PlentyofFish

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Plenty of Fish
Type Private
Founded 2003
Headquarters Vancouver, Canada
Key people Markus Frind, Founder and CEO
Industry Internet
Revenue $10 million USD[1] (2008 estimated)
Employees 4[2]
Website www.plentyoffish.com

PlentyofFish is a free online dating site, popular primarily in Canada, the UK, Australia and the United States. [3] Unlike many popular online dating websites the service is free to use and generates revenue through advertising.[4]

However, PlentyofFish has added a paying function to their site: paid users are now labeled as "Serious" members, and unpaid users are encouraged to pay. The site generates more than $5 million a year[dated info] from ads that appear with user profiles.[5]

The founder is Markus Frind (born 1974).[6]

Contents

[edit] History

Markus Frind, CEO and Founder of PlentyofFish Media Inc., graduated in 1999 from British Columbia Institute of Technology with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology.[7] Over the next few years, he worked for several dot.com companies as the number of them in Vancouver began to wane. Markus ended up working at a company as a website and database administrator where he found and fixed errors.[8]

In 2003, Frind had to learn ASP.NET and to better learn the language, he built a dating website. The free dating website quickly grew in Canada and then spread, via word of mouth, to the U.K., Australia, and the United States.[9] To keep the site free, Plentyoffish began using AdSense to generate revenue. The first cheque arrived in July 2003 and was for $1,100 USD.[10]

In 2004, PlentyofFish became a full-time business for Frind.[11] He ran the site independently until 2007, when he began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters.[12]

[edit] Staff

PlentyofFish employs three customer service staff members [2] and relies heavily on volunteers to monitor their forums and sort through the 50,000 new photos that come in each day.[13]

[edit] Features

Photographs may be added by members if they choose. Other members can flag any photograph that is not clear or contains inappropriate content. There are a rating system in place similar to that on the site HOTorNOT and a chat room feature. The extensive forum discussion group allows members to discuss their dating experiences and organize local events with other singles.[14]

An Adobe Flash-based instant messaging client was provided by Userplane, but the feature was removed in April 2009, with Frind stating that adding the IM system had been "by far the biggest strategic mistake [he'd] made with the site".[15]

[edit] Technical details

The website uses the following technology:[16]

[edit] Statistics

  • Registered users: 11,000,000[17]
  • Dating site ranking in the UK: 1 (Comscore June 2008)[18]
  • Dating site ranking in Canada: 1 (Comscore June 2008)[18]
  • U.S. overall site ranking: 82 (Hitwise, June 2007)[19]
  • U.S site by market share: 2, with 10.64% of the market (Hitwise, February 2008)[20]
  • Number of page views a day: 30+ million (August 2007)[9][unreliable source?]
  • Google AdSense earner ranking: 1 (May 2007)[21][unreliable source?]
  • North American Daily Visits: 36,825,000 (Comscore June 2008)[18]
  • UK Daily Visits: 8,025,000 (Comscore June 2008)[18]

[edit] Awards

PEER 1's PlentyofFish.com video customer story won three bronze awards in the Video categories of Infomercial, How-To/Instructional and Comedy at the Telly Awards.[22]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gomes, Lee (2008). "PlentyofFish Owner Has the Perfect Bait for a Huge Success". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117987775136211487.html. Retrieved on 2007-05-23. 
  2. ^ a b "How Plentyoffish Conquered Online Dating". Inc.com. 2009. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-03. 
  3. ^ "‘‘PlentyOfFish.com How one man beat the big guys’’ at ARCast.TV". http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=331501. Retrieved on August 3 2007. 
  4. ^ "‘‘Plenty of Fish Fact Sheet’’ at POF". http://www.plentyoffish.com/about_facts.aspx. Retrieved on February 3 2009. 
  5. ^ Surridge, Grant (2007). "Kingdom of the Online Cupids". The National Post. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=0e18c4f6-9880-4e0e-9349-64424e372b70&k=30784. Retrieved on 2007-07-28. 
  6. ^ "‘‘OPW Interview - PlentyofFish-CEO Markus Frind’’ at Online Personals Watch". http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/02/online_personal_1.html. Retrieved on February 21 2006. 
  7. ^ "School of Computing and Academic Studies: Computer Systems Technology". B.C. Institute of Technology. http://www.bcit.ca/cas/cst/. Retrieved on 2007-12-09. 
  8. ^ "About the Team". PlentyofFish. http://www.plentyoffish.com/about_team.aspx. Retrieved on 2007-12-09. 
  9. ^ a b "ARCast.TV - PlentyOfFish.com How one man beat the big guys". Channel 9. 2007. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=331501. Retrieved on 2007-08-03. 
  10. ^ "The new Internet millionaires". http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=6ea70f26-747a-45b2-a111-671de5b398d8&k=44884. Retrieved on 2008-03-09. 
  11. ^ Lehman, Michael (2007). "IIS Show #10 - PlentyofFish.com and IIS 6 = Plenty of performance". Channel 9. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=300230. Retrieved on 2007-04-12. 
  12. ^ Chafkin, Max (January/February 2009). "And the Money Comes Rolling In". Inc.. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in_Printer_Friendly.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-21. 
  13. ^ "From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year". The New York Times. 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?_r=3&ex=1357880400&en=9a69f05cdc551c11&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Retrieved on 2008-01-18. 
  14. ^ "PlentyofFish Forums". Plenty of Fish. http://forums.plentyoffish.com/. Retrieved on 2007-08-28. 
  15. ^ Frind, Markus (2009). "No more IM...". The Paradigm Shift, PlentyOfFish Blog. http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/no-more-im/. Retrieved on 2009-06-05. 
  16. ^ Frind, Markus (2007). "Looking for 3 Senior Software Developers.". PlentyOfFish Blog. http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/looking-for-3-senior-software-developers/. Retrieved on 2007-12-09. 
  17. ^ "From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year". The New York Times. 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?_r=3&ex=1357880400&en=9a69f05cdc551c11&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Retrieved on 2008-01-18. 
  18. ^ a b c d "Plentyoffish Has Plenty of Users: Top Dating Site in US and UK". Mashable. 2008. http://mashable.com/2008/07/29/plentyoffish-us-uk-comscore/. Retrieved on 2008-07-29. 
  19. ^ Surridge, Grant (2007). "Making money making dates". The National Post. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=61afd33c-cff9-4770-9c13-98ee55ca170d&k=27530. Retrieved on 2007-07-20. 
  20. ^ Albo, Bonny (2008). "Top Five U.S. Dating Sites by Market Share". About.com. http://dating.about.com/b/2008/02/18/top-five-us-dating-sites-by-market-share.htm. Retrieved on 2008-06-24. 
  21. ^ "Largest Google AdSense Checks plentyoffish earns 901k per month, and digg earns 250k per month". Dewitts Media. 2007. http://www.dewittsmedia.com/seo-blogs/search-engines-seo/largest-google-adsense-checks-plentyoffish-earns-901k-per-month-and-digg-earns-250k-per-month/. Retrieved on 2007-05-10. 
  22. ^ "PEER 1 Wins Telly Awards For PlentyofFish Testimonial Video". Online Personals Watch. 2008. http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/2008/05/peer-1-wins-tel.html. Retrieved on 2008-05-20. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlentyofFish"
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