chance you are married or seeing someone. Instead of Americas view point this is more of a young American view point.

For more information on Chemistry.com, click here for our review.

The Daily Yomiuri Online has an article called "NPA targets online dating sites / Agency wants stricter regulations as current law being ignored". The Japanese National Police Agency wants tougher regulations regarding prohibiting minors under the age of 18 from using dating services. They have found currently this regulation is largely being ignored. In a suggested revised law, dating site operators would need to take measures to confirm a member's age, such as requiring users to fax copies of ID certificates to dating site operators. There are a few other proposed changes mentioned as well for the current internet dating regulations in Japan.

The Time website has an article called We Just Clicked. It talks mainly about the issues large online dating companies are going through when they expand from their own markets to other countries with different cultures. As example, one point talks about international dating sites having to rethink profile questions and what is culturally appropriate. In Japan, it was pointed out they don't really need to ask about hair color since almost all of the people have the same color.

I got a little bit of laugh out of this next point. eHarmony advertises on their site that marriages happen too their member on average 90 a day. According to "We Just Clicked", these unions have so far produced 100,000 children with a disproportionate number of them named Harmony.

Match.com was also talked about a fair bit in the article. It looks like in some countries Match.com is doing extremely well, while in others they have hardly made a dent. Match.com now is in 35 countries and of the 15 million, 1.3 million members pay for the full service and off those 30% live outside the United States. In the Scandinavian market, of the current 2.2 million online daters, 1.5 million have joined Match.com. It is unclear if Match.com counts the total number of members from all of Match.com branded dating sites from other countries in the 15 million they say are members. I always though, when Match.com US said they had 15 million members, that was the total number of members who joined the US site. The reason for my thinking this is Match.com dating sites for other countries look different and they don't allow you to use your US member account if you try to login.

In the U.S. alone, there are close to 1,000 dating sites. With competition so furious and with the growth in the North American market slowing, these sites are looking abroad for more revenue streams. For more information about eHarmony, check out our review and for Match.com please read this review.

On January 14, 2008, New Jersey passed the first United States online dating legislation called the Internet Dating Safety Act (Senate Bill-1977/A4304). This law will take effect in 120 days. Several other states have tried to pass different variations of this Act but New Jersey is the first state to succeed. All I can say is this Internet Dating Safety Act is a mess. In a nut shell it requires all New Jersey-based members to be informed if criminal background checks are performed and if the people who are deemed to have a criminal background are prevented from joining the site. This sounds ok on the surface but, as pointed out on Online Personals Watch this section quoted below from the act will cause some major headaches for dating websites:

"If an Internet dating service does not conduct criminal background screenings on its members, the service shall disclose, clearly and conspicuously, to all New Jersey members that the Internet dating service does not conduct criminal background screenings. The disclosure shall be provided when an electronic mail message is sent or received by a New Jersey member, on the profile describing a member to a New Jersey member, and on the web-site pages of the Internet dating service used when a New Jersey member signs up. A disclosure under this subsection shall be in bold, capital letters in at least 12-point type."

I also have to wonder why dating sites are getting picked on here. Going to Bars, Dance Clubs, etc.. offer a no safer place to meet singles and these establishments are not required to do background checks on their customers. Plus,quality of a background check has to be put into question. How far do you need to go here? All this act will do is just lead to a false sense of security for people dating online in New Jersey. Not all criminals get caught!

eHarmony announced yesterday that they have a new online id verification service for its members. This service, which is provided by ReliID allows eHarmony members to validate their full name, age and address. RelyID uses publicly available information for the id verification. Once members are verified they will have a RelyID badge displayed with their profile showing other users that they have completed the process successfully.

I'm glad other large dating services have started to offer this type of verification service. It's a great first step which willl go a long way in helping people trust the information they find in a profile. This should generate a lot more communication for eHarmony members who have been verified. But, how much further can eHarmony go? True.com does criminal background checks and I have seen some other sites like MillionaireMate.com verify photos. It would be great to see all of these services combined. I wonder if this service is available on eHarmony Canada?

For more information on this new verification process read this News Release and for more information on eHarmony, check out our review.

Update 2008-01-16: I just notice that Online Dating Insider has some more information on this new verification service including the cost ($5.95) and how the actually verification takes place.

Update 2019-10-22: Please note that the Online Verification Service is not available anymore.