Chemistry.com PR head Tina Couch has left the building. I enjoyed working with Tina and her team on the chemistry.com blog project earlier this year. Best of luck to Tina in her new endeavors.

Think you have what it takes to jump into the battle with eHarmony? Chemistry.com PR Director auditions are now open.

Speaking of PR, this morning I had a good conversation with Allison Clark, the new Senior Manager, Public Relations at Match.com. Kristin Kelly, who had been at Match since 2004, has also exited stage left.

Dating site executives, have your PR, marketing and communications directors subscribe to this blog. Email, RSS feed or plain old bookmark options available.

Is you site doing something that Online Dating Insider readers would find interesting? Send in your press releases and keep those comment coming. Sometimes I get tired of hearing myself talk. What’s on your mind?

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Time Magazine has named eharmony.com one of the top five worst sites on the web. Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.

Personality profiling will be front and center in coming months.

Markus gets it right, the Chemistry.com “Rejected” anti-eHarmony campaign initiated the investigation into eHarmony’s exclusionary practices (if reporters copying what other reporters say without understanding the entire issue is an investigation). Once the media caught wind of the situation and the pile-on began, it was clear that eHarmony lost the battle to Chemistry, but what of the war, because like it or not, that is what the skirmish between the two has become.

(Disclaimer: I have done some work with Chemistry in the past.)

Does anyone else feel like eHarmony has been more focused on hardware upgrades than media relations and PR this year?

There is something to be said about keeping your mouth shut and focusing on taking over a large portion of the online dating market, which eHarmony has accomplished brilliantly in a few short years, leaving the majority of the online dating industry to fight over the precious few daters that pay for the privilege of belonging to a date-warehouse.

“No comment” has always been the party line at eHarmony in regards to the whole pro-Christian/anti-gay allegations. Why open the company to the scrutiny of the media and public when there are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made? The problem for eHarmony now is that they have no choice in the matter. High-powered PR operatives experienced with damage control are in place and certainly putting together a response, be it marketing-focused or in the courts. Make no mistake, eHarmony brought this on themselves. Bringing this courtside would probably do more harm than good for both parties, especially Chemistry, which is the new kid on the block and can’t afford the distraction at such a critical time in the company’s lifecycle.

Eharmony has established itself in the dating market, but at what cost to singles?

Eharmony is certainly going to feel the sting of the Chemistry.com ad campaign, which if they play their cards right, will be worth much more than the $12 million ad campaign which put the “Rejected” ads in front of prime time viewers on shows like The Office.

You have to give it to Chemistry, those ads are compelling, funny and make you think, which is a lot more than I can say for any other online dating ad I’ve seen on tv.Yahoo! Personals France has dome some pretty interesting ads, but those are, a bit too French for the American market.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t matter how many people are on Chemistry or what their test is like. Is it demonstrably more efficient than the eHarmony test? Who knows? I’ve spend time with Helen Fisher, who created the test for Chemistry, and I like her basis for the test, but when it comes to results, the jury is still out.

Food for thought: Imagine how popular eHarmony would be if they came out with a 50-question test for those currently excluded.

Further reading: Time did a piece, Is eHarmony Biased Against Gays? back in June. Or, as usual, Google is your friend.

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Online dating ad spend data from Brandweek’s Kenneth Hein:

• True.com is going to spend $90 million on advertising over the next 12 months. If you think True’s membership doubling in the last 12 months has anything to do with safer dating I’ve got a bridge right here for you.
• Eharmony will up its ad budget as much as 20% this year after spending $117 million in 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Eharmony’s number of unique visitors fell 22% in March.
• Chemistry.com’s “Rejected” ad campaign weighs in at $10 million.

Via Markus.

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Lot’s of attention being paid to the recent Chemistry.com “Rejected” ad campaign, which clearly places eHarmony in Chemsitry’s crosshairs. The media attention is approaching the True.com level, which is to be expected, because let’s face it, besides the retread Living Arts articles about online dating, the media haven’t had much to write about our cozy little industry for quite some time.

Over the weekend I was quoted in the Washington Post in an article about eHarmony stating they have rejected over 1 million people for being, among other things, depressed or gay.

