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Comments 6

1. DMC wrote:

   So that's where our subscriptions go. It lets eHarmony pay market research companies so eHarmony can make unsupportable and unverifiable claims. My goodness!

   Now I have an answer when eHarmony uses this claim in a spiel. Such as when encouraging me to renew my subscription.

   Posted 16 Nov 2008 at 5:38 am ¶
2. Chiolder wrote:

   The study is BS that’s why. I want to see pictures from every wedding this year based on this claim. If they met on EH it would be no big deal to submit the pictures. EH is a money pit.

   Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 5:52 am ¶
3. Rob wrote:

   These people are chronic liars. First of all, they don’t want you to get matched because they make a small fortune off each member – and the longer they stay unmatched, the more money they make. This site was built by a right wing bigot – I strongly encourage you to not support this company.

   Posted 22 Jan 2010 at 6:07 pm ¶
4. Martin wrote:

   Actually, that’s how independent research companies work. Ask any of them about any survey they’ve done, and you’ll get the same kind of response. It doesn’t mean their actual data disagrees with eHarmony’s 236 statistic. It just means that the company runs hundreds of surveys each year and can’t be responsible for what their clients (read eHarmony and other businesses) do with the research results.

   Unless you are talking to one of the actual analysts, it’s unlikely they even have a way to get you the results of the data they gathered for eHarmony, even if they were supposed/allowed to.

   Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 9:21 pm ¶
5. Bytor wrote:

   @Martin: That may be how all the independent research companies work, but that doesn’t make the claims of eHarmony valid. It’s still and uncorroborated and unverifiable because the data is not released. Effectively, the data just doesn’t exist which makes eHarmony’s claim an unsupported assertion.

   In my experience, when investigating marketing claims like this and trying to dig up the data and research methodology you generally get one of two responses:

   1) Yes, we’d love for you to have it!

   2) FOAD.

   The first happens in three cases:

   a) sound data collection methodology results in good data and sound evaluation methodology allows appropriate conclusions to be drawn and the organization wants you to know it

   b) unintentionally shoddy methodologies resulting in either bad data or bad evaluations (often both) but the organization doesn’t have the internal skills to realize this (which was why they hired somebody else) so they still want you know because they think all is good.

   c) sketchy methodologies with sketchy data or sketchy evaluations papered over with some fancy and ambiguous market-speak and the organization knows but they’re hoping you don’t have the skills to notice it.

   As for 2), well, if they essentially tell you to FOAD then the research didn’t give them the answers they wanted so marketing made up the claims out of whole cloth. There’s a smaller possibility that the reports did give them the answers they wanted but somebody internally realized they were crappily done and wouldn’t hold up to inspection.

   Now obviously I don’t know the specifics with eHarmony an not every situation can be generalized like this.

   There is, however, a relevant observation I would like to make.

   I went and got myself a preloaded credit card that I can throw away so I could get subscriptions in order to do some amateur research into dating websites. Nearly every one so far has had a (to me) mind boggling number of obviously fake profiles on them. I’m sure you know the kind I mean. Contact messages with atrocious grammatical mistakes, but not the same kinds of mistakes that even an uneducated native speaker would make, with requests that you contact them at oddly obfuscated email addresses. And they are obviously made from template because you get several nearly identical messages from multiple different “members” every week. Or system-generated matches with profile about-me sections that say they are 21 but the calculated age from the birthday they had to enter to sign up with is 40, or they have have a graduate degree but are making less than $25k per year. Cut and past for your favorite variant.

   It seems to me that the amount fakes/spam profiles is orders of magnitude higher than even what you find on popular web 2.0 “social web” sites like Facebook or Twitter.

   I’ve done web development in the past and am still career IT in network engineering and administration now, so I consider myself knowledgeable in what it takes to both make it difficult in the first place to robo-set up fake accounts on a website and then how to most efficiently deal with the ones that do get through through otherwise. As such I cannot see how the number of spam accounts on these website cannot happen without the collusion of the administrators.

   Either they are creating and running the fake profiles themselves or they are turning a blind eye to phishers creating fake profiles because in either case it generates fake activity and fake matches that keeps the subscribers paying in the hopes they’ll find that special someone. I’m not sure which is more reprehensible.

   It also seems that there is a correlation between the gross amount of fake profiles and how implicit or explicit the casual sex focus is on the website. Off the top of my head, on Adult Friend Finder, Meet Locals and Horny Matches, the dedicated booty call sites, I get an average of 7 contacts per day from obviously fake profiles. On Match.com, Smart Date, eHarmony and eVow it is about 7 per week. Cougar Life, Mate 1 and Christian Mingle (ironically) are both about 14 p week. Contacts from “real” subscribers is about 1 per day on all of them. Of the system-generated matches sent my way, on the sex sites it’s about 80% fake profiles, on the normal one it’s about 10%, and on the half-ways about 30%. Fake profiles discovered when doing searches is roughly the same as found in system generated suggested matches.

   That one pay-for dating site that I hardly encounter spam profiles on? Zoosk. In 16 weeks signed up there (it where I started my research) I have gotten contact messages from fake profiles a total of 3 times, an average of about 0.19 fake contacts with horrible grammar per week. That’s anywhere from 1 to 2 orders of magnitude less than all the rest. This probably has something to do with the fact that when I report a suspicious profile and check back in 24 hours it has always been terminated. The others take anywhere from two weeks to never to remove reported profiles.

   On Plenty of Fish and OK Cupid, two free dating sites, I’ve gotten no contacts from obviously fake profiles and none from system-generated matches, either. I’ve also actually gotten dates from them, too, not from any of the others.

   As I said, this is just amateur “research”. I’ve tried my best to try try and limit the variables like cutting and pasting the same profile essay into each site and sending messages at the same rates on all. My methodologies and assumptions may be flawed, I may very well have been fooled by well crafted fake profiles and I haven’t been recording precise numbers so this is probably more anecdote than data for those of you who understand the difference. In any case I still think it offers valuable insight into the possible corporate thought process behind eHarmony’s claim of 236 marriages per day but not releasing their data and methodology.

   Cheers.

   Posted 28 Dec 2010 at 3:31 am ¶
6. Free Muslim Dating wrote:

   Honestly – who CAN you trust? With each day/week/month/year that passes, the almighty dollar begins to become more and more powerful and everyone now has a price.

   The Government will police it, that is until they’re cut in on whatever the deal is too, at which point all will be declared ‘legit.’

   I long for simplier times but it seems things are only going to get worse.

   Posted 06 Feb 2012 at 8:48 pm ¶

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