eHarmony

eharmony was founded by Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist, with his son-in-law, Greg Forgatch. Warren and Forgatch created Neil Clark Warren & Associates, a seminar company, in 1995. The company eventually became the dating website eharmony. During its initial four years, the website was developed by TechEmpower.

The service was financed with a $3 million investment from Fayez Sarofim & Co. and individual investors. eharmony was launched in 2000, making it the first algorithm-based dating site. Between 2000 and 2010, about 33 million members used the service. As of 2008, about 15,000 people were taking the eharmony questionnaire each day. Harris Interactive said in 2010 that after finding a match on eharmony, an average of 542 eharmony members in the United States marry every day.

eharmony has been profitable since 2004. In 2009, eharmony's cumulative revenue exceeded $1.0 billion while their annual revenue was about $250 million. As of 2012, eharmony had 14 percent of the U.S. dating-services market.

In July 2012, Neil Clark Warren came out of retirement to become chief executive officer. Warren closed unprofitable international operations, switched advertisers, made changes to the board, and bought back stock from Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. eharmony featured in the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where the namesake protagonist speaks to a personal counselor at the company. In 2017, it was reported that eharmony had about 750,000 paid subscribers and 10 million active users, which was about the same as it had been in 2012. Warren left the company again in July 2016.

In 2016, eharmony announced their questionnaire would now be optional for users. By 2017, the questionnaire consisted of 150 questions, down from 450 questions.

In 2018, German mass media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media purchased eharmony via their Nucom ecommerce division (a joint venture of ProSiebenSat and private equity firm General Atlantic).

In 2020, the parent company ParshipMeet Group was formed to manage eharmony, Parship and The Meet Group, after the acquisition of The Meet Group by ProSiebenSat.1 Media.

Criticism over claims

A 2012 analysis of dating websites by Scientific American stated that eharmony, along with other algorithm-based dating sites, had not yet provided members of the scientific community with information about their matching algorithm which could be used to vet their claims about their algorithms being scientifically based.

In 2014, eharmony was criticized by the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau over claims the company had made about their rates of success. This occurred after Match.com challenged claims made by eharmony about the two companies' relative success.

In 2018, the Advertising Standards Authority stated that an eharmony ad which included the lines, "It's time science had a go at love", and "Imagine being able to stack the odds of finding lasting love entirely in your favor", was misleading. When the ASA asked for evidence supporting eharmony's claims that their scientifically proven matching system increases the odds of finding love, eharmony was not able to provide any. The ASA subsequently banned advertisements that claimed the use of a scientifically proven matching system. eharmony publicly disagreed with the ASA but said it would work with them to clarify its advertising.