EHarmony

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eHarmony.com
Type Private
Founded 2000, Pasadena, California
Headquarters Pasadena, California
Website www.eharmony.com

eHarmony is an online relationship service. eHarmony matches men and women with compatible singles, taking into consideration what it considers key dimensions of personality. In addition to singles matching, eHarmony operates eHarmony Labs, a relationship research facility, and publishes eHarmony Advice, a growing relationship advice site. eHarmony, which was launched on August 22, 2000, is based in Pasadena, CA and has operations in the U.S., Australia and Canada. The company is privately-held, with investors that include Technology Crossover Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Fayez Sarofim & Co.

Contents

History

eHarmony was founded by Neil Clark Warren, PhD, one of the best-known experts on establishing and maintaining healthy relationships.[1] In the late 1990s, after more than 35 years of work as a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor, Warren decided to test his evolving theory that certain characteristics can predict compatibility, and lead to more satisfying relationships. After three years of research, working in collaboration with Dr. Galen Buckwalter, now the Vice President of Research and Development at eHarmony, Warren developed a predictive, scientific model of compatibility that is now the basis of the company’s matching system.[2]

eHarmony launched its matching service for singles in 2000.[3] The company has grown such that, in 2008, about 15,000 people take the eHarmony questionnaire each day[4] and, after finding their match on eHarmony, Harris Interactive reports than an average of 236 eHarmony members marry every day. In addition to the singles matching service, eHarmony operates eHarmony Labs, a relationship research facility, and publishes eHarmony Advice, a growing relationship advice site.[5]

Methodology

At eHarmony, new members complete a questionnaire that determines key characteristics, beliefs, values, emotional health and skills.[6] Sophisticated matching algorithms uses these answers to match members with compatible users.

A user who completes an initial personality analysis survey (essentially a personality test developed by Dr. Galen Buckwalter, Director of Research at eHarmony) may then specify a number of additional criteria, "self selects" by which to create a more accurate potential pool of recommended matches. Among the criteria available for the user's specificity are self selected age range, ethnicity, religious affiliation, geographical vicinity, and maternity/paternity status (children living with/children living away/no children). In conjunction with the 258-question relationship questionnaire, this is how all of the matches are delivered. One significant scoring factor is what may be called the honesty factor. This is a psychological profiling technique designed to score the relative honesty of the respondent. This factor is apparently considered by eHarmony as a significant factor in arriving at a good match. Contrary to many other matchmaking services, the user is not allowed to browse through profiles or choose potential matches themselves, and must rely completely on the eHarmony service itself to arrange potential matches.

Users are not permitted to choose matches based on marriage "experience" (i.e., divorced/widowed) as with other sites. While matches can be presumed to be currently unmarried (as eHarmony only offers matching services to legally single people) there is no option by which a "never-married" user could choose to only receive "never-married" matches, or a widower could request to be matched with a widow, etc.

eHarmony states that for 20%, or 1 in 5 respondents, they are not able to predict with whom the user would best be matched. Such respondents are told that they do not fit "rigid profiles" of personality type.

eHarmony's research methods and its models for compatibility matching have not been submitted to any peer-reviewed journals for evaluation and publication.citation needed However, eHarmony's research director, Dr. Steve Carter, Ph.D. did present a paper at the 2004, 16th annual American Psychological Society (APS) meeting. In the paper presented, Carter compared eHarmony couples married for more than 5 years with a control group, using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), a measure of couple satisfaction. The results purportedly showed that "Over 90% of eHarmony couples had marriage quality scores which were above average when compared to couples who had begun their relationships elsewhere. eHarmony couples were more than twice as likely to be in highly successful marriages than non-eHarmony couples... Not only are eHarmony couples 35% more likely than other married couples to report that they enjoy spending time together, but we found they are nearly twice as likely to report that their marriages are "extremely happy" or better versus other recently married couples." [7] Such an informal presentation should not be confused with peer-reviewed scientific investigation.

eHarmony's selection of a model for statistically choosing the factors to be included in their questionnaires was made using couples who scored in the top quartile of the DAS measure. The use of the DAS to measure outcomes may present a methodological flaw in establishing validity, because the DAS is not independent of eHarmony's models. Using an independent measure of satisfaction would be more convincing. However, eHarmony appears to be the only "matching" service online that has actually conducted either predictive or post hoc research using married couples to create or validate their methods. In fact, this use of empirical data from married couples to create a system for matching singles online is the core of eHarmony's patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,735,568).

