eHarmony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

eHarmony is a venture capital-funded,^[1] personality-oriented matchmaking website. The company advertises through television and the Internet and requires users to complete a detailed compatibility questionnaire.

Contents 1 Founding and Funding 2 eHarmony's "Singles Program" 2.1 Methodology 2.2 Compatibility research 3 eHarmony's "Marriage Program" 4 Criticism and Response 5 References and footnotes 6 External links

[edit] Founding and Funding

eHarmony was co-founded by Neil Clark Warren, PhD and his son-in-law, former commercial real estate developer Greg Forgatch. Forgatch was eHarmony's founding CEO and President, while Warren is its Chairman of the Board. Warren's wife, Marylyn, handled eHarmony's PR for several years, but retired in 2005. Greg Waldorf^[2] is the current CEO, while Greg Steiner is the current President and COO^[3]. The initial site was built by TechEmpower with TechEmpower's CEO, Tony Karrer, acting in a CTO-for-hire capacity. The vision behind the company is not simply to create marriages, but to create happy marriages by using scientific research to unite compatible individuals.^[4] eHarmony's services are selective.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 with $3 million of Series A funding from Fayez Sarofim & Co. and individual investors.^[5] Dr. Warren, an evangelical Christian with strong ties to the conservative Christian community, attributes much of the initial success of eHarmony to its being promoted through James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show.^[6] In 2005 eHarmony sought to distance itself from Dobson and Focus on the Family, largely in an effort to broaden the market share of Warren's books and that of eHarmony according to Warren.^[7] After Warren publicly distanced himself from Focus on the Family and purchased back the copyright from his earlier books from the organization, Dobson told his radio audience on May 26th, 2005, "I introduced Dr. Warren and his books — and eHarmony, more recently — to our listeners specifically because he was and it was decidedly Christian in nature," ... "Dr. Warren is anxious to change that direction. So ... we will go our separate ways ... with reluctance and regret."^[8]

In 2004 eHarmony received the fourth largest venture capital investment of that year from two California-based companies, Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures (Lee, 2004). The investment of $110 million is expected to fund eHarmony's branding process, which includes heavy advertising, and also to provide cash payments to the founders and 114 other individuals associated with the company (Rivlin, 2005). ^{[9] [10]}

[edit] eHarmony's "Singles Program"

[edit] Methodology

eHarmony's services are geared only towards single heterosexuals looking for a long term relationship, these requirements are prominently displayed on their website and described in more detail in the next paragraph. Dr. Warren's goal is to reduce the divorce rate in America to less than 10% (it is estimated to be 40-50%). ^[11] Because of this goal, his website only fully supports match making for single heterosexuals.^{[citation needed]}

The company claims to be the Internet's number one paid matchmaking service based upon marriages per match. It has rather strict limitations, which Dr. Warren states are solely based on over 35 years of research into successful marriages. Factors "which may limit a user from experiencing eHarmony's matchmaking service to the fullest" include: still being married, seeking a same sex partner, three or more previous failed marriages resulting in divorce, and severe depression. These users are immediately disqualified with extended support from the complete profile.^[clarify] eHarmony still extends their community forum, newsletters and customer care to these registrants.

Barring disqualification from the above mentioned criteria, 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.

It is also interesting to note that 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.

[edit] Compatibility research

eHarmony's research methods and its models for compatibility matching have not been submitted to any peer-reviewed journals for evaluation and publication. 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 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." ^[12]

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).

[edit] eHarmony's "Marriage Program"

In early 2006 eHarmony released a new Marriage Program designed to assist married couples to enrich their current relationship, or to try to help rescue marriages that may be in distress. In some ways this program is similar to eHarmony's Singles Program, involving questionnaires concerning communication, romance, sex and other topics. A computerized psychological profiling process is another already familiar aspect of the new Marriage Program. The program also offers a series of 12 online videos offering advice and guidance on various topics related to some of the most common types of marital concerns. The price for eHarmony's 'Marriage Program' ranges between $75 and $239, depending on how many program services may or may not be purchased. The first online video is free.^{[13] [14] [15]}

[edit] Criticism and Response

• A number of customers have complained that even after canceling their accounts, they still receive spam e-mails, and in a few cases, have received actual letters bearing the eHarmony logo at their homes. Naturally customers may not like their families/roommates/neighbors to know that they are subscribing to a "personal and private" dating website.
• Customers are routinely matched with people living great distances away, i.e. a person living in Connecticut may be matched with a person in Nova Scotia. This has been reported even when the "Close distance is very important to me" box is checked when making the initial profile; the secondary setting in the account preferences under "Match Settings" that puts a hard limit on distance is not obvious to all users.
• Customers are routinely matched with people who may not be paying members, therefore would not be able to communicate with the customer.
• Customers have no way of being matched with other members who have children, even though they can request to only be matched to members without children. Calls to the company have confirmed this.
• Consumers have difficulty finding the company's phone number (1-800-263-6133) to speak to a live representative.. The phone number for their headquarters in Pasadena, CA is 1-(626)-795-4814.
• When a consumer speaks to a live person, he/she might feel that he/she gets "canned answers" i.e. "Eharmony is the Number 1 trusted dating website...." The consumer may not feel that any answers are given.
• The procedure to unsubscribe as a paying member is complex and leads to errors or undesired credit card charges. Some complain the procedure is unfair or misleading.^[16]
• Website lists ability to cancel subscription online, but must be called in. Inability to reply to customer service emails, even when instructions tell you to "reply".
• Various problems relating to the matching mechanism used, such as:^[17]
  • 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.
  • Failure to provide same- sex matching options
  • Inability to tell if that match is actually a paying/active match.
• After answering a 258 question profile, they are rejected without explanation. A public statement from eHarmony claims that the reasons for rejection are usually because of three factors:^[18]
  • They are already married (30%);
  • They are under the minimum age of 21 (27%);
  • They provide inconsistent answers during the profile (9%)
• The interface for managing matches is limited. Matches that either party has "closed" (ie rejected) remain in the list until the other party closes them too. Managing matches is more time consuming than necessary. Pictures are only shown on profiles, not in the list. Matches can now be sorted by creation date, name and stage of contact, but not by age, height, personal rating, distance, or any other more useful factors.
• E-harmony will continue to leave your profile on their website for a long period of time after you have asked them to stop your membership. Even if you cancel your membership, you must also turn matches off or you will continue to receive new match emails; even if matching is off, you may still get "nudges" from people you were matched with before you cancelled and turned matching off. The company will not disclose (because they don't want to or don't have the data) the percentage of users who are active (paying) vs. non-active (trial or expired/canceled).

[edit] References and footnotes

[edit] External links

• The official eHarmony Homepage
• The eHarmony contact information page