PlentyofFish Press

100+ Million Monthly Logins

 THE PARADIGM SHIFT - Feb 25 - We just passed 105 million monthly logins this month,  and we have up to 380,000 emails an hour sent between users. All this growth caused us to take the site down last night and move much of our core database onto a Ramsan 620.  

The latest comscore numbers show we are bigger than all of Match.com and meetic properties combined worldwide. The biggest problem we now face is how do we bring more users to online dating? Its no longer enough to take marketshare from others. What would your strategy be?

Match, eHarmony And PlentyofFish Target UK Dating Market

TIMES ONLINE UK - Feb 14 – Facing a stagnant US online dating market, the top US dating sites are focusing more efforts in the UK. Comscore has reported a 1% drop in the global dating market, but the UK is showing a strong 16% growth. Match.com and eHarmony.com, each with a reported 20 million members, dominate the estimated £1 billion a year matchmaking business in the paid site space. PlentyofFish.com holds the crown for the free dating space, attracting 933,000 visitors in Britain last month alone. eHarmony added 130,000 new UK members in January, bringing their subscriber base to 800,000. Match.com has long been established in the UK and boasts roughly 6.5 million members. FULL ARTICLE @ TIMES ONLINE

Make It Personal, Keep It Real - Experts Share Advice

LA TIMES - Feb 14 - "Keep profiles brief and specific. Leave the novel at home. Don't put pictures of you and your pets or children. Don't post party photos."
— Julie Spira, author of Cyber-DatingExpert.com and the book "The Perils of Cyber-Dating"

"It's great when people put five or 10 pictures of themselves that depict things they love to do, pictures that communicate your personality. It's about making it personal [with] adjectives, interests, descriptions and honesty."
— Bob Holden, EHarmony's VP North America

"You should always have one close-up to the face. Post three to five photos. Also run 50 or so through HotorNot.com [and let people vote] for which ones score the best."
— Mark Brooks, editor at OnlinePersonalsWatch.com

"Get a friend to help you write it.  Be honest about who you are and what you're looking for."
— Greg Liberman, president and COO, Spark Networks

"If you start on a date with a picture from 10 years ago and you've gained 10 pounds or if you have a lot less hair now, you're starting on false assumptions. Your profile should be three paragraphs. It should be a conversation piece."
— Whitney Casey, Match.com's relationship expert and author of the book "The Man Plan."

"The more someone knows about you, the less they want to date you. If you write a massive essay, they're going to find something to dislike about that person. If you don't know something, everyone assumes you're the same as them. Let everything else come out during the dates."
— Markus Frind, founder/CEO of PlentyofFish.com.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

Finding The Right Online Dating Service

LA TIMES - Feb 14 - Piper Jaffray Investment Research predicted U.S. spending on online dating would reach $1.7 billion annually by 2013, and $1.2 billion was spent in 2008. The Internet is essentially the world's largest bar, explains Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch. The first step is figuring out which nightspot is for you: There are those with no cover charges, PlentyofFish and OKCupid, and hookup spots Fling.com and OnlineBootyCall.com. There are "theme nights" geared toward particular interests, such as BikerPlanet.com, and "neighborhood watering holes" based on religion or culture, such as JDate or AsiaFriendFinder. There's comfort in name recognition from eHarmony and Match. Or get a yenta through eLove.com.

"One of our more popular sites as of late is DateaCougar.com," says Stephen Ventura, VP of First Beat Media, which owns GothScene.com, BikerPlanet.com, FitnessDates.com and others.  Want a dash of romance with your social networking? Brooks says to look to Zoosk. It syncs with a users' Facebook's profile page. Spark's Kizmeet is attempting something similar. Still, Brooks says it's unlikely that social networking sites will kill the online dating market. "If people are anonymous, people tend to be more aggressive and more outspoken," he says. "On an Internet dating site, if you want to cut somebody off, you can easily. When you're on a social network, you have to be [polite] because their friends are watching."

Match.com's mobile members alone grew 250% from 2008 to 2009, says Whitney Casey, Match's relationship expert. Industry experts Brooks and CyberDatingExpert.com's, Julie Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare. "I'm looking forward to people using Internet dating on the iPad," Brooks adds. "You can look up a profile very easily on that format. The iPhone is still a phone." Spira says to look to webcam dating sites, Speeddate.com or WooMe.com. Hitwise reports that visits to free dating sites like PlentyofFish rose 19% over the previous year.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

In World Of Online Flirting, Virtual Gifts Are Big Business

MIAMI HERALD - Feb 12 - Virtual gifts have become a $1 billion industry in the U.S. and $5 billion worldwide. Snap Interactive runs the Facebook app. "Are You Interested?'' which introduced a gift store two months ago. CEO Clifford Lerner said the app. is raking in "a couple thousand dollars a day'' just from gift purchases starting at $1.25 for a heart, to $20 for a picture of an engagement ring or gold bricks. "We've actually seen that the higher cost of some of these gifts, the more we actually sell,'' Lerner said. "If a girl is not interested in a guy, and she sees he spent $20, she's probably going to respond. And that's worth it to the guy, just to get a response.'' Mark Brooks, a social media and Internet dating consultant, has seen companies recently introduce new features like virtual goods or mobile dating services. As the online dating space becomes more saturated, finding extra revenue is more important. "It's more difficult to get started, it's more difficult to make money in this market,'' Brooks said. "Virtual gifts are definitely in right now.'' PlentyofFish discovered that as a gift's adorability factor increased, so could the price. "The cuter they are, the more receptive they are,'' said Kate Bilenki, Director of Love at PlentyofFish.com. "Teddy bears, hearts, bunnies, cute things like that.''

