Category: eHarmony

Online Dating Traffic Surges Between Boxing Day And New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 26, 2012

Onlinedating key on keyboardHUFFINGTON POST – Dec 26 – Mark Brooks, a dating analyst and consultant to the Internet dating industry, said it was the endless stream of awkward questions from family members that prompted many to search for love online this time of year. “The effect becomes more pronounced over the Xmas vacations and party season," he said. “Questions such as 'have you been dating anyone recently' and 'do you think you’ll ever marry’ become 'On your own, are you?'." Kate Taylor, a relationship expert at Match.com, said people look back at their achievements over the past twelve months, and think about their New Year's resolutions. On Match.com ~4M unique connections are expected to be made; with 3M email messages written; 2.5M 'winks' sent; and 500K IM conversations taking place. Brett Harding, managing director for Lovestruck, said registrations increase by 48% during this period. For eHarmony, the number of registrations was 3.5 times higher than the week immediately before Christmas. Cupid.com's Sean Wood also suggested that the pressure on couples in the Christmas period could also lead to more break ups – resulting in more singles on the scene by Boxing Day. AshleyMadison.com biggest spike came immediately after New Year's Eve. The first working day after New Year's there was a 413% increase in member sign-ups with a total of 9,857 new members. What's really interesting is that for many sites, the traffic then falls again drastically in the spring. “Internet daters tend to stick around for about three months," said analyst Brooks. "Then they bail, then they come back, or go to another site, or multiple internet dating sites."

by Charlie Thomas
See full article at Huffington Post

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Why Are You Still Single?

Posted on December 15, 2012

Eharmony-logoMARKETWIRE – Dec 12 – eHarmony helps answer that
never ending question from family and friends — "why are you still
single?" They put together 10 of their snappiest comebacks for use at
parties, family events and holiday gatherings to get prying family
members off your back. 
"Why Are You Still Single?"

  1. Because you haven't proposed yet.
  2. Just lucky, I guess.
  3. Name one married superhero. Exactly.
  4. My mail-order spouse should be arriving any day now.
  5. Because I want my cat to grow up in a stable environment.
  6. Mother Teresa was single, would you be bugging her?
  7. Because I keep turning down proposals.
  8. Because no company is better than bad company.
  9. What's the rush? With a longer life expectancy than previous
    generations, I can get married later in life and still end up
    celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary.
  10. True love is worth waiting for. I'm not going to settle just because I've been single for a while.

See full article at SysCon

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eHarmony Founder Has His Heart Set On Reviving The Dating Site

Posted on December 14, 2012

Eharmony neil clark warren la times interviewLOS ANGELES TIMES – Dec 13 – Neil Clark Warren came out of retirement to take over as CEO. In the last three years, he said, new memberships, retention rates and time spent on the site were all down. eHarmony growth has slowed: Its 2012 revenue is estimated at $275M, up 3.8% from last year. That's down from 2008, when eHarmony saw 16.4% YOY growth. Now, just 15% of eHarmony's staff has been with the company at least five years. Warren wants to make eHarmony a broad "relationship site" that includes services to help users make new friends, find the right job, become better parents, cope with aging and solve interpersonal problems, among others. How eHarmony manages that wealth of member information — users fill out an extensive questionnaire when they join the site, answering questions about their daily habits, likes and dislikes, past experiences and goals — will be the key to whether the new ventures are successful, said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry consultant. "I've seen a few Internet dating companies moving into other areas and failing," Brooks said. "But in the case of eHarmony it makes a lot of sense because they have deeper information on their users than any other company I can think of." Still, Brooks said he doesn't want eHarmony to lose focus on its core business, which "no question should have been a half-a-billion-a-year-revenue company by now."

eHarmony declined to release financial details but said new memberships increased 20% in the last month from the month before. It also said a member's average total amount spent on the site is up 15% year over year.

by Andrea Chang
See full article at LA Times

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Google’s Most Searched Singles Sites Of 2012

Posted on December 14, 2012

Search buttonHUFFINGTON POST – Dec 14 - Google Zeitgeist — the search engine's annual online presentation of the year's top "trending" and "most searched" terms — includes a list of the top 10 most searched dating sites.

