My response rate on Match.com back when I was on it in 2002 was exactly zero. I probably sent out 25-30 e-mails, and I wasn’t sending out form letters. Not even a wink or a nudge or whatever it’s called. Other people I’ve known on Match had a similarly bad response rate, so I’m surprised you’re getting responses at all…I guess somebody has to be succeeding on it.
I’ve argued eHarmony was better in the early days, when it wasn’t as outwardly preachy (yes, I know it was launched by a super-Christian, but even though I openly stated that I was agnostic I had no trouble getting matches), and you couldn’t see your correspondent’s picture until you’d had three “contacts” with them. I’m probably the only person on earth who would argue the latter, but I thought it worked well to get to know someone a little before you learned what they looked like. Usually it was a nice surprise. I had two meh dates, one friendly date, and one almost-relationship from my time on eHarmony in 2002-03. In general I thought the concept of eHarmony was a good one, if the application was bad.
I’ve heard though that recently eHarmony is only pretending to match people on personality traits. There are many anecdotes out there of people who do not fill out even a single personality question who get flooded with matches, or people in the same town with very different personalities who all get exactly the same matches. I’m beginning to wonder if eHarmony is going to exist in a couple years, frankly. It’s significantly more expensive than Match.com and it’s not appreciably better any more, at least if those reports are accurate.
True dat. I mean, what they do is not a bad thing. But they charge a premium for something that any 5-year old could put together, and its not even a particularly well designed Web2.0 experience.
I’ve met up with several people off of match, and talked to several more besides (winks, emails, etc.) I think as in life, it’s all a matter of realism. Most of the people who started a profile are in a different place in their lives than when they started it. Many more just aren’t that into you. You simply keep at it, interfacing until you find folks that are.
Obviously, it’s very different men vs. women. Men write hundreds of emails. Women respond to around 1/100th of them. Just the way it is, really.
I get a about 7 matches from them every day. It mostly seems like match.com, only with only the “here are you new matches!” enabled and searching disabled. Seems clunky. But then, I know lots of people who have found significant others via eharmony, so it can’t be all bad. I have a feeling it’s really more suited to the 40+ set than people my age.
Former eHarmony user here, now dating a woman I was matched with on the site.
For me, the appeal of eHarmony was its simplicity. I knew folks were there strictly to find dates, which is not necessarily the case on free sites. I didn’t have to go searching through pages and pages of profiles and send out tons of correspondence hoping for one of two responses; I was able to focus on just a few conversations at once. Yes, some days I’d be frustrated when I’d log on and find that I had zero interest in any of my matches, but that’s the price you pay for having a computer force-feed you profiles. I figured that since people were willing to pony up the cash, there was a greater chance of them taking the whole selection process seriously.
And yes, the matching algorithm is largely B.S. In my experience, it seems to place a high emphasis on matching folks of similar age, ethnicity, and/or religious beliefs with some minor factors such as your answers to the various personality questions thrown in for good measure. The match rating/feedback system lets you have some vague control over future matches, but not to any substantial degree.
The nature of the eHarmony system forces you to give people a chance, I think. When you only get a few matches a day, you tend to open up communication more often. Unless there is something glaringly off-putting about the person’s profile, you’re going to send a message and respond to a match’s message. Why not, what else are you going to do on the site that day? You can’t get more matches. Most of the time, the responses you get match your impressions of the person’s profile for better or worse. But once in awhile, there are pleasant surprises, surprises you might not have experienced if you had simply passed on someone because their profile was unremarkable.
Why would you cite this as evidence that it is largely B.S.? It seems to me, empirically, that more couples are formed with similar ages, ethnicities, and religious beliefs but fairly divergent personalities than vice versa. Interestingly, black rabbit specifically mentioned age and religion as qualities he was concerned about, and not any personality factors. And he was also critical of matching algorithms. Maybe the demographics actually are better predictors than whether you are both outgoing or curious or detail-oriented.
It could well be the case that demographics are better predictors. But eHarmony makes a big deal of its “Compatibility Matching System”. It asks you a god-awfully long sheet of questions that are supposed to ferret out your true personality characteristics and then claims to match you based on “29 Dimensions of personality.” Obviously, I don’t actually know what’s going on behind the curtain and I’m just one data point. But it just strikes me as a bit disingenuous to make you jump through all these hoops if the system is basically just doing demographics matching, as it felt like from my personal experiences.
Eh, I’ve never had any luck ith any of them, though okcupid is the only one I’ve used with any regularity.
I seem to get a decent amount of responses from the messages I send (I’d say 60-70%,) but for some reason, every woman so far has just stopped returning messages. I don’t even get to the “maybe I’ll ask for a date” point.
But that’s precisely the point. I don’t need a puffed up “scientician” with a magic psychological profile to tell me that this or that person is similar in age to me, or even that I’m a slob and they’re a neat freak. They really play up their matching system whereas I can’t see any evidence that it’s doing anything special whatsoever. Match and okcupid let you search by all the same relevant categories.
I have several female friends who are currently using match or eHarmony to look for dates/partners.
From what they say, match is better than it was when I used it (2003-04) and no longer seems to have the buggy search it had then, but it certainly isn’t the women’s market it was when I used it. Two of my friends have only had a small handful of dates from it and they are attractive, successful women, though both over 40. They aren’t getting the huge numbers of messages women used to get. I think that the ratios may well be closer to 50/50 these days.
eHarmony doesn’t seem as aggressively religious as it did but one of my friends reported a disturbing story: she and two of HER friends, all in the same town, all joined eHarmony and all of them got identical matches. They are quite different people. I have to wonder how much of the personality matching is a scam.
None of my friends use okcupid as they all feel they are too “old” for it at >30 years of age. Too, they are turned off by the profiles they have seen on there. I never used it, myself. I did have success with lavalife but then I wasn’t looking for a relationship…heh.
I do get the sense that okcupid is very much a 20s/30s scene. And there are definately some of goofy profiles, goths, things like poly couples thrown in there. But I’ve met a lot of extremely normal, down to earth women as well.
But ok, match and eharmony still have a market (well, and things like J-date): how do all the second-tier pay sites stay in operation? Onion personals/Nerve/etc. Does anyone here use or even pay money to these sites, and why?
I had a friend recommend that I try okcupid. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, and based on these two comments I’m wondering whether I should bother, since I’m in my mid-50s.