Avid Life Media's HotorNot.com got the virtual gift ball rolling in the dating scene back in 2002 by selling virtual flowers which now cost $2 to $10 each. At AshleyMadison.com users can send a virtual bottle of champagne or hotel room key. "The growth rate is phenomenal,'' said Noel Biderman, president of Avid Life Media. "If it has the right impact, people will pay to replace words.'' AshleyMadison has 5.2 million members and has seen spending on virtual gifts jump from 2.4% to 4.1% of total user revenue in the past year.

This kind of success is persuading other sites to give it a spin. First Beat Media oversees more than 100 niche dating sites like BikerPlanet, GothScene, LatinaRomance and TattooLovers. It's testing virtual gifts. "Seeing a ton of icons of roses and chocolates from other suitors on your page might turn people away from contacting you -- doing more harm than good," said Stephen Ventura, director of operations. "We're approaching it very cautiously,'' Ventura said. "We feel it might detour some folk from the relationship finding process.''
FULL ARTICLE @ MIAMI HERALD

PlentyofFish Wins Online Dating Faceoff: Match.com vs. PlentyofFish

OPW - Feb 12 - Mashable's weekly faceoff pitted the two biggest dating websites against one another: PlentyofFish vs. Match.com. PlentyofFish is the world’s largest free dating web service. It has made millions solely through ads and a staff of fewer than five, led by the founder, Markus Frind. Match.com has 20+ million users, hundreds of millions in revenue, and is owned by IAC, who also owns Chemistry.com. Which model is better? Is Match’s subscription service more effective at helping find true love, or does PlentyofFish provide the best chance at romance? 

Who would win in a fight: Match.com or PlentyofFish? (Poll Closed)

• Match.com 35% (334 votes)
• Plenty of Fish 45% (430 votes)

Match.com vs. PlentyofFish

MASHABLE - Feb 11 - There are hundreds of dating sites to choose from. However, this week’s faceoff pits the two biggest dating sites against one another: PlentyofFish vs. Match.com. PlentyofFish is the world’s largest free dating site. It has made millions solely through ads and a staff of fewer than five, and is led by the founder, Markus Frind. Match.com, on the other hand, has 20+ M users, hundreds of millions in revenue, and is owned by IAC. Is Match more effective at helping find true love, or does PlentyofFish provide the best chance at romance? Vote in our poll and let us know what you think. Polls close on Valentine’s Day, 12:00 p.m. PT. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

Love At First Site

SOUTH JERSEY MAGAZINE - Feb 11 - Internet dating is not only more common; it’s also becoming the norm—no different than, say, meeting a partner at a bar or party. Kate Bilenki, PlentyOfFish.com’s “director of love,” revealed that her free site gets 1.8M hits from the Garden State on a monthly basis. A 2007 study eHarmony found that 19.4% of respondents met their spouse through the Internet, a 5.3% increase from 2005. “It’s time and money saving,” Bilenki says. ”With online dating, you don’t spend $50 on drinks or dinner or a movie.” There is also the advantage of finding people outside of the usual circle of friends, said Whitney Casey, relationship expert for Match.com. The other big draw is the enhanced comfort level that occurs when you take the “blind” out of “blind date. “You can pre-screen people pretty well before you meet them,” Bilenki says. “If you want tall dark and handsome, you can punch that into the search criteria and, voilà—there it is.” There are niche dating sites that can point you in the right direction such as TrekPassions, RepublicanSingles, VeggieConnection, DateAGolfer, WealthyMen and more.. FULL ARTICLE @ SOUTH JERSEY MAGAZINE

The Online Dating Game

SMART MONEY - Feb 8 - The online dating market is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2013, up from $957M in 2008, according to Forrester Research. With online services reporting an increase in subscriptions, sites could raise their prices without losing customers, says Mark Brooks, principal consultant for Courtland Brooks. PlentyofFish.com and OKCupid.com let you troll for dates free of charge. Ignore dating-site boasts about their number of profiles. "The real measure is the number of people who have logged in," Brooks says. "A paid subscription isn't worth it unless monthly traffic is at least 10,000 unique visitors", he says. Complaints about dating services rose 62% from 2005 to 2008, according to the Better Business Bureau. Read consumer reviews about a site before signing up, says Jeannette Kopko, a spokeswoman for the BBB in Dallas. Scammers prey on online daters reeling them in with promises of love and then begging for cash to afford a plane ticket or other expenses. Sites have policies in place to weed out such users, reviewing profiles and communications for red flags, such as poor grammar, mismatched photos and details, and keywords including "wire money," Brooks says. Some also use monitoring services that recognize the scammer's computer preventing him or her from creating a new account after one gets flagged. FULL ARTICLE @ SMART MONEY

Traffic To All Dating Sites Declines Sharply

THE PARADIGM SHIFT -- Feb 5 -- After holding steady for years visitors to dating sites have started to drop sharply since the summer.

Nothing better than a graph to show a point…
fortunately for  Plentyoffish traffic has increased.