LA City Beat has a good cover story
on the science of matchmaking, the ethical questions and also does a pretty good job of taking it to eHarmony. It’s thorough with many not-read-before details, highly recommended.
Bullet points:
PerfectMatch matched 250 singles on an episode of Dr. Phil. They clearly understand get how to reach their audience. I’m enthusiastic in the hopes that this type of marketing and promotion will be embraced by other companies.
Ethical questions: Do these sites have an ethical obligation to guarantee that their tests are proven effective?
A full two screen are dedicated to discussing eHarmony, it’s Christian, anti-gay focus and links to Focus on the Family. I get lots of email from people pointing this out, perhaps it will force eHarmony to be more clear in their marketing about they types of people they want on their system. Certainly with all the hype behind the fundamentalist Christians, there won’t be any shortage of members for eHarmony.
Marylyn Warren, the company’s senior vice president, is careful to say that eHarmony is meant for everybody. We do not discriminate in any way. That’s not true and we all know it but that’s what marketing is for. They’ll spin this all day long if they have to until people walk away thinking eHarmony is all about lasting marriages.
PerfectMatch, True, and Yahoo! Personals all offer same-sex matching. And yet Dr. James Houran, chief psychologist of True, says his own research shows that gay couples are not seeking exactly the same things out of a relationship as straight couples.
It just so happens that heterosexual and homosexual couples … certainly agree on the recipe for compatibility, but they don’t agree on the relative amounts of those ingredients.
Houran is adamant that his test is the only truly scientific one on the net. True’s test measures 99 relationship factors to calculate an overall compatibility index score between two members, telling them the likelihood that they will get along. Angered by what he sees as his competitors’ lack of scientific discipline, he’s gone so far as to author an article in The North American Journal of Psychology detailing their failings.
Scroll down until you get to the major differences between the philosophies employed by PerfectMatch, True, and eHarmony. Interesting stuff.
