eHarmony Blog.comTwo hours ago I got this email from Evernote
and it made me wonder why eHarmony takes months and months to add even small enhancements to the features of the website. I think eHarmony makes more money and has more capital and more employees than Evernote — why is it that eHarmony has been left behind in web technologies? Just curious.
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Tips and tricks: 6 ways how to get a discount in eHarmony 1 minute, 38 seconds agoI understand this feeling as well, however working in the web and technology sector I also know there are large differences in how companies are run, what platforms they are on, and the frustrations and challenges that lie therein.
I also read somewhere that eHarmony has over 12 million members at any given time and that they are running on Oracle.
if you think about the scale of something like that, and then scale out the implications of making a small change (say to the questions, or to the profile section)
you then have to determine if those things roll backwards to old users (if you are adding something) or how you change or modify a score (if you are taking something away).
Those types of database integration and workflow issues can be quite complex though not insurmountable. I do agree though that it does seem as though they take an extraordinary amount of time comparatively.
I currently have my team doing a complete server move, architecture change, one full workflow section of our websight handling hundreds of thousands of assets and ecommerce pieces and we are getting done in less than 6 weeks including QA and regression testing.
My overall thought is that it is a combination of the complexity of their system, probably a small IT and Dev team(they are mainly doing sustainment of the system is my guess) and a reluctance on the Executive team’s part to actually roll out any of the features a lot of us wants.
just my $0.50
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T
eHarmony runs on Java/Oracle, a technology platform over 11 years old. Before, eHarmony used to run on Java/SQL Server.
In 1999, the same time eHarmony was being made, I was part of a dev team making a website on the Java/Oracle platform. Like eHarmony, we didn’t build the site according to an MVC architecture and instead used JavaServer Pages (JSPs) and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). It was the worst development project with which I’ve ever been involved. The site came out four months late, and the eventual code was the most unmaintainable piece of junk I’ve seen. At the time, I justified the mess saying, at least we didn’t use Perl.
Four of us made the site, and, if you asked us to make small changes to it, we ourselves need a few days to do it. What more if you asked somebody else to make the changes? He would need weeks of QA and regression testing.
JSPs and EJBs, by the way, are known until today as one of the most resource-hungry web platforms. Sites built on JSPs and EJBs need more computing power per user compared to other sites.
bubblenix, have a look at the HTML source of a typical dynamic webpage in eHarmony and you’ll see the big mess. A page of theirs produces hundreds of HTML, CSS and Javascript errors.
Read about “lava flow” code, the technical term for the situation.
To answer your question — blame it on the web platform they chose nine years ago… and blame it on eHarmony’s leadership and its obvious reluctance to invest resources to junk the old code and start anew with current technologies.
I love hearing that they continually invest in compatibility science and research. But how can they forget that their product is a website?! They have to invest in website innovation, too.
It’s none of my business, yes, but if I ran the show, instead of hiring 50 more customer service reps to appease confused customers and guide costumers in using the site, I’ll hire 5 programmers to revise the site so that the site is easier-to-use and is self-explanatory. Suppose Microsoft hired more CS reps instead of making Microsoft Office easier to use, would they have market share they have?
My 2 cents,
Pyke
Other things to consider.
- For the most part they also have a dating system that works. You don’t want to through to much new things in at once.
- Watch out for the tech gimicks. eHarmony’s members are older and take longer to jump on the tech bandwagon. As example, features that deal with the iPhone would not make much sense for them since it probably only deals with a small percentage of their members. Plus the iPhone is going to have some heavy competition soon so it may not remain on top for long.
eHarmony’s members are older and thus NEED the site to be as self-explanatory as possible. In your opinion “for the most part it works”, in my opinion its members are as easily confused as headless chickens.
Case in point: The Icebreaker notification email reads like this — note the last line:
Dear Pyke,
Natasha from Springfield, IL has sent you an “Icebreaker.” She said, “Great pic…would love to see more photos!” Just click here to see her profile.
Natasha is eagerly awaiting to hear back from you!
Sincerely,
The eHarmony Team
P.S. Not sure what to do? Get expert tips from eHarmony Advice!
Look at the comments posted on that eHarmony Advice article since April (5 months ago). It’s from dozens of people who thought that posting a comment there is the way to reply to the Icebreaker.
One woman even posted her home phone number there.
I didn’t say it was perfect and in no way do I think it is. I could think of dozens of improvements. But, a good percentage of their members do find someone to date.
The main reason they are probably slow to enhance the site is explained well by Todd and your reeasons as well in regards to their development platform.
The eharmony site employs a lot of CSS2 and AJAX features. It aint Facebook, Google Docs or Yahoo! Mail, but I disagree that they are left behind.
That pages don’t validate is no big deal. All big sites aren’t valid HTML either.
Actually Heather, a lot of big sites that I am familiar with are valid. Check out ESPN at least a month or two ago they were ALL CSS and Valid.
Though I think that is less of the issue here and more to Pyke’s point in that by using old style Java/Oracle (or previously SQL) without doing any form of MVC or truly tiered architecture, componentization and master page types it makes for a system that is quite difficult to not only maintain but to enhance as well.
From my experiences E-teams rarely want to spend the money on Dev making it “better” when it already “works” – even if what works is unscalable.
additionally the end result of all this type of developement and code structure is timelines that are quite long, page errors, and slow performing sites in general.
Also – where do they use AJAX? So far the one place I could see them using it is in the star rating and that seems to be performing a Post action (at least for me and my browser) in such a way that the page loses focus.
Example:
open a profile
click communicate
select a star rating
rating refreshes (appears to do a full post back or at least a div refresh)
click send questions
click send questions AGAIN because the default form element=Button has lost its ID association .
Anyway – I’d love to be incorrect here and I *am* curious as I think there are cool things about eHarmony or I wouldn’t be there – I’d just love to see them enhance a few things.
BTW – two things slightly on topic.
1) got pinged to do a survey for them last week – however forgot to mention the biggest thing that kills me which are the dead or inactive profiles that fill our matches.
2) I would LOVE an iPhone app.
–
T
From my experiences E-teams rarely want to spend the money on Dev making it “better” when it already “works” – even if what works is unscalable.
Watch when the company goes public.
When the company goes public? What, with there 90′s Web 1.0 dating site and there spectacularly failed advise community? This is there public offering? I’ve got a formerly inflated Scooby Doo raft suck off the coast of Florida that’s more viable than this.
… and a PR crisis because they reject gays and anyone it deems as square pegs for their round holes. Hahaha. I think that’s eharmonyblog’s point.
Jewel, I’d like more information about that Scooby Doo raft. Will it hold 119 users? I think we’re going to need it.
tW
Here’s what eHarmony should do:
1. Don’t advertise on TV/radio one day of the week (say Wednesday) for one year.
2. Use the $25 million gained to build an eHarmony 2.0 from the ground up.
3. Use open source software like PHP, MySQL — I don’t know what else.
4. Here are the specs of eHarmony 2.0
* Web 2.0-whatever
* Multilingual and internationalized
* Workflow-based, i.e., “Welcome back, bubblenix, here are your tasks for today.”
* Integrate thoroughly with the advice community site
* Context-sensitive help
* Instructional videos
* etc.
(Who are they) 
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