Here are some screenshots of the new eHarmony questions. If you are an eHarmony user right now, you will see the “New Profile Questions” globe when you log in. It clearly says “Tell us more about your interests. Find out what interests you share with your matches. Note: This information is not used for matching. Thanks to Fernando. If you want to real scoop on eHarmony, ready the unofficial eHarmony Blog.

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I was interviewed extensively for last summer’s HBS Case Study of eHarmony. All my interview output was nixed by eHarmony. I was told to take that as a badge of honor. You can order your copy of the Harvard Business School eHarmony Case Study for $6.95.

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Eharmony continues to receive grief in the wake of it’s launch of a new dating sites. Members protesting the launch of same-sex site Compatible Partners are being denied a refund when trying to unsubscribe.

EHarmony was ordered to pay Eric McKinley, who brought the original suit against the dating company, $5,000 for expenses incurred and time spent on the lawsuit. The matchmaking giant also had to fork over $50,000 to the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights for its administrative expenses, according to the settlement agreement. More here.

Another class action lawsuit against eHarmony for discrimination based on sexual orientation continues to move forward in California. The plaintiffs in that case maintain that eHarmony’s decision to establish a separate site for gays rather than integrate its flagship site, eHarmony.com, amounts to an unlawful “separate but equal” policy and the continued marginalization of gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The California case has been certified as a class action. Press release.

I’ll be talking to eHarmony next week and hope to have additional clarification on the various lawsuits and early feedback on Compatible Partners.

Related posts:

1. IDate News Flashes- eHarmony Lawsuit, Messmo, eFlirtexpert
2. eHarmony Now Compatible With Gays
3. eHarmony Launches Same-Sex Dating Site

Pandora’s box has been opened. Gays weren’t enough, now eHarmony is in the hotseat for not catering to bisexuals. Where is the logical end to the types of people eHarmony must serve. Unhappy polygamists? (thanks to anonymous for this.)

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Eric McKinley, a gay man from New Jersey, sued eHarmony to let him be a member. Just in time for Proposition 8, Eric got his wish. Now gays can meet online, fall in love, and still not get married in most states.

eHarmony, Inc. legal counsel Theodore B. Olson:

Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business, we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the Attorney General since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable,

“Unpredictable” is one way to put it. I think he meant to say, “expensive.”

Eric has won a free year of eHarmony service and $5,000. If he successfully finds a match, he can be featured under the “Diversity” section on the successful relationships area.

As a result of the ruling, eHarmony is about to launch Compatible Parters for gays. I can’t believe they could only get the .net version of the url. Featuring a new website and a logo that looks like it was done in MS Paint, eHarmony now caters to the gay population and is (almost) open for business.

Let me get this, er, straight. Ever since day one, eHarmony has said that their research never took gays into consideration and that their matching system wouldn’t work for gays. Am I the only one that sees the irony here?

New eHarmony FAQ

Q: What happens to my profile now that gays are allowed?

A: Gay profiles are on a completely different website and database. At no time will your straight profile touch a gay one.

Q: What if I need help?

A: Because we don’t understand you, we have hired several gay customer service reps. They understand terms like “fierce” and “bottom” and which back pocket your handkerchief goes in.

I wonder if the eHarmony will have to say that it admits gays in 12 point type on the home page.

Besides advertising in the Advocate, I wonder how much money eHarmony is going to spend marketing to gays? I talked to many, many gay people about this and nobody ever said it bothered them or that they wanted to be a member.

What does this mean for Chemistry.com? What does this mean for the existing eHarmony brand? Will it burnish or harm it? I think it’s going to be a blip on the radar, in terms of revenue and traffic for eHarmony.

I’m glad Compatible People is a new url that we can track traffic separately from eHarmony.com.

Keep an eye out for a new Kathy Griffin monologue.

The Unofficial eHarmony Blog has all the details and links.

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The unofficial eHarmony Blog continues to break great stories. Some of the posts are news oriented, like this post about how eHarmony partners with Yahoo for advertising in Austrailia. Other posts tend to dig deep into how eHarmony functions. Great stuff.

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eHarmony Starts an Open Relationship With AOL

EHarmony begins a partnership with AOL today to share its online dating advice to readers of AOL Personals. AOL users will be able to register for eHarmony’s singles matching service directly from AOL Personals, but in keeping with AOL’s new aggregation format, eHarmony will share the screen with competing services like Match.com.

eHarmony certainly is doing a great job syndicating their dating advice through various channels. People at AOL will read about brushing their teeth before a date, then say, wow, eHarmony, thanks for that advice, here’s $100, go find me my mate. Nice traffic driver and there are reams of generic dating advice to be repurposed out there.

eHarmony’s metrics and methodology behind the “236 marriages a day” claim.
10 things eHarmony 2.0 can copy from Gmail.
eHarmony: 1 billion served.

If you want all the facts about eHarmony, you should be reading the Unofficial eHarmony blog. They are relentless in their coverage, best eHarmony resource out there by far.

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The unofficial eHarmony blog compares my thoughts about eHarmony’s acquisition plans with Mark Brooks. Original Post is here.

Mark Brook says,

Waldorf says eHarmony has pass the minimum requirements for an IPO, but it has no capital needs at present.

Mary.com could be an attractive target for an eHarmony acquisition.

It is possible that eHarmony is hesitant to go public because of its failed foray into social networking businesses.

It’s also possible that eHarmony is lying low because of Chemistry.com’s ad campaign last year.

