eHarmony

I was doing some research and I ran across this CNN Money article again. In it CNN mentions that eHarmony has annual revenues of almost $200 million. In 2007 this dating service spent upwards of $100 million in advertising (from our stats page you will see they spent $88 million for the first 3 quarters of the year). This means, about 50% of revenue (membership fees) goes towards advertising. I know eHarmony is not the only dating site spending this type of money on marketing. Other dating sites that have similar spending habits includes Match.com and Friend Finder. I wonder how this compares to other industries?

For more information on eHarmony, read our dating review.

eHarmony is planning another Free Communication Weekend this Friday October 31 to November 2. New eHarmony members will have complete access to the dating site, which includes reviewing of matches, photos, profiles and the ability to communicate with other members. The last Free Communication Weekend was Labour Day (see story).

Visit our eHarmony review for more information on this popular dating service.

For the last number of years eHarmony has been playing up the fact that a large number of people get married everyday who originally met each other on their dating site (current published average is 118). JDate appears to be copying this market tactic. They are currently advertising:

Each day over 60 people tell us they found their soul mates on JDate.

Finding a soul mate is not the same thing as being married but it does lead people to believe it is something more than love. It makes it appear as if the relationship may be leading to marriage. 60 is a fairly large number for a dating site which serves a specific niche. I wonder if we will see other popular dating services following suit and start advertising similar facts.

See our JDate Review for more information on this Jewish matchmaking service.

There are a few new things mentioned in a press release on Market Watch from eHarmony. They are reporting 93 percent of Brits do not believe a scientific formula can match them successfully, eHarmony hopes to change this thinking. The release also mentions there are currently 150,000 singles living in the United Kingdom registered on the U.S. version of eHarmony. Lastly, the press release mentions a few key differences in the U.S. and U.K. matching algorithm:

The OII research revealed that while the UK had many similarities in what determines a successful relationship, there were also some interesting differences between US and UK couples.

For example, married people in the United Kingdom consistently express greater satisfaction with the amount of consensus they experience in their marriage, such as the time spent together, how they get along with family and in-laws, and their sexual relationship.

Those from the United States, on the other hand, show more satisfaction with interpersonal aspects of the relationship, such as laughing together more frequently, exchanging ideas, and kissing more often.

Reuters mentions that eHarmony will reject members who are currently married (which we knew) or who have been married more than 3 times. Also, members who "are emotionally unfit to enter a relationship, such as the severely clinically depressed" will not be granted a membership. eHarmony also restated the fact that they would consider started a dating site for homosexuals but, do not currently have plans to do so.

It seems the eHarmony Cracked blog will not be updated for the next little while. The writer of the blog, Scott, needs to concentrate on some other aspects in his life. We wish him well and hope he can return to blogging soon.

As always you can find our more about eHarmony by reading our review.

With eHarmony appearing to be close to officially launching their UK dating site there has been an unusually high number of articles on the internet about the dating service. Just watch some of the statistics being presented, some are not completely accurate. In our last story we took a look at this Times Online article. In it they reported:

A poll carried out by Harris Interactive reports that last year eHarmony was the force behind 236 marriages per day. That is more than 80,000 a year. Indeed, the company claims to bring about more than 2 per cent of all marriages in the United States.

This is not correct. eHarmony has reported recently that they are responsible on average for 118 marriages a day. This then means that 236 eHarmony members get married everyday (2 people = 1 marriage). Likewise, according to eHarmony 86,102 eHarmony users have been married in the year ending March 2007. This works out to 43,051 marriages in a year, not the over 80,000 in which the Times article suggests. The last point of the quote is also inaccurate. eHarmony claims to be responsible for 2.57% of marriages in the United States of people between the ages of 20 and 54, and who use the internet. They do not claim over 2% of all marriages in the US. Of the 2.2 million people married in 2007 (from the US Census), only 1,675,172 of these marriages fall within eHarmony's parameters.

For the complete statistic read, How eHarmony Concluded, 236 Members get Married Everyday and for more general online dating statistics visit our Statistics and Facts page.

The UK's Times Online posted an article today about online dating in the United Kingdom. While it talks about a few of the popular sites briefly, the main topic of the story is eHarmony's new website with a matching system designed just for the United Kingdom. Launched in July of this year (see story), eHarmony jumped started their membership base by offering 90 day memberships for free. This offer is now over but anyone curious in eHarmony UK can still signup for a 7 day free membership. eHarmony UK does standout from other US dating sites that have moved into the European market. The reason for this is, they have worked with local established research institutes (in this case, Oxford University) to modify their dating site and matching algorithm to make it apply more specifically to relationships in the United Kingdom.

The article also has some price comparisons for one month memberships:

• Dating Direct charges £25 for a single month. Read our Dating Direct Review for more information.
• eHarmony costs £33.95 for one month. We currently do not have a review that has looked at eHarmony's UK site but you could try our eHarmony Review that is for the US.
• Match.com charges £22 for a month. Read our Match.com UK Review for further details.

For the full story visit the Times Online UK and to find out more about this matchmaking service read some eHarmony Reviews.