Happy Birthday, eHarmony Cracked!

Wow.

This blog is having it's first birthday tomorrow.

And, let me tell you, folks. It's been a wild, and unexpected ride.

Let's take a quick look at how we've started, and where we are today...

When this blog was started, it was meant to be a gift to the pickup artist community. A little secret to be shared between trusted friends. An evolutionary adjustment of technique to adapt to a different method of communication.

Well, the "little secret group" lasted less than a month, after one of our more enthusiastic members began a (small) publicity campaign.

And started a chain reaction of events that I would have never predicted.

The most obvious change? Our membership itself. From a secret cabal of less than 25 invited members, we've grown to a readership of over 2000 unique readers monthly. And we expect to pass the 3000 unique readers benchmark in January.

Aside from our numbers, Quantcast.com paints an interesting picture of us. Here's what I know about you:

• Despite being written from a man's perspective... 45% of our readers are women. And, although I could joke about how interesting it is that women want to read advice on how to pick up other women, they've made our community much more interesting. (And, yes, I've been told that a few people have went around eHarmony and met each other through our Google Group...)
• You're a lot more successful than the average eHarmony (or advice.eharmony.com) user - at least financially. 29% of you make over $100,000 a year, and 60% of you make over $60,000 yearly. And you're also more educated than the average advice.eharmony.com user. Bottom line? People who've been successful in their lives choose my advice over eHarmony's. And that's flattering.
  
• On the down side? A little ethnic diversity would be nice. My readership is 92% cauccasian. If anyone has ideas on how I could make my writing or our group a little more relevant to other cultures... please let me know.

So, how are you doing? It's difficult to say. I get a lot of letters thanking me for what I've done, and quite a few letters telling me about improvements they've made. Perhaps more importantly, I'm seeing a lot of men, previously describing themselves as being "frustrated" with the service becoming happier and more self-confident.

Oh... and eHarmony's made some changes, too. One wise man described the process of change as going in three steps:

• "That's not true."
• "That may be true, but it's not relevant."
• "That's true, but we already knew that."

Before this blog started?

• eHarmony's radio ads trumpeted that you don't have to worry about what you write in your profile.
• They suggested that they were the only certain way for someone to meet the love of their lives.
• Suggested that the solution - for everyone - was to find the "right person", and that the "packaging" should be irrelevant. And that if anyone was doing badly, they just needed more patience.
  

Since that time?

• eHarmony wrote one article saying that pickup technique (particularly the concept of the "avatar") was effective, but deemphasized it's relevance for "relationship-minded" people.
• ... but, soon after writing that article, incorporated the core avatar principle in another article - that a profile can not be a complete statement about who a person is, and that one should be mindful about the initial impression their profile makes.
• They've stopped discouraging people from looking for people outside of the eHarmony service. Advertising started centering around finding someone "you'll love", and less about marriage. And they've even tested ads where they're just promising a good date.

Can I say that these changes were because of my blog? I can't say. But it's an interesting coincidence.

Anyway... thanks for a great year, folks.

Can't wait to see what happens this year.