1. John E. on January 25, 2005 10:39 PM writes...

I don't want to be too negative because everyone is a critic, but... I signed up and kicked the tires of plentyoffish and I thinking "Yes, this is really simple and incredibly basic." Then, within two pages of results I'm seeing bait ads and fake profiles. Plus the pictures are all warped and people are allowed to break the layout with obnoxious usernames and the whole thin reeks "unmanaged." Isn't that dangerous, really? A search for women between 18 and 45 within 75 miles of New York City comes up with 562 results. If his 385,000 members represent .9625% of the 40M online dating population one would expect well over 16,000 women in the NYC metro area (Est. 2.9M online singles). 562 is quite a difference! So what is his the real story here? A myriad of unscrupulous profiteering scavengers nipping and biting at the paid profile warehouses, bragging all of the way?!?! Is giving away free membership a genuine token of customer respect or do we measure the respect of the customer by the quality of the site?

2. Stephen Sclafani on January 25, 2005 11:14 PM writes...

You seem to have changed your tune since your reply to Surfer in:

http://www.corante.com/dating/archives/two_new_features_on_matchcom.php

Markus Frind must be very convincing.

3. Dave Evans on January 26, 2005 12:05 PM writes...

It's one thing to read about an obscure site on the net stating near- impossible numbers. It's another to meet the person F2F and get additional perspective. I remain skeptical about the free sites and the traffic and black magic they use to get it. Every site seems to use bait ads. Bank statements and aquisition audit trails would prove the reality of the situation but we'll never see those. My point is to show that certain sites can pull major traffic while others can't approach their numbers, even with funding and a marketing team. Better to improve the user interface and experience with 400k members than have a super-smooth site with 5k members.

4. Insight on January 27, 2005 2:06 PM writes...

It's great his site is doing good. Webdate was on a similar path. I hear they are soon turning to a paid model. They already charge $2.00/monthly for their Mobile Version.

Free works to an extent, and I don't know the statement made about changing the online dating industry are his or just words people put in his mouth.

Either way, an important point that got left out that the free site survives on the money that paid sides spend on advertising. So instead of trying to change the industry, he should really just be hush and encourage dating sites to continue their rampant spending! ;-)

5. Peter L. on January 27, 2005 5:41 PM writes...

I'm a member of pof and I must say that since I joined I have seen the 'explosion' of people who have joined that site. A big difference between pof and a giant like lavalife is that lavalife is a little confusing, especially upon first use. With pof it's quite intuitive and doesn't really require that much effort. When it comes to fake profiles, all dating sites use those... it's not an excuse but to go on a rant about the use of fake profiles on one site like it's the demon of the batch is somewhat rediculous.

6. Jean val jen on February 7, 2005 2:32 AM writes...

This Guy he's amazing how did he rich top ranking in major serach engine and dating sites has too many competitor . I think this year will be plentyoffish year . My friend he just launched free dating website called yum or yuk www.yumoryuk.com , I think he got the coolest name ever .

7. Plentyoffish on February 7, 2005 1:57 PM writes...

"www.yumoryuk.com , I think he got the coolest name ever"

I see you left out the part where he tried to extort money from yukoryum.com and then created a clone site?

"If his 385,000 members represent .9625% of the 40M online dating population one would expect well over 16,000 women in the NYC metro area (Est. 2.9M online singles)."

I never claimed that all my members lived in the USA, or that i had a even distribution of men to women, and a even distribution of members accross the usa.

"Is giving away free membership a genuine token of customer respect or do we measure the respect of the customer by the quality of the site?" and "I'm seeing bait ads and fake profiles"

Depends how you define quality, most dating sites claim they are "free" but it turns out they are just free to signup. Only 10% of users convert to paid and are able send messages & respond, making the other 90% of ads nothing but bait/fake. In the plentyoffish forums people often talk about the massive amounts of spam they get on paid sites from nigerian users and russians pretending to live in the usa trying to scam them. Yahoo americansingles etc do nothing to block them, as it leads to high conversions (they have hot pictures and reply to all emails) Before filtering signups on my site are about 5% of total signups are con artists, scams, escorts, porn sites etc. Major sites have higher rates because once a scam works the scammers just keep coming back in droves.

As for bait ads on plentyoffish, there are none, creating a realistic bait/fake system is a bit much for one person to handel especially the data entry! But this doesn't stop men from signing up and creating fake profiles of women. I suspect less then 500 accounts are "fake". Keep in mind when you have 400,000 users some of them have to be hot!

Plentyoffish at the moment works because the operating costs are still fairly low so advertising can couver it. But if i had to spend anywhere near the million a month match.com and americansingles are spending on hardware/software there is no way i could keep the site free. Each of those sites has around 200 servers. Aff has 500 servers with some costing 200 grand + each.

8. jean val jen on February 12, 2005 11:39 PM writes...

I didn;t know that were a website called yukoryum.com , but if you see yumoryuk.com is diffrent content . the other one is clone to hotornot.com and it's paid membership.
yumoryuk.com is totally free.
but i;m still wondering about plentyoffish.com how much this guy make money per day . propably more than $ 1000 .
what about myspace and friendster these guys are rock.

9. Angelina on April 5, 2005 9:27 PM writes...

I don't know how these free sites survive, but cupidpost is a new free site that just appreared recently. I joined the site and so far it looks pretty good, no fake profiles and annoying advertisements.