Blog #8: Summarize two of today’s articles

Today we read several articles about Internet dating. One article, “Internet Dating 2.0,” was about different Internet dating companies. The most popular ones are EHarmony, Match.com, and Chemistry.com. But I wonder if these are the most popular simply because they spend the most money on advertisement. Could it be possible that they are the most popular, but not necessarily the BEST ones? Well, this article talks a lot about an online dating service called HonestyOnline. I wonder if this is really a site. I’ve never heard of it before, but then I haven’t been in the dating world in over 10 years, so who the heck knows?

A second article, “Is eHarmony Biased Against Gays,” was clearly about gay men and women who apparently would like to use eHarmony but believe it is biased against them. I say that, but I’m not surprised. If I remember correctly, eHarmony is religious based (at least sort of) and the founders of the company base their compatibility matching on marriage. Thus, as the author quoted one of the founders, since same sex marriage is not legal in most states, the dating service is not inclined to provide services to that group of people. The article’s author also pointed out that it is silly to say eHarmony is biased against same sex relationships when sites like ManHunt.com are strictly for gay men. The author asserts that if the argument that eHarmony is biased against gays is legit, then the argument that ManHunt.com is biased against heterosexuals is just as legit. It seems kind of silly to me.

I don’t know how the class thought about these articles. Most students were a little repulsed about the idea of Internet dating. But I thought that was a little goofy too. I polled the class and most of them could say that they had met someone before from a posting on their friend’s FB page or MySpace page. I don’t really see what the difference is, but maybe this is because I met my husband on the Internet through a dating service. I guess I’m just biased.