...eHarmony Final Paper December 15, 2010 If you are single and looking for long-term love, eHarmony.com Inc. wants to find you the "perfect mate." With traditional values and modern matchmaking possibilities, eHarmony.com has taken the electronic dating scene by storm. eHarmony has united more than 10,000 couples in marriage in its short history and, during 2008, had more than seven million registered users. Background In 2000, eHarmony was founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren an evangelical Christian who worked for 30 years as a psychologist specializing in counseling married couples. He also authored two books, “Finding the Love of Your Life” and “Date…or Soul Mate?”, the former selling over one million copies. After a successful career of counseling married couples and research into marital problems, he came to one solid conclusion. In his biography on eHarmony’s website he states, “In almost every case, these were two persons who should never have married each other! They really didn’t belong together. They thought they did, but they were not well matched”. From there, he identified 29 dimensions that he found were consistently present in successful marriages. Dr. Warren found online dating as an opportunity to take his match making theories to a new level. eHarmony’s competitive advantage is that it established its credibility by using a scientifically developed questionnaire based on Dr. Warren’s 29 dimensions. The questionnaire does not...
Words: 4650 - Pages: 19
...eHarmony If you are single and looking for long-term love, eHarmony.com Inc. wants to find you the "perfect mate." With traditional values and modern matchmaking possibilities, eHarmony.com has taken the electronic dating scene by storm. eHarmony has united more than 10,000 couples in marriage in its short history and, during 2008, had more than seven million registered users. Background In 2000, eHarmony was founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren an evangelical Christian who worked for 30 years as a psychologist specializing in counseling married couples. He also authored two books, “Finding the Love of Your Life” and “Date…or Soul Mate?”, the former selling over one million copies. After a successful career of counseling married couples and research into marital problems, he came to one solid conclusion. In his biography on eHarmony’s website he states, “In almost every case, these were two persons who should never have married each other! They really didn’t belong together. They thought they did, but they were not well matched”. From there, he identified 29 dimensions that he found were consistently present in successful marriages. Dr. Warren found online dating as an opportunity to take his match making theories to a new level. eHarmony’s competitive advantage is that it established its credibility by using a scientifically developed questionnaire based on Dr. Warren’s 29 dimensions. The questionnaire does not just ask for personal hobbies and interests...
Words: 4684 - Pages: 19
...sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1529100612436522 http://pspi.sagepub.com Eli J. Finkel1, Paul W. Eastwick2, Benjamin R. Karney3, Harry T. Reis4, and Susan Sprecher5 1 Northwestern University; 2Texas A&M University; 3University of California, Los Angeles; University of Rochester; and 5Illinois State University 4 Summary Online dating sites frequently claim that they have fundamentally altered the dating landscape for the better. This article employs psychological science to examine (a) whether online dating is fundamentally different from conventional offline dating and (b) whether online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating. The answer to the first question (uniqueness) is yes, and the answer to the second question (superiority) is yes and no. To understand how online dating fundamentally differs from conventional offline dating and the circumstances under which online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating, we consider the three major services online dating sites offer: access, communication, and matching. Access refers to users’ exposure to and opportunity to evaluate potential romantic partners they are otherwise unlikely to encounter. Communication refers to users’ opportunity to use various forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to interact with specific potential partners through the dating site before meeting face-to-face. Matching refers to a...
Words: 59050 - Pages: 237