  1. PlentyofFish
  2. Match.com
  3. OkCupid
  4. eHarmony
  5. DateHookup
  6. Zoosk
  7. ChristianMingle
  8. AdultFriendFinder
  9. JDate
  10. Singlesnet

by Christina Huffington
See full article at Huffington Post

eHarmony’s Top Marketer Departs

Posted on December 10, 2012

Eharmony ottokar rosenberger1MARKETING WEEK – Dec 9 – eHarmony’s top marketer Ottokar Rosenberger has left the dating site, just months after moving from the role of UK country manager to become VP of international. It is not yet known whether Rosenberger’s VP of international role will be directly replaced. Bryn Snelson, country manager, oversees marketing activity in the UK. Rosenberger was responsible for making the company’s marketing more UK-focused and helping launch its mobile propositions in the region.

by Lara O'Reilly
See full article at Marketing Week

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eHarmony Founder Breaks Up With Investors To Reboot

Posted on December 4, 2012

Eharmony-logoBUSINESS WEEK – Dec 3 – At age 78, Neil Clark Warren, who founded eHarmony 12 years ago, is taking back control. Since becoming CEO in July after a series of CEO changes, he’s fired 100 people, cut the board from nine to two and bought back stock from Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, which invested $110M in 2004. Gone from the company are the business degrees, and in are social scientists. Sales growth slowed from 16% in 2008 to 6.3% in 2010 and an estimated 3.8% this year to $275M, according to IBISWorld. Sales in the U.S. online dating market are expected to increase 5.1% annually, on average, over the next five years to $2.6 billion in 2017 from $2 billion this year, IBISWorld said. The business has gained entrants, with companies including POF and Zoosk tapping a younger demographic, and Badoo going after consumers more inclined to use smartphones than computers. Warren sees multiple opportunities for growth. He estimates that of the 120M single people in the country, only 5M are on a dating site, so just getting more to gravitate to the Web will expand the market.

by Ari Levy
The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.

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1.2 Million Canadians Used Online Dating Sites

Posted on December 4, 2012

Online dating - heart on keyboardTHE VANCOUVER COURIER – Dec 3 – Of the 1.2M, 80% were single while 18% were married. eHarmony, Plenty of Fish and Match.com boast of their high success rate and their ability to predict matches based on compatibility. The idea that online dating is reserved for the desperate, weird and older individuals is being challenged. The highest demographic signing up for online dating is between the ages of 23 to 29.

by Amy Yew
The full article was originally published at Vancouver Courier, but is no longer available.

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eHarmony Translates Big Data Into Love And Cash

Posted on November 6, 2012

Eharmony-logoZD NET – Oct 6 – Famed for its proprietary matching system that pairs people up based on compatibility, eHarmony has ~33M users across 150 countries, and claims that between the years of 2008 and 2009, an average of 542 people married every day in the US after meeting through the site. eHarmony managing director for Australia, Canada, and Japan Jason Chuck estimated that eHarmony has "terabytes of data" in its large internal data warehouse based in the US. eHarmony also mines "a ton of data" on its users, mainly from their activities on the website. eHarmony is very much a data-based business, with nearly half of all employees being either technology engineers or dealing with data on a regular basis.

by Spandas Lui
See full article at ZD Net

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How Smartphones Are The New Wingman

Posted on September 24, 2012

CNN – Sep 23 – Online dating used to be largely a deskbound activity. But in recent years, mobile apps like Blendr have employed constant Internet access and location-based services to turn the smartphone into a wingman of sorts. Today's mobile location apps connect singles based on the proximity. Grindr has been a global success, with 1.1M daily active users in 192 countries. OkCupid also made its own location-aware app last year called OkCupid Local. Match.com and eHarmony have also gone mobile, but their apps are still more like window shopping. Location data isn't required to make the smartphone useful for meeting people. Smartphone owners can use Bump, a mobile app that lets you exchange contact information easily by bumping two phones together. Bump was an early hit in the iPhone app store and has been downloaded ~100M times.

by Heather Kelly
See full article at CNN

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How To Find Happiness In A World Of Password Madness

Posted on September 22, 2012

Password breachPC WORLD – Sep 21 – In June, hackers stole ~6.5M LinkedIn passwords and posted them online. That same month, intruders compromised ~1.5M eHarmony passwords in a security breach, and in July hackers grabbed 450K Yahoo Voice passwords. Among the most common passwords used by those Yahoo members: "123456," "welcome," and "password." “These days you have to have dozens of passwords and logins,” says Terry Hartmann, VP of global security solutions for Unisys. All of the passwords breached in the LinkedIn, eHarmony, and Yahoo exploits had been "hashed"—that is, the actual passwords had been replaced with algorithmically generated code. Complex passwords infused with numbers and special characters give you a fighting chance against hackers. Password management programs are essential tools for managing your digital life. A good password manager remembers all of your logins, replaces the simple passwords you choose with complex ones, and lets you change those passwords quickly if a site or service you use gets hacked. Instead of having to remember dozens of unique passwords, you only have to remember one: the master password for your vault. A biometric security system taps into the unique properties of your own physical packaging to authenticate your identity. Biometric systems can scan fingerprints, irises, faces, and even voices to establish whether a person should have access to a service or piece of hardware.

by Dan Tynan
See full article at PC World

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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.