There have been several studies that claim e-dating, at best, offers no improvement in creating marriages that are stable over time. This wouldn't be a surprise as the science of how people pick each other is far from settled and appears to be complex. Whatever model used to create an algorithmic approach is not going to work perfectly - or even close to it. The question is how good is it relative to normal methods.
The NY Times has a piece on eHarmony's chief scientist defending their approach at a meeting for psychologists. What is described appears to be much to simplistic to describe the real world, but perhaps it is good enough to match or beat conventional matchmaking and dating - and perhaps not. This could be settled with more openness and enough money to study it. If eHarmoney was right, such a study would be great for their advertising. If they were wrong -- well.....
I suspect that such services are often used out of frustration - the basic problem of meeting people can be replaced by a flood of candidates. Probably a good business to be in once the pool of candidates is large enough.
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