Tuesday, June 4, 2013
eHarmony: We're Number One For Online Marriages
Looking to not just find a date, but a spouse? It looks like Santa Monica-based eHarmony might be the place to go. eHarmony said that it ranks number one in terms of the number of marriage created by an online dating site, based on a scientific study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). eHarmony said that it had the largest number of marriages surveyed who met via online dating, with 25.04% of marriages. eHarmony also said the study was tops in terms of marital satisfaction, as well as the lowest in terms of divorce and separation.
The study is somewhat unusual--in technology hype terms, at least--in that the numbers come from a highly regarded scientific journal, the PNAS. The scientific study studied the marital satisfaction and break ups from both on-line and off-line dating. The study found that about 45% of online marriages came from online dating sites; interestingly enough, even online multiplayer games have spawned marriages, with 3.59% of marriages in the survey from online gaming. eHarmony led the number of marriages for dating sites, but was closely followed by Match.com (24.34% of marriages). Yahoo had 7.21% of marriages, and PlentyOfFish just 5.71%.
One interesting tidbit of information that eHarmony did not point out in the study, but is striking, is that people who met through online services--particularly eHarmony--had much higher martial satisfaction than people who met offline. The study's authors speculated this either was because people disclose more information online before dating, or also maybe because of the effectiveness of the algorithms dating sites use to match up potential dates.