REVIEW
Plenty of Fish review
According to Hitwise, which measures market data, Plentyoffish.com is the largest online dating site on the internet today. As the name would suggest, there are a lot of fish in this pond. What kind of fish is another matter. Men's profiles tend to be very short, telling you little about your potential mate. Women's profiles vary in length and depth, but for a guy who writes intelligently and is looking for a real relationship, POF can be a goldmine--he won't have a lot of competition. The poor speller ratio is higher than on Match.com, Yahoo Personals and OKCupid combined. The site's traditional base has always been people living in small towns. Because of this, it's not uncommon for men their early 20s looking for a committed relationship to find women 18-25 who already have a child or two.
So why, is POF so popular? For one thing, it was the first free online dating site. Also, if you're just looking to date--or hook up--there's an almost endless array of people.
Technologically, Markus Frind, CEO of the company claims Plentyoffish uses a sophisticated matching system, as many site owners do. But the site's aficionados--some of whom are devotees--agree that POF is a place where you throw your profile in with the rest of the herd. When it comes to potential mates, you have to do the thinning yourself. One user described it as Craigslist with pictures. Its only distinguishing technical feature is designed to appeal to the OCD crowd: the site makes it extremely easy to check up on how often--and when--your date last logged on.
Part of the reason for POF's lack of technological finesse is until July 2008, the company was a one-man show run out of Frind's Vancouver apartment. Until recently, Frind bragged that he worked one hour per day. Even now, the site has only three employees. Not bad for a company that grosses $10 million per year in ad revenues, though it's a shame more of it isn't poured back into improving POF's amateurish look and feel. Inc. magazine described POF as "a designer's nightmare; at once minimalist and inelegant, it looks like something your nephew could have made in an afternoon."
Overall, POF is a very deep pool of potential mates. Unfortunately, too many of them are bottom feeders.
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