Dave Evan says,

Going public will be a disastrous move right now.

eHarmony has a strong balance sheet, solid leadership and a fairly clear vision for moving forward.

The Chemistry campaign didn’t perform as well as expected. eHarmony and Chemistry are exactly where they were 12 months ago.

eHarmony has been talking about an IPO for years. Passing the minimum requirements to go public is a long way off from actually ringing the opening bell. I worked with a company a few years ago that had to pull their IPO the night before. There are a million ways an IPO can go south and with yesterday’s Wall Street catastrophe, is an IPO realistic for eHarmony?
The one good thing about an eHarmony IPO is the transparency we would have into their financials. How many paying customers, how long does a customer stick around, how much are they worth? What are the spending on marketing and customer acquisition costs?
One this is for certain, I would love to see the eHarmony prospectus.

There are lots of companies that make sense for eHarmony to acquire. I’m not going to talk about acquisition targets, thats for another post. If eHarmony can afford to acquire companies before an IPO, then what’s the money for? Remember, eHarmony raised $110 million several years ago. Has this money been paid off or are they looking to do that with IPO proceeds? I am not a CFO, but I do have a sense of how the markets view online dating, and with Spark trading at $4.36, what do investors see in eHarmony?
I’d love to hear Mark Brooks chime in on his comment about eHarmony’s association with social networking. Facebook and Myspace make more than eHarmony and they haven’t even figured out their revenue models yet. Where’s the stigma there? If anything, investors see that dating industry growth has plateaued and social networking valuations are off the charts. Case in point, Bebo to AOL for $800 million.
There are a whole slew of Internet companies ready to IPO ahead of eHarmony. If you are an investor, are you going to jump on $10-$15 eHarmony shares on opening day and hope to sell them north of $25 or whatever they end up at? I’m interested to hear what readers think about this. Is eHarmony a good IPO candidate?

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Eharmony is looking for a Data Modeller / Architect.

Perform data design in transactional, reporting and data warehouse database environments accessed by global applications. Supporting several development teams simultaneously, analyze system requirements and data to create logical and physical data models conforming to corporate standards. Create data mappings and specifications for ETL routines, DML for data loads, and creation of Microstrategy universes.

I’ve always wondered if dating site developers inserted undocumented Easter Eggs (hidden feature or message) into their code, so if you, for example, searched for people over 8 feet tall and 900 lbs the search results would say something funny.

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A warm welcome to our new sponsor, Dating Ad Network.
Match closed down their “match studios” service and re-opened it under the name of Match Profile Pro. You can see the ad unit if you go to “edit profile” it’s on the far left hand side of the page. It offers the same things as match studios. Match studios used to cost $40… Match Profile Pro costs $39.99.
Big shout out to Adriana at Lavalife.

I was quoted in the Houston Chronicle talking about Facebook dating applications.

People are tired of shelling out even $10 to $60 per month when they can find dates for free on social networks such as Facebook, according to Dave Evans, a Boston-based social media consultant who writes the blog onlinedatingpost.com. Indeed, Match.com, Yahoo! Personals, True.com and eHarmony have, on average, shed 50 percent of their market share as love seekers have ventured elsewhere, based on figures from Hitwise, a New York City-based Web consulting firm.

Talked to Kelly Brough, CEO of Allegran. Great to learn more about what’s happening with LoopyLove and the UK dating market.
Social dating continues to attract attention. With Sparkbliss, members create and mobilize their private social network for romantic introductions. Each social network consists of trusted friends and family. Profiles and photos are confidential within each social network, as well as identities of persons who receive introductions. Matchmakers are an integral part of Sparkbliss which helps trustworthy people meet trustworthy people.

Look what I found on Facebook. A comparison between myself and Markus Megabucks of PlentyOfFish. No fair, he is in bed with several hotties and I’m goofing around on the beach.
Plentyoffish: Google CTR Down 60%.

Mark Brooks has an article on TechCrunch, Niche Dating Sites Grow Steadily As Mainstream Ones Flail. Misleading sensational headline, typical attention-grabber. Where’s the analysis, all I see is Hitwise stats. Match revenue is up 10% over last year. Not exactly flailing. Casual dating is different from adult dating, I wish people would get this right.
Mark says:

In theory, the perfect dating site would be a single dating site with all the singles on the planet on it…and really, really good search functionality. In reality, it appears that the market is moving in the opposite direction to this perfect model.

People are poking around the edges of the answer, it’s not monolithic and it’s not niche, it’s something else that I can’t talk about, yet.

Like bad boys? Meet an Inmate.

NY times on niche sites, Let’s Say You Want to Date a Hog Farmer.

SpeedDate.com – 26-year-old girl wants to date 300 guys.
Newsweek on eHarmony, An Algorithm for Mr. Right. This article was news three years ago, execept for the legal matters with Chemistry.com. I don’t think Chemistry should be gunning for eHarmony like this.
So what if eHarmony discriminates as long as they are up front about it? Problem is, they haven’t been. Why would gays want to be on eHarmony anyway when there is so much hype about the growth of the gay dating market, and sites like MyPartner (past client.)

Date a Golfer redesigned their site.

My German dating guru told me that last week the first german online speed date website, OWONDA, launched (www.owonda.de). However it’s rather an online dating website with a speed date module and other cool gadgets then a WooMee or Speeddate, which to me makes it special and worth noting.

Current TV segment on dating tips from Cablight.com.

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