From The Atlantic: How Do I Love Thee

eHarmony is celebrating its 8 year anniversary in two days. I figure it’s great to read and look back at how eHarmony started. I haven’t written about the following The Atlantic article yet (because it was dated March 2006, before this blog began), so I think it’s good reading for the occasion. Happy Anniversary, eHarmony! Thank you for everything.

How Do I Love Thee?

by Lori Gottlieb, The Atlantic, March 2006.

A growing number of Internet dating sites are relying on academic researchers to develop a new science of attraction. A firsthand report from the front lines of an unprecedented social experiment

I’d been sitting in Dr. Neil Clark Warren’s office for less than fifteen minutes when he told me he had a guy for me. It wasn’t surprising that the avuncular seventy-one-year-old founder of eHarmony.com, one of the nation’s most popular online dating services, had matchmaking on his mind. The odd thing was that he was eager to hook me up without having seen my eHarmony personality profile.

I’d come to the eHarmony headquarters in Pasadena, California, in early October to learn more about the site’s “scientifically proven” and patented Compatibility Matching System. Apparently, the science wasn’t working for me. The day before, after I’d taken the company’s exhaustive (and exhausting) 436-question personality survey, the computer informed me that of the approximately 9 million eHarmony members, more than 40 percent of whom are men, I had zero matches. Not just in my city, state, region, or country, but in the entire world. So Warren, who looks like Orville Redenbacher and speaks with the folksy cadence of Garrison Keillor, suggested setting me up with one of his company’s advisory board members, whom he described as brilliant, Jewish, and thirty-eight years old. According to Warren, this board member, like me, might have trouble finding a match on eHarmony. Read more

Do you think the company changed directions since when this article was written? Did it adapt to the times? Has it gotten better? Is there a difference between being a subscriber in 2006 and being one in 2008? Share your experience with us in the comments area.