Current board of directors

Current executives

Financing history

eHarmony was founded in 2000 with a $3.0 million investment from Fayez Sarofim & Co. and individual investors.[8] In 2004 eHarmony received the fourth largest venture capital infusion of that year from Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures.[9]

Criticism and response
This section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
  • It reads like a review. Tagged since August 2008.
  • It is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. Tagged since July 2008.
  • It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since July 2008.
  • eHarmony does not match gay individuals, and this has led to criticism.[10] Warren responds that he has not done the same amount of research on same-sex match-making as he has done on heterosexual match-making.[10] He also notes that eHarmony is about marriage, and that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states.[10] In a discussion regarding eHarmony's lack of services to gay individuals, the founder is reported as having said, "Where Focus on the Family and a lot of these other places come from is that there are six places in the Bible that say homosexuality is wrong." But then he continued: "On the other hand, in the Old Testament if you work on the Sabbath day and you're guilty then you should be shot."[11] Failure to provide same-sex matching options has prompted a lawsuit claiming that eHarmony has violated California's laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.[12]
  • Some complain the procedure to unsubscribe from the service is unfair or misleading.[13]
  • Various problems relating to the matching mechanism used, such as:[14]
    • Matches cannot be filtered by user-defined criteria. For example users cannot require that all matches contain a picture.
    • The only power the user has is to look at the matches brought up by the matching system and pursue or reject them. Therefore a significant amount of trust in the psychological matching system is needed to justify the service.
    • Inability to tell if that match is actually a paying/active match.
  • After answering a 258 question profile, some would-be customers are rejected without explanation. A public statement from eHarmony claims that the reasons for rejection are usually because of three factors:[15]
    • They are already married (30%);
    • They are under the minimum age of 18 (27%);
    • They provide inconsistent answers during the profile (9%)

References and footnotes

  1. ^ "Dr. Neil Clark Warren". Redbook (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  2. ^ "[www.eharmony.com/about/eharmony About eHarmony]". eHarmony (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  3. ^ "[www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/history/eharmonyhistory.html History of eHarmony]". Online Dating Magazine (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  4. ^ "FastForward: eHarmony". Fortune (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  5. ^ "[www.eharmony.com/about/eharmony About eHarmony]". eHarmony (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  6. ^ "[www.eharmony.com/about/faq About eHarmony]". eHarmony (2008-09-19). Retrieved on 2008-09-19.
  7. ^ eHarmony press release on customer satisfaction study, Mar 15, 2004, results from an in-house clinical survey of former customers. Downloaded 06/05/06.
  8. ^ ""History of eHarmony"". Online Dating Magazine (2008-09-16).
  9. ^ Lee, D. (2004). "Matchmaker site lands $110 million". Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. December 22, 2004.
  10. ^ a b c Kornblum, Janet. "eHarmony: Heart and soul", USA Today, May 18, 2005
  11. ^ [1]
  12. ^ Egelko, Bob (2007-06-01). "EHarmony sued for excluding same-sex matches". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  13. ^ "Consumeraffairs.com eHarmony complaint log complaints lodged since 2004-03-19". Retrieved on 2006-06-05.
  14. ^ NPR/ Fresh Air Interview (ibid) Lists 8.3 million total applicants vs: over 1 million applicants being rejected.
  15. ^ Farhi, Paul (2007-05-13). "They Met Online, but Definitely Didn't Click" D01. The Washington Post. Retrieved on 2007-05-13.

External links

eHarmony's Alternative to Marriage Counseling

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 7 October 2008, at 19:13.

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