Category: eHarmony

Internet Dating Industry June News – 12 Mins

Posted on September 17, 2009

June 2009 OPW News Summary from Mark Brooks.

This is actually the news for June. We're playing catch up. July and August are in process.  Here's the news we covered for June.

-  eHarmony survey finds 51% of single parents believe that they and their children are better off emotionally when the parent is in a committed relationship
– Match and eHarmony success rates.
– Spark Networks revenue down
– DatingTrail.co.uk launches
– Virtual goods startups raise $69 million funding in Q1
– Great Expectations complaints
– PlentyOfFish.com and rapper Flo Rida team up
– McGinn vs Match.com lawsuit
- ChristianCafe.com and Single Christian Network combines
– IAC completes transaction with Meetic
– Meetic signs partnership with MSN for distribution in 12 European countries
-meetMoi location based mobile dating partners with ClearSky
– Virtual Greats and Viximo partner
– Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine selected to power Deutsche Telekom’s FriendScout24

The Tech Behind eHarmony

Posted on September 17, 2009

Eharmony-logo COMPUTER WORLD – Sep 16 – To match people, eHarmony relies on four database and data warehousing products which include Oracle Database, the open-source MySQL database, open-source data-crunching app, Hadoop, and data warehousing appliances from Netezza. Assigning matches is a complex mathematical problem called "graph partitioning," said Joseph Essas, VP of engineering and operations. Hadoop is speedy, says Essas. "What used to take hours now with Hadoop takes just 30 minutes," he said. eHarmony also uses Hadoop to do real-time analysis of the effectiveness of its TV ads.

The full article was originally published at Computerworld, but is no longer available.

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OMG — My Mom Is Online Dating

Posted on September 2, 2009

Babyboomer7 CNN — Sep 2 – As the baby boom generation ages and once-married boomers become single again, they increasingly are turning to the Web in search of dates. The number of eHarmony users age 45+ and divorced has more than doubled in the past eight years, says Gian Gonzaga, senior researcher for eHarmony. Registered users ages 45-64 jumped 9% from 2007-2008. For many grown children, having a parent suddenly jump into the dating pool is a shock, especially if the parent begins dating numerous people, and perhaps having sex with new partners. PerfectMatch.com CEO Duane Dahl, age 46, helped his own mother, who is in her late 60s, enroll in his service. "This is a great opportunity for us to help our parents and educate them", says Dahl. FULL ARTICLE @ CNN

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The Top Online Meat Markets

Posted on August 25, 2009

Forbes article august picture FORBES — Aug 25 — Online dating is now a $950M industry and according to Nielsen dating sites snared 27.5M unique visitors in June. Forbes used Nielsen's latest unique-visitor data for June 2009 to rank the 10 most popular dating sites. #1: eHarmony.com, with 4.25M visitors, up 48% YOY. Yahoo Personals came in at #2, with 4.1M uniques, followed by Match.com, with 3.4M. Plentyoffish.com, at #6, boasting 2.2M viewers, nearly double the amount a year ago. Noteworthy is the 91 minutes that an average users spends per visit. "Unlike other dating sites, Plentyoffish relies less on a marketing blitz than on word of mouth from satisfied customers", says founder Markus Frind. In Depth: The 10 Top Online Dating Sites. FULL ARTICLE @ FORBES

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eHarmony Attempts To Cut Off Patent Suit

Posted on August 7, 2009

Eharmony-logo LEGALTIMES — Aug 6 – Last week, eHarmony’s attorneys from Orrick,
Herrington & Sutcliffe asked Judge Paul Friedman at the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia to declare that the company
had not infringed on patents owned by eRecruitment, a job search site
based in the UK. According to the complaint, eHarmony received a letter
dated July 14 asking the company to either shut down its site or pay a
licensing fee for the technology that classifies and indexes users’
personal information. FULL ARTICLE @ BLOG OF LEGAL TIMES

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eHarmony Traffic Down But Membership Up

Posted on August 3, 2009

Eharmony-logo EHARMONY BLOG — Aug 2 – In this week’s Wall Street Journal article, eHarmony notes that site traffic may not correspond to user registrations, which eHarmony says were up 20% in the first five months (January to May). According to comScore the traffic dropped 33.5% from 2.524M in January to 1.826M in May.

The full article was originally published at eHarmony blog, but is no longer available.

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Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied In Knots

Posted on July 29, 2009

Marriage1 WSJ — July 29 — eHarmony has twice commissioned studies from Harris Interactive to estimate its impact on marriages. The first, in 2005, found that 90 people a day married because of the site. The second, in 2007, found that the number had surged to 236. Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on marriages, eHarmony estimated that it could claim credit for 2% of marriages in the U.S. A Match.com media kit claimed that 12 marriages a day trace their roots to the site, but the company now says it's inaccurate. Markus Frind, CEO of PlenyofFish.com, says his site creates 800,000 relationships each year, according to exit interviews with departing members. ~100,000 marriages per year. The only statistic Mr. Frind knows with certainty is the number of members who have self-reported success stories on his site — now ~ 2,000. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ

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Are Online Matches Happier?

Posted on July 22, 2009

Gian Gonzaga ABC4NEWS — July 20 — About 20% of couples meet online. The other more traditional ways include meeting through friends, at school and at work. Dr. Gonzaga is a senior research scientist at eHarmony whose life career is to study the success of online dating. He goes as far as to say he thinks online dating users will have a lower divorce rate in the future than those who meet through other means. Dr. Gonzaga says eHarmony manages to set up 236 marriages a day simply because the survey matches ‘like with like.’ Contrary to the popular adage, the love doctor says, “opposites ‘do’ attract…but then, they attack.”

The full article was originally published at ABC4News, but is no longer available.

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Match.com And eHarmony Choose JAJAH’s IP Platform

Posted on July 16, 2009

Jajah logo nove MARKETWIRE — July 16 — A dating site wishing to offer its members the ability to talk, SMS and leave voice messages for prospective partners, while keeping their personal details private, can do it by connecting into JAJAH's Platform for Dating. The JAJAH Platform for Dating has been implemented by a number of dating sites, including Match.com and eHarmony.

The full article was originally published at Earth Times, but is no longer available.

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Recession Dating

Posted on July 13, 2009

Online-love@(1) 33TV — July 13 — After a long marriage, Alexander Drake is once again dating and in this economy he chose the free site PlentyOfFish.com. "I had zero expectations, but it wasn't worth spending money if it was going to turn out to be something that didn't work for me." It seems the down economy is not hurting dating. Match January membership was up 16% over the same time last year. And from January to May eHarmony saw its registration grow 20% over the same time period last year. eHarmony did a national survey recently and found one if four unmarried men and women want a long term relationship more as a result of the current economic climate.

The full article was originally published at 33TV, but is no longer available.

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