The short-lived eHarmony site Jazzed is closing its doors on Sept. 18, 2012. The eHarmony attempt at launching a Match.com-like less serious dating site wasn’t able to make enough of it to remain a viable ongoing concern. Jazzed was questionable a bet that eHarmony had to make, even though they knew it would probably lose. I’m not surprised that eHarmony couldn’t make Jazzed work. Its not in their corporate DNA and brand to be like Match. They did have some great people on the project, I hope they get reassigned somewhere in the org where they can do some good. The good news is few people have heard of Jazzed and its unlikely that the eHarmony brand will be tarnished by the demise of the service.
Last year Jazzed launched a photo-sharing app and was featured in a dating television show. Thats all I really heard about the service. At the time I was seeing around 100k/month visitors. Chemistry.com spent 10’s of millions in advertising to show up on peoples radars. I think its safe to say that Jazzed didn’t spend anywhere near that that.
Someone needs to pull the add mentioning Jazzed off the eHarmony site.
Look how eHarmony’s Match-battler Jazzed started out hot (top graph) and after the usual pre-Valentine’s day ad spend increase never really went anywhere. Compare this to Ourtime, the new over-50 dating site run by Match-owned People Media. My post on OurTime by far has the most comments of any post on this blog.
Traffic featuring sawtooth characteristics verses a picture-perfect ramp-up to Valentine’s Day without the summer hangover. Data from Compete, not perfect, just showing the general traffic trends that I’m seeing.
Lets take a look at the underbelly and more complicated legal aspects of what happens when a dating site shuts down.
Any data associated with your account will be deleted shortly after the closure, provided that we may archive certain information for record keeping integrity, fraud prevention, enforcement of our terms, or to the extent it relates to a pending dispute.
I think most people would agree that the Shut-down FAQ is unclear and fairly ominous. Lets parse this. Your account will be deleted shortly after the closure. Exactly how long is “shortly”? Deleted but archived: Data cannot be deleted *and* archived, either its gone or its sitting on a hard drive, so which is it? Enforcement of terms: How can you enforce terms after a site is shut down? Wait, what does “closure” mean?
What exactly is going to happen to my profile? Will the url remain active, or is it being sold to another company? Are they just taking the database offline? Merging free members in the eHarmony database? Selling profiles to competitors?
By posting information or content to any profile pages, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Jazzed and its users, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully-paid, worldwide license to use, reproduce, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such information and content, and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sub-licenses of the foregoing.
Sounds like they can do just about anything they want with your profile. I’d like to see someone “publicly perform” my profile.
What are these pending disputes? The only issue I’m aware of is that it was a lackluster dating site that never had a chance because it was treated like a bastard son and never given enough love to flourish. Probably billing arguments, just like at OurTime and any other dating site.
Singles should read the Terms of Service payments section and review their credit card bill each and every month. Dating sites should stop with the BS billing practices.One does anything for an, ahem, the other does anything for a buck.
In order to extract some final cash from members on their way out the door, eHarmony has a limited-time special offer (for everyone?), eHarmony: $9.95/mo. for 3 months. Use promo code JAZZEDEH. I would love to see what the take rate on this offer is.
Last year, eHarmony also launched Premier, for a one-time payment of $503.40. I wonder how that is going?
Dr. Neil Clark Warren is back at eHarmony and the company is acting like Google when Larry Page came back – executive changes, shutting down unprofitable services and 33 open staff positions.
