Several days ago I blogged on comparison of online dating services, especially, discussing EHarmony in some detail. Here is another blogger’s evaluation of how successful EHarmony is in connecting people who ultimately get married. He believes EHarmony is much less successful than they claim.
http://meditationsonmeaning.com/2006/11/30/the-truth-about-eharmony/
As promised, here is another installment in this series about online dating. Chemistry.com and Perfect Match select matches for you and notify both matches, just as EHarmony does. So you’re relying on their selection criteria. And of course they don’t evaluate on appearance and can’t evaluate on chemistry. You’ll have to winnow down your matches for those things.
Chemistry.com bases its matching in great part on a sort of Myers-Briggs personality inventory, which has been around a long time and is used by lots of people to evaluate personality and how different types get along. I have zero idea whether this is a good basis for matching people.
Perfect Match has its own system that is a bit different than Chemistry’s. You have to answer some practical questions that the Perfect Match people think matter a lot in relationships. One of these areas is money. Similarity in ideas about money may well be very important in marriages. I understand that differences about money are one of the two most significant and common arguments married couples have (the other is sex).
All these services point out that what they are really doing is sending you people that should be good matches, under the skin. They rely on you to pick the ones you find most attractive after that. They say this is better than you browsing to find another person and just being bowled over by that person’s looks, charm, etc., and not realizing that he is incompatible with you in some major ways.
Do these methods work? I don’t think anyone knows. Are they worth a shot? I think so. As I mentioned in my last post, the online services are the only place you can go to find large numbers of single people, especially after college. I think it’s worth it to try Match.com or Yahoo Personals, the largest of the browsing services, and consider trying one of the services that match people, such as EHarmony (especially if you’re a guy, bc this is the only service that has more females than males) or Chemistry.
After your early to mid-twenties, the vast majority of people you know are likely to be engaged, married, or dating someone seriously.
The only other way to meet so many singles is speed-dating. I’ll write another post addressed to speed-dating soon.
