eHarmony Blog.com

Two days ago Galen Buckwalter, head of R&D of eHarmony, and his team opened the official blog of eHarmony Labs.

Though the posts are about building romantic heterosexual relationships (and nothing else) and may tend to read like “Dear Abby” columns, or moreso, like eHarmony’s newsletters, the blog inevitably reveals the minds of the creators and designers of our favourite dating site. Here’s an excerpt from Buckwalter’s introduction:

eHarmony Labs is, to the best of our knowledge, the first commercially funded research Lab dedicated solely to the study of human relationships. As such we who work with eHarmony Labs feel incredibly fortunate to be working in this commercially funded, applied setting….

This blog is intended for everyone who has more than a passing interest in human relationships. Anyone who posts on this blog is either a relationship scientist (social, clinical or cognitive psychologist) or a scientist in training. There will also be regular contributions from world class scientists who will share their expertise on specific projects. So, you will often get more detail than you would see in a popular magazine and the topics may get a bit esoteric at times. But we promise to keep our readers at the fore of empirical knowledge into the science of human relationships. Read the rest of his post.

Well, Dr. Buckwalter, you can think your Lab is the first, but it isn’t so. The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, funded by the private sector, has been doing much of the research you’re doing since 1942. Or do you mean human relationships in general? — then the American Sociological Association has been publishing research on human-social interactions (the study of human relationships) since 1905, far before you were born. It’s one thing to hear this claim from a fluffed press release, it’s another to hear it from a man of science like you.

Folks, check out their blog — http://blog.eharmonylabs.com/

P.S. Hey, this blog accepts comments! Now people have an official spot to comment about eHarmony, the lack of matches, the lack of responses, neurotic matches, and sneaky 7-day trial periods! Yay! Post away!