Plenty of Fish
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PlentyofFish is a popular social networking and online dating service boasting that "Plentyoffish.com is larger than all other free dating sites combined!" The site uses individual member locations and message filters to determine viewable profile matches between people. The site was ranked as the #2 most visited personals site by Alexa Internet as of May 2006; with similar traffic levels to major pay sites like Lavalife, eHarmony and JDate. (It should be noted that these sites each average roughly one quarter the traffic of Match.com, the category leader.)
About
PlentyofFish is primarily a free internet dating service that attempts to differentiate itself from other online services (such as eHarmony or Match.com) in a number of ways.
Primarily, it does so by being a free. Its entire revenue is based on Google advertising and its staff is limited to two people, the creator and his girlfriend with a few volunteer forum moderators. It was reported in the media that creator of the site, Marcus Frind, makes about $10,000 from advertisements displayed on his site. The service was created by Markus Frind and copyrighted by Plentyoffish Media INC. His reason for beginning a site is "I created this dating site because I was sick of seeing faceless corporations prey on people looking for love. In my mind finding love is not about handing over a monthly fee to some dating site that only cares about making sure you stay another month to pay them again".
Aside from being free, the site is constantly changing based on member feedback. Its main focus is allowing members to meet with the type of people they have selected; they feature a member "filter" for messaging. Using this feature allows members to block messages from individuals or even whole groups of other users they aren't interested in.
Auto-filter woes
As this is an OPEN source database, one cannot expect every entry on Wiki to consist of 100% praise and boast while comparing oneself to one's competitors. Wouldn't that would be biased/advertising?
Plentyoffish users FREQUENTLY complain that their accounts are being deleted for reasons unknown to them(*). POF's moderators have explained that routine maintenance wipes out accounts using known proxy servers, anonymous surfing services but sometimes legitimate users as well. In some cases, entire IP scopes are blocked to the dismay of members. In other cases there seems to be no justifiable reason for accounts being deleted.
Note that all of the POF messages provided as citations from actual POF users, and the corresponding TinyURL link were deleted from POF within 10 hours of my posting the links here.
- Yup... happens all the time. Account deletion for no apparent reason - It's happened three times to me, and they provide no responses or answers , despite numerous enquiries. It's rather hard to be able to count on a site that's so unprofessional. For my money, I'd rather pay a few dollars and have some confidence that my developing relationships with people aren't just erased.