eHarmony

We just got the official word that eHarmony is planning for a Free Communication Weekend from February 13th to February 16th 2009. eHarmony is taking advantage of the large number of singles that will be using dating sites on Valentine's Day and during February (the busiest month for online dating). eHarmony wants to show how well their matching system works and, what better way to do this than to give all members (not just new ones) full access to the site. This allows you to review your matches and communicate for free.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 15 for eHarmony. They also had one last year at the same time. If eHarmony's promotion pattern continues you can expect to see more free weekends on or near every major US and Canadian holiday.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this popular and award winning dating service.

According to NewMediaAge, eHarmony is going to be doing a big marketing campaign in the United Kingdom. This is the first major marketing campaign for the UK version of the dating site, which launched last July (see story). For the first month or so eHarmony UK was offering free 90 day memberships to help populate their database with profiles. The digital marketing agency which eHarmony hired called Essence, will soon be launching a display, search and affiliate campaign. NewMediaAge also estimates eHarmony's US marketing budget at $160 million.

To find out more information about this popular dating service, read our eHarmony review.

Recipient of Gold
Match.com

Recipient of Silver
eHarmony

Recipient of Bronze
Yahoo! Personals

We closed the 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll yesterday (Jan. 12) with a total of 600 votes from the public. This is almost 150 more votes than last year's Single's Choice Awards which ran roughly the same amount of time. I'm glad to see user participation up this year for our most important award. We started the 2008 poll in October, for 2009 we plan to start it in September as we did for 2007. This way we hope to get the Awards Summary finished by the end of the year instead of January like this year.

We did two things different this year. First we included 10 dating sites instead of 8 as with the year before. Second, we are giving the top 3 dating sites an award, Gold for first place, Silver for second and Bronze for third. We decided to do this since there is not a huge percentage difference between first and second place and it also gives an idea to the public what other dating sites singles also consider as a good choice to join.

The Gold 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Match.com. This is the second year in a row that they are the winner of this award and it is also the second award for them this year as well. Match.com also won our Editor's Top Pick - Overall Award. Of the 600 votes received, Match.com got 160 votes which is over a quarter of all the votes. Smart advertising, a good designed interface and communication tools makes this site a popular choice for singles everywhere.

The recipient of the Silver Singles's Choice Award for 2008 is eHarmony. This dating site, which is famous for its automated matching system, won the award this year for the Editor's Top Pick - Match System Award. eHarmony has 132 votes which is 22 percent of the total vote and just 4.67 percent less votes than Match.com.

Finally, the Bronze 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Yahoo! Personals. This is our first award for Yahoo. They had 12.83 percent of the total vote, less than half of what Match.com received but 5 percent more than 4th place which received only 7.83 percent of the vote. With the Yahoo name behind this dating service, a well designed service and a new 6 month guarantee this year, makes this online dating site our readers 3rd choice.

This year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll are (click the dating site name to read our full review):

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Yahoo! Personals
4. SinglesNet.com
5. FriendFinder.com
6. Lavalife
7. PerfectMatch.com
8. True.com
9. Chemistry
10. Date.com

We received 30 percent more votes this year for the Single's Choice Award and we would like to thank everyone for your participation.

The unofficial eHarmony Blog noticed that a few months ago eHarmony lowered their member age requirements to 18. Back in 2006 the minimum age to join eHarmony was 21. The maximum age has never change and is 110 years old.

For more details visit the unofficial eHarmony Blog and for more information about this dating service, read our eHarmony review.

eHarmony is planning an extra long Free Communication Weekend this New Year. Starting next Thursday, January 1st to January 4th 2009 new members of eHarmony will be able to not only review matches for free but communicate with them as well (just like a paid member).

Since we started counting, this makes it, Free Communication Weekend number 14 for eHarmony. The last two were in November, 2008. This would be a good time to see if eHarmony is the type of dating service for you as the next time this promotion most likely will be available (if history is any indication) is in February, on the Valentine's Day weekend.

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

E Harmony has taken a lot of flack lately regarding their dating site not allowing gay singles to join. The recent settlement about eHarmony violating the New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination has only fuelled the flames. A large number of newspaper articles and blogger posts support the gay activists in which they have the right to use the dating service. Here are a few posts which take the stand on the other side of the argument.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article called EHarmony settlement erodes everyone's freedom. Their main point is, E Harmony just didn't provide the service in which Eric McKinley (the plaintiff of the settlement) wanted, male to male matching. The author goes on and points out this would be like someone suing an Asian grocery store for religious discrimination, for not selling kosher meat

The unofficial eHarmony Blog has a post called From Arjewtino: 7 more lawsuits inspired by the eHarmony case. It is written by a gay author and looks at the case from several different angles. He also pokes fun at the E Harmony case by including 7 sample cases in which other groups of people could sue companies for not providing a certain service.

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