True Love for Everyone

An Associated Press article reports the settlement of a class-action suit objecting to eHarmony’s separation of its straight and gay dating services. The company has agreed to link its two services and allow participants to use both websites for one registration fee.
The economic issue here is that of matching in the dating market, which is the purpose of the service, and of price in relation to average cost. Presumably the linkage raises eHarmony’s average cost, although I doubt by very much. As such, I would expect the price of the service to rise slightly for all participants, unless eHarmony had been discriminating in pricing against gays, or straights, before. Bi-sexual people benefit a lot, though: they no longer have to pay double to be registered on both matching services. So this seems like a standard economics example of most people facing a small loss, with a few – bi-sexuals in this case – reaping a substantial gain.