ParshipMeet Group

First eHarmony, the dating site, got its start in 2000. Then in 2006 eHarmony launched its eHarmony Marriage site with its goal to help people to create better and stronger marriages. I notice recently on eHarmony's site that they had launched eHarmony Parenting this past summer. This is a free resource to help and guide parents to raise happy and healthy children. The site contains mainly articles which are arranged by topics like Anger, Discipline and Medical. There are 20 topics in total and the contributors all seem to have professional backgrounds that would make them an expert in this area. If you visit this site don't expect a large number of articles but, the ones they do have are informative.

Why did eHarmony create a resource for parents? Single Parents make up a large part of the online dating market and eHarmony is tapping into this by offering single Moms and Dads a free resource on parenting.

For more on eHarmony read our review. For parenting information visit eHarmony Parenting.

There are a large number of Christian and religious oriented dating services on the internet. This makes it a difficult choice for singles who are looking for a Christian faith dating site. For this reason, these singles tend to take a long time in researching and are very meticulous when selecting a site to join. Their faith and moral values are very important to them.

We recently reviewed a site called ChristianCafe.com which appears to be an excellent dating service but, it is still new to us so it was decided to wait until next year to reconsider this site for the Christian award. In the end, the Editor's Top Pick - Christian Award will go to eHarmony. While not a pure Christian only dating service, they do promote matching based on Christian principles and have a large number of Christian single members. In fact, I would consider eHarmony as probably having the largest number of Christian members for a dating service. When you are filling out eHarmony's detailed profile and you indicate your Christian faith as very important to you, eHarmony will make sure you are matched up with similar minded members.

eHarmony matching system is complex but it is very successful at matching singles. In fact, on average 90 members of eHarmony get married every day. This works out too over 33,000 members every year (according to a Harris Interactive Poll)! To achieve this eHarmony uses a scientifically proven method to match singles based on 29 key dimensions of compatibility. Because of this system, eHarmony was considered and almost won our Top Pick Match System award.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this dating service or visit eHarmony directly.

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): ChristianCafe.com, ChristianMingle.com and BigChurch.com.

CNN Money has an informative article about how the online matchmaking service eHarmony was started 7 years ago. eHarmony is one of the few dating sites which was started by a psychologist, Dr Neil Warren, who had years of experience counselling married couples. This enabled eHarmony to present a scientific approach to matchmaking. They continue to do this by having on staff "five Ph.D. researchers who are constantly tweaking the matchmaking software based on their latest findings". eHarmony takes the conservative approach to online dating and believes in Christian values. A lot of other dating services currently are pushing a sexier image.

The author explains as well the process of how eHarmony works, from signups, to creating a profile and then the matchmaking process. The article further goes through the ups and downs of eHarmony's success, including their latest negative press regarding gay singles being not allowed to use the site.

The Motley Fool has an interesting point of view regarding eHarmony's charges against Chemistry before the Better Business Bureau's ad council. The charges are in response to Chemistry's new TV and internet ads that mention eHarmony has rejected over a million singles.

The article goes on and explains that the Chemistry ads are free advertising for eHarmony and they don't necessary reflect them in a bad light. It can be a good thing for a dating service to be choosy over which singles can join.

Seven years ago today, eHarmony was launched (August 22, 2000). Today more than 17 million singles have registered as members. eHarmony's unique scientific approach to matchmaking has made it very popular, allowing them to increased there membership base by at least 30% every year. eHarmony is one of the few succesful dating services which only displays potential matches to members and do not allow them to search for matches themselves.

For more information of what eHarmony has to offer, check out our review.

CNN Money has an article called "Voice-over-IP powers online love connections". This article talks about a new service eHarmony plans to offer which allows for members to place actual phone calls to other members without giving out personal information. Here is quote from the article that describes the service in more details:

"Using voice-over-Internet Protocol, or VOIP, technology, eHarmony's service enables potential partners to speak on the phone without disclosing personal contact information. If one of the interested parties wants to initiate a call, he or she clicks on a special link on the eHarmony site, and eHarmony then sends an e-mail indicating the caller's interest to the intended call recipient. The eHarmony service, designed by VOIP provider Jajah, then initiates a call to the recipient's preferred phone number, only that data (as well as the phone number of the caller) is completely masked by the site."

eHarmony plans to offer this service for an additional charge of $5.75 which give them an unlimited number of calls to its members. At this point there is no mention of when the service is planned to start.

This type of service is a good idea, especially for people who are not into using Instant Messenger or similar tools. These singles tend to be older and not as technical savy, which fits right into eHarmony's demographic. I like the fact you don't need a VOIP phone that plugs into the internet, a normal phone can be used, which keeps it very simple. The one thing eHarmony needs to allow with this additional service is insure paying members can contact other non paying members. This is my major complaint with a number of dating services. When a member is a paying a fee they should be allowed to contact any member in the system.