Category Archives: General Thoughts

eHarmony – The Business of Online Dating

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In August, I had a friend who felt I was “too good a person” not to have found a partner in my life and pretty much strong-armed me to join eHarmony. I completed the complex personality questionnaire with her at my shoulder and then balked at paying the sixty dollar monthly subscription fee, considering my current employment situation. After all, the ads do promise that I can see my matches for free. However, what was available to be seen was just words, the descriptive answers in the member’s profile, as photos are blocked as well as the ability to communicate with the matched members. Even though eHarmony’s advertising is not very upfront about this, it seemed reasonable in order to justify the subscription fee for full membership. Then some of the women reached out to me, sending me a smile or a selection of five questions to initiate contact. I felt it was only proper to respond, but discovered that no communication included responses. Naively, I expected at the time that these paying members would receive some indication that I would not be able to respond at the time since I was not a paying member.

During the next few weeks, I kept receiving daily notifications of new matches, averaging five to seven a day. Then, I received a promotional e-mail offering a three-month-for-one deal. I signed up for the deal and started to go through the 100+ matches I had already accumulated. I felt compelled to start by responding to the women who had reached out to me with initial five questions. This led to five meet-and-greet dates over the next several weeks, providing me with a couple of new Facebook friends, but the “One” was not in these dates. Among the initial group of women who had reached out to me, I was disappointed that the guided communication with the most promising match suddenly stopped in process without reaching the meet-and-greet stage. I was still getting the daily five to seven new matches during this time and now had well over 200 matches. It was time for me to choose from this group and reach out to a few of these matches. There was no way that I could even consider sending a smile to every match in the ever growing pool, but I suddenly had no luck in getting any response from the few I chose to send a smile or an initial set of five questions.

After getting several new matches from profiles that had not been active for over a month, plus a few that were obviously phony, I realized that a portion of my matches were with non-paying members who would never be able to communicate with me. I also realized that no profile contained any indication to a paying member on whether that profile was open to communication or not. I went back to the profile of the promising match that suddenly ended and realized that all of her communication to me occurred during the Labor Day weekend which had been promoted as a free communication period for all members. As soon as the promotion ended, her communication ended with me. This meant she was likely a non-paying member, perhaps a new member signing up for a free trial. Even though I was now paying for the service of finding and connecting with women, I was cut off from completing a connection with a very positive match because she was not a paying member and we could not complete the guided communication over a three day free weekend.

What I began to wonder was what percentage of my matches were members who had just signed up for free or had gone inactive. There was no way to determine this, but the sudden inability to get any responses from my initial communications made it seem likely that this percentage was substantial. I felt like I was part of a roulette game which had been partially rigged by the House. There was no way I could put a chip on every number on the table, but many of the numbers were already foregone losers. The point is I was paying expressly for a service that was being undercut by the business model. I was paying more to be an ad for eHarmony than to find that special connection. I truly suspect that the best ratio of paying communicable matches was when I first joined for free and decreased gradually up to the time my three month reduced fee subscription ended. Since I determined not to extend my subscription, I wanted to be sure that my profile would not be used to bait-and-switch another trial member. I changed my membership settings to not receive any more new matches and then added in the additional information section of my profile for my current matches that I was no longer a paying subscriber able to communicate or respond to any initial outreach. I did add that if anyone wanted to know more about me, I could be found by searching for Legacy Discovered on Amazon.com. If I was being used to promote eHarmony to others, I felt I should be able to put in a little self-promotion of my own.

The Gathering – A Christmas Favorite

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Every Christmas season, I make time for an annual viewing of movie holiday classics among the multitude of new offerings presented by Lifetime, ABC Family and Hallmark Channel. Many would recognize the classics in my DVD collection – It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, The Apartment. However, I have one favorite standard in my collection that may not be as well-known, The Gathering. For years, I had to be content with watching it on the VHS recording I had made when it aired on PBS over twenty years ago. Last year, it was finally released on DVD and I was able to retire the VHS tape to the recycle bin.

