eHarmony; Dr Warren's Story

BELLA ONLINE -- Feb 1 -- In 1995 Dr. Neil Clark Warren, moved his counseling practice to a new office in Pasadena. Much of his time was consumed with creating materials to teach people how they could have a better marriage. One day while talking with his son-in-law Greg Forgatch, he told him about a study he had done in which he asked 100 married couples to tell him what makes a great marriage.  His son-in-law asked him had he ever thought of creating a service for singles based on that kind of information?  FULL STORY @ BELLAONLINE

Mark Brooks: Dr Warren started eHarmony.  Greg is the CEO now.  PerfectMatch and True are direct competitors and are branding on their personality profiling.

Comments

[Dave Evans]

Not true, PerfectMatch is branding on their supposed 60/40 female/male ratio and True brands on their background checks if anything.

[Mark Brooks]

The first thing on the www.True.com website...

"With the only truly scientific compatibility test online, we'll measure 99 relationship factors to help you find your most compatible match."

And the President mentioned on the executives panel at the internet dating convention in January that he thought the background checking marketing differentiator would last another 6 months max.

Reason #1 - It would seem True is losing their battle to pass regulation to get online dating sites to prominently post whether or not they do background checks. Two states have voted against the bill so far. I didn't think it would get traction. But it was a brilliant PR idea.

Reason #2 - SafeDate and myriad other background checking companies are touting their services to online dating companies so a perhaps a few other online dating companies will copy True's background checking feature shortly.

As regards PerfectMatch...male female ratios aren't mentioned on their home page. They brand solely on profiling. They put one press release out in 2004 about their favorable ratios.

[Dave Evans]

Next line on home page is background checks. Line after that is about prosecuting married people. Agreed that's a short term market differentiator. The larger market for ID verification is chat, by orders of magnitude. No wonder all their email communications these days focus on women chatting free, no credit card required, 7-day free trials, etc. Most TRUE employees wonder how long they're going to have jobs, I would guess that TRUE has 6 months to go unless they get another cash infusion. James Houran, Ph.D at TRUE does more to promote their matching system on my blog than their own marketing team. Wait until the Match print and TV and Yahoo! radio spots kick in, it's going to be a real battle next quarter. I'll say it again, nobody picks a dating service based on search features.
More at http://www.corante.com/dating/archives/perfectmatch_vs_eharmony.php.

Agreed, brilliant PR, but then again they're still probably at 25k paying subs so perhaps not.

Tier one date warehouses are 2-3 months away from implementing ID verification.

Did you see that PerfectMatch is doing something with Dr. Phil? They are really nailing the marcomm effort. Magazines, celebrity endorsements, tv shows, smart.