eHarmony Offers Relationship 'e-therapy'

UPI -- Feb 5 -- eHarmonyLabs launched Monday as an interactive relationship advice service that offers everything but the leather couch to users seeking help to build lasting bonds with their significant others.  eHarmonyLabs is run by a scientific advisory board of sociologists, neurologists and human relationship experts who offer advice on all aspects of relationships. Since its initial launch in 2000, eHarmony has built a membership of more than 12 million. David Card, a Jupiter Research analyst, said the online dating industry made $650 million from personals in 2006, and predicts $700 million in 2007, and nearly $1 billion by 2011. With ~0 million subscribers in 2006, the industry continues to grow at a healthy pace.

Mark Brooks: In order for eHarmony to continue to be able to command premium memberships it needs to be perceived as being the company doing the most research on relationships, and make it's team of researchers more public.  eHarmonyLabs will help eHarmony  stay one step ahead of the likes of Chemistry.com. The Jupiter numbers have been adjusted upwards since the 'slow period' in 2005 when Jupiter predicted the industry would reach $623 million by 2009.

Comments

[James Houran]

Hi Mark,

I am skeptical that this move will help eHarmony in any substantial way. The academic community has consistently bashed eHarmony for its lack of scientific evidence or rigor regarding its "test" or matching algorithm. In fact, eHarmony's own data reveal that its major premise -- similarity is better -- is not the best predictor of relationship quality. The more eHarmony attempts to publicize its "authority" in the compatibility domain, the more academics will (and are) hitting back with their legitimate criticisms of the company's claims and methodologies.

Thanks,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine

[Fernando Ardenghi]

"eHarmonyLabs will help eHarmony stay one step ahead of the likes of Chemistry.com"

I had read at http://advice.eharmony.com/newsletter/volume60/didyouknow-0107.htm

"Even more important, though, is the consistent finding that similarity is related to relationship success (e.g., Acitelli, Kenny, & Weiner, 2001). And even though people are attracted to similar others on many different attributes, some factors are more important than others when it comes to relationship quality. Research shows that it's not similarity in values or political beliefs that's important, but similarity in personality (Luo & Klohnen, 2005) and emotions (Anderson, Keltner, & John, 2003) that makes a difference in romantic relationships. Studies from our own eHarmony Labs researcher, Dr. Gian Gonzaga, show that couples who grow more similar in personality and emotions over time become more satisfied as well (Gonzaga, Campos, & Bradbury, in press). "

I could not read the paper "Similarity, convergence, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples" yet.
Will be very interesting to see how they calculate "similarity" in personality traits and emotions (if it is only a linear regression equation).

Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]