A reader wrote yesterday to inform me that my previous blog entry was short-sighted and just plain wrong! He wrote:
“To say that current technologies don’t provide a step up from the laborious and awkward real world meeting processes is short sighted and just plain wrong. On eHarmony, for instance, tens of thousands of people a year successfully find a marriage partner via the computer. What do you say to that?” – Anonymous
November 30th, 2006
Dear Anonymous,
Before we get into the math, let’s introduce eHarmony to those of us who don’t yet know about its unique characteristics: eHarmony runs an online dating site for people interested in one thing – marriage. The company matches members based on “29 Key Dimensions of Compatibility” which are determined on the basis of 430 attributes that are filled out by each of its members.
The hour or so that it takes to fill out the required 430 attributes certainly hasn’t scared away many potential members. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people join eHarmony each day, adding to the company’s already strong base of over 12 million members. Of those members, roughly 24% have been willing to pay $49.95 monthly or $249.95 yearly for access to their proprietary matches (which, by the way, garners eHarmony a sh**load of profit).
According to eHarmony’s founder, Neil Clark Warren, the company is the best in the business! And he backs up his claim with real numbers: “90 eHarmony members get married every single day,” he says.
That works out to an astounding 32,850 eHarmony members married each year – more marriages, by far, than are attributed to any other dating sites… and enough marriages, perhaps, to convert even the most ardent doubters of the “meaningful connection” capabilities of current online technologies…
Well, not enough marriages to convert readers of this blog… at least, not yet! We know that 32,850 married members each year belong in eHarmony’s win column. But we don’t yet know what number belongs in its loss column. And we haven’t yet compared eHarmony’s stated marriage success rate with the marriage success rate of the U.S. singles population.
So let’s do the math:
· 45 marriages on eHarmony a day * 2 members per marriage = 90 married members per day.
· 90 married members per day * 365 days in a year = 32,850 married eHarmony members a year.
· 32,850 married eHarmony members a year / 12,000,000 eHarmony members = 0.274% of eHarmony members married per year (or 2.7 per 1000).
· Not bad…. if you’ve previously been looking for love in a space shuttle. The percentage of single people in the US who got hitched in 2004 (the most recent marriage census available) was 0.399%, (roughly 4 per 1000).
eHarmony members are paying high fees for the opportunity to use the latest available “matching” technologies. In reality, they are paying for a 0.274% chance of getting hitched with another eHarmony member in any given year. That’s 1/3 worse than the success rate of the U.S. singles population!
Now I know what you’re thinking, Anonymous: “How is it that dozens of PhD’s – whose full-time job is to get this stuff right – can get it so wrong? And how is it that U.S. singles overall – many of whom aren’t actively looking for a partner – can have a higher marriage rate than that of eHarmony members – all of whom have an expressed interest in finding marriage partners?
These are good questions, Anonymous, and I’m excited about finding answers together in these next few blog entries.
Best Regards,
Dan