Adam Hanft, in his Huffington Post blog:

I believe that what Chemistry.com has pioneered is the beginning of the next wave of marketing, as companies and brands define themselves in the competitive marketplace by not just how they perform, but their values and belief systems.

Take with a grain of salt, Hanft works for Chemistry.

Adrants says eHarmony Not So Harmonious.

Eharmony blog asks if you agree with eHarmony rejecting people.

AfterElton interviewed Chemistry about the “Still Gay” commercials.

Eharmony’s outside legal council, Lanny J. Davis (who spun the media for President Bill Clinton during his “relationship problems” with Monica Lewinsky), last week asked NBC and People magazine to stop running Chemistry.com’s current ad.

Much like Clinton stumbling over the definition of the word “sexual relations”, Davis is asking Chemistry to add fine print defining the phrase “1 million rejected.”

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A big welcome to SkaDate, the latest sponsor of Online Dating Insider.

I’m in North Carolina working on a new dating site. Last night was a big night out with the client, who knows how to have a good time. Asprin and strong coffee, stat!
The news this week was all about the new Chemistry.com attack ads against eHarmony. I saw the ads during The Office last night, they definitely play differently on a 50″ plasma in the middle of my favorite shows than in a tiny YouTube video. The Chemistry interview has more. My Mate1 interview is on deck, should show up here early next week. Oh, and Lavalife turned 20, happy birthday Double L!

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Jangl on TypePad, and Tagged.com. Jangle is blowing up, is Myspace intergration next?

Microsoft and Match partner. MS to offer Instant Messaging capabilities to Match members. Hopefully this works better than the old Match chat app which was rendered mute by everyone’s pop-up ad blockers.

Chemistry.com: Come as you are.

eharmony chooses Strongmail. Why is most of the recent eHarmony news about it’s technical infrastructure?

Let’s Grab a Drink: What kind of beverage are you?

Classmates.com launches dating service. True is an advertiser, and Yahoo used to be onthe site as well, will they remain on the site?

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Chemistry.com is launching a national TV and print ad campaign that launches the week of April 23rd. Look for ads in People magazine, TV ads on NBC, USA Network, and Bravo starting on April 30th.

Chemistry’s launch was soft as butter. In the past year or so they have been building up the membership base by marketing primarily to people on sister site Match.com.

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Chemistry.com is set to launch a TV campaign that will debut in late April and early May and run for over a month. They also announced a 100% commission structure for affiliates.

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Mark Brooks mentions an email he received from Chemistry.com announcing a Feb 2007 Playboy interview with Dr. Helen Fisher titled Chemical Romance. I’m working with Chemistry to launch a blog for Dr. Fisher, who is responsible for the matching system at Chemistry.com. Helen’s blog is located at helenfisher.typepad.com

I have to say, until recently, I’ve not been a big fan of personality testing on dating sites. Too much of a black box process, who knows if the questions are right, how are the data processed, what are the primary assumptions that dating site tests are built upon?
Unless you have a PhD, you’re at the mercy of the test designers and most people just want to go on a decent date.

Given the nature of the people designing tests for dating sites (secrecy, lack of transparency, no major peer reviews), it’s no wonder we take Yahoo and Eharmony’s matching system at face value, instead focusing on the demographic of available singles in a particular area.

In the post, Helen talks about her experience doing brainscans on people in love, fascinating stuff, and I like the fact that she will continue to develop the questionnaire, instead of publishing it once and being done with it like some other sites.

Dr. James Houran, who created the True.com matching system weighs in, and as always, Fernando Ardenghi weighs in from Argentina with his thoughts on scientific matching.

Scientific matchmaking has a long way to go. Eharmony makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year with their system, but is it the system or the commercials that people respond to?

Maybe Chemistry has built a better system, or some new site will come along with a better mousetrap (Fernando, when are you going to launch a site based on your system?). What I want is to see the report of all these sites in 10 years, then we’ll know which ones are most effective. For now, I’m learning all I can about the different systems and how they work, I knew that Psych 101 course in college was going to be good for something.

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