The Gathering was a 1977 TV holiday movie that won the Emmy for Outstanding Special. Edward Asner stars as Adam Thornton, a gruff, stubborn business owner who is separated from his wife and estranged from his four grown-up children. As the movie opens, he has just been informed that he has only weeks to live. He realizes that he needs to rebuild the relationships with his children, so he goes to see his wife, Kate, portrayed by Maureen Stapleton, to get their addresses or some means of communicating with them. Despite his attempt to display normalcy, she instantly realizes that something is wrong and confronts him, forcing him to confess his medical condition. She declares that they together will invite the children back home for a Thornton family Christmas. Will they come and give their father a chance at redemption and reconciliation? Since this is a warm holiday movie, we already know the answer to this, but it goes to the power of the story that we become so emotionally invested in the process.

During my years with Disney ABC, I was fortunate to meet and interact with many well-known actors and television personalities while producing satellite interview tours and interview junkets. It was during one of these satellite tours that I had a chance to meet Ed Asner. I told him that The Gathering was one of my favorite Christmas movies and his first response was “Great script by James Poe.” His comment went to the essence of what makes this movie so great. This was a writer’s vehicle, a well-structured story with wonderful dialogue. It weaves the individual tales of each relationship into a redemptive drama about the rebuilding of a family.

Pride and Prejudice

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In Legacy Discovered, I used references to classic literature that reflected themes within my novel. I had read many of the referenced works, but one classic I had not read was Pride and Prejudice. My use of Jane Austen’s classic as a high school English assignment for Sue was based upon my general knowledge of the book’s story and themes. However, after I published Legacy Discovered, I felt I should take the time to read Pride and Prejudice for myself, so I downloaded the free e-book. Last week, I had time to finally read this literary romance classic.

In order to read and understand Pride and Prejudice, the reader must consider the social and historical environment at the time it was written. In order to project refinement and social bearing within mid-nineteenth century English society, conversation and narration was less direct and presented very grammatically and more subtly with a polite surfeit of words to please modern English teachers. For the LOL generation, this is TMI for attention-challenged minds. However, for those willing to look under the puffery language, Pride and Prejudice is a light, yet thoughtful story about a woman, Elizabeth Bennet, who is the second oldest in a family of five daughters, whose mother is very intent on finding suitable – read higher social class – husbands for them. But Elizabeth is too proud and honest, brutally so, to play the game her mother expects her and her sisters to play. Elizabeth attracts the attention of a well-to-do reserved gentleman, Mr. Darcy, which she determines to be arrogant.  Stories about Darcy that she later hears from a suave regiment officer just reinforces her prejudices toward him. It is only when Darcy gains the courage to express his intentions and gets an earful on his perceived shortcomings, that he begins to show her just how wrong she was about him. The plot has become a standard in many romantic comedies since, which is why it deserves its reputation as a classic in English literature.

Creating Holiday Cards

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I mailed my holiday cards today. Everybody has their favorite traditions for the Christmas season and mine is to create my own cards for my family, friends and associates. When I first started making my own cards years ago, I painted unique designs on watercolor sheets and wrote individual messages inside the folded sheets. However, computer technology has greatly improved the process, especially when my mailing list grew to cover an expanding directory of business associates . Basically, I would select an appropriate photo from my travels in the previous year, compose a poetic message for the interior and use the creative tools of Photoshop and Microsoft Word to build the theme for the year. A recipient database in Excel and mail merge made sure each card was personalized. It is an annual labor of love.

The one thing I will not totally give over to technology is the replacement of the physical card with the trend towards the virtual card. I think there is nothing so personal as feeling and viewing the work of art in your hand, then slowly opening the card up to read the original poetry inside. So my close friends and family will receive their personalized cards inside envelopes through the US Postal Service. However, a single frame image of the card will be posted on Facebook so my ever-growing sphere of social media friends will get to enjoy my annual creative endeavor.

Opening Lines

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When I first decided to write and self-publish a novel, I thought that if I told the story well, a few likes from my Facebook friends, a few good reviews from some book sites and some impulse purchases from Amazon.com readers would allow me to sit back and focus on writing the next book. However, I have learned that the social media-connected world requires authors to have a blog in order to reach out and promote themselves to today’s readers. So here I am, opening myself to the world, ready to make a few observations. I hope I live up to the readers’ expectations.