Eharmony Compatible Partners
Mar 31, 2009 The actual Compatible Partners works pretty much the same as eHarmony and, that might be a problem. Compatible Partners uses the same Patented Compatibility Matching System. As stated on the homepage: The Company's patented Compatibility Matching System was developed on the basis of research involving married heterosexual couples.
- Jun 18, 2013 Compatible Partners is the only gay dating service with the World’s First Patented Compatibility-Based Matching System. That means we match you with singles on serious dimensions that go beyond.
- EHarmony never wanted to open Compatible Partners but as specified in the terms of a settlement in November 2008, they must open a dating site for gay people by the end of this month. We have been told that the site will work like eHarmony's current site which involves a long profile questionnaire to help in the matching process.
- Age distribution. Compatible Partners has members from 18 years to over 65 years old. The majority of users on this platform are between 25 and 35, which is the ripe phase for marriage. You can find members as old as 65 years, and these too can be very good dating partners.
eHarmony & Compatible Partners
I just saw my sister-in-law Alice and Brother-in-law Erwin over the Christmas Holiday. They were one of those internet couples. Specifically they met on eHarmony. When I heard that my sister-in-law was putting her profile up on e-harmony I was a little skeptical. Its not that I had anything against e-Harmony, but I honestly didn’t understand why people couldn’t meet someone in person. I got over it, especially when I thought more about the way Americans do relationships nowadays and juxtaposed that to the arranged marriages of different culture and previous generations.
A few months ago I heard that Eric McKinley was suing eHarmony because they did not have provisions for those seeking for same sex relationships. I flippantly dismissed the issue and went on with life, until I read a CNN article reporting that eHarmony had settled for $50,000 and was to start a same-sex site called Compatible Partners before March 31st.
I am a little perplexed by all of this. I can comprehend the desire for the LGBT community to want to have an online relationship service. However, I don’t understand why eHarmony felt the need to back off of their previous stance of being a heterosexual site. eHarmony is private company, it has the right to market towards certain individuals and not to others. It is not discriminating the LGBT community, it is not set up for the LGBT community. eHarmony creating another cite for the LGBT community is like forcing dockers into making jeans for the “typical” African-American body-types – I as well as several of my African-American friends can’t wear dockers our legs are too big. That is just not who they market to or whose bodies fit into those jeans.
Originally, eHarmony had deep connections to Focus on the Family, and Warren attributes much of eHarmony’s initial success to its promotion on the daily radio broadcast of Focus on the Family. However as eHarmony grew, Warren parted ways with Focus on the Family. In 2005, Warren stopped utilizing Dobson’s radio show and bought back rights to three of his books — Finding the Love of Your Life, Make Anger Your Ally, and Learning to Live with the Love of Your Life — originally published by Focus on the Family.
My thought is that is that Warren, who I believe is a Christian, realizes that there will be a large market in the LGBT community – there is nothing as good as this for the LGBT community. His profit motive is perhaps greater than his personal beliefs (perhaps his beliefs have changed).
I observe this and ask , what does this all mean? Can a group change a private institution? Lets say higher education. Can I sue Hollins or Spelman because they do not except men? It honestly makes me worried about what will and won’t be legislated. Will a Christian secondary school or College be forced to higher someone of different values (be they homosexual or something else)? I wouldn’t expect to be hired by an organization like the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood and I believe that those groups have the right to do that.
I think this is wrong, backwards and unjust. If our private institutions – of various types – can be regulated so strictly, why allow there to be private institutions? The government can support both private and public institutions. Even ones that are ideologically in conflict. Isn’t that essential to diversity?
While I am an advocate for the rights of the LGBT community and believe that they have been treated unjustly in the past I also think that managing freedom is complicated – in my mind, there is technically such thing as 100% freedom. Beliefs will be in conflict, people will disagree, even deeply. The United States is not a mono-ideological nation. We have to seriously acknowledge that and live with those ramifications.
It hasn't all been a honeymoon, but after 16 years in the business, Dr. Neil Clark Warren is still committed to helping people find love.
Warren is the 81-year-old cofounder and current CEO of online dating site eHarmony.
The site, which bills itself as a place for finding deep love that leads to marriage, first launched in August 2000. Warren, who retired in 2007, came out of retirement in 2012 to help 'turn around' the company.
Earlier this week, I sat down with Warren -- his wife, Marylyn, of 57 years by his side -- to talk about the rough patches, the competition, and of course, the highlights.
Gay marriage
In 2005, the company was sued for discrimination of same-sex couples. To settle a lawsuit, eHarmony in 2009 launched Compatible Partners, a site for gay and lesbian singles.
When it did so, Warren says 350,000 of its members fled eHarmony out of principle. The company originally started as a Christian dating site and Warren himself is an evangelical.
'We've suffered from the contentiousness of that topic,' Warren said, who added that it wasn't about being anti-gay.
'We didn't want to pretend to be experts on gay and lesbian couples,' said Warren. 'We're not anti-gay at all ...It's a different match.'
Warren says the company -- which uses its patented algorithm to connect people based on 29 dimensions of compatibility -- is now seeing success in matching up gay and lesbian singles on Compatible Partners.
Eharmony
'We've had quite a number of same-sex marriages,' he said.
The company says it has matched 2 million couples that have led to marriages. And according to Warren, they're beating the marriage odds.
A new era for Internet dating
Warren said that a survey of 20,000 of its married couples found that just 3.9% have gotten divorced (compared to 6.9% of U.S. marriages.)
EHarmony has roughly 770,000 active users who are paying anywhere from $9.95 to $59.95 per month depending on the length of the plan. (That doesn't include numbers of its Compatible Partners service.)
But Warren said they're continually trying to improve: 'Our job is becoming harder.'
That's not because there is more competition. In fact, Warren doesn't see the onslaught of dating apps as threats to his business. 'We don't discourage people from Tinder,' he said, adding that apps like Tinder are primarily used for dating and hooking up -- not marriage.
Rather, connecting people is becoming harder because 'people are becoming more complex.'
That's a result of our increasingly wired world, said Warren, who worked as a clinical psychologist for 35 years before starting eHarmony with his son-in-law.
'The more complex you are, the harder it is to find someone with broad-based compatibility,' he said. 'Oh my gosh, we have a team of roughly 20 people working every day to improve our matching algorithm.'
(They're also working on a career site to apply their secret sauce to the job search).
Warren said one of the biggest things he tells people is not to hurry: It could take as many as five years to find 'that person' using his site.
But it'll be worth it: 'We encourage people not to settle.'