POF (dating website)

Plenty of Fish is a Canadian online dating service, popular primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Brazil,[2] and the United States.[3] It is available in nine languages. The company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia[4] generates revenue through advertising and premium memberships.[5] While it is free to use, Plenty of Fish offers premium services as part of their upgraded membership, such as who has "liked" a member through the service's MeetMe feature, and allowing users to see whether a message has been read and/or deleted.[6] On July 14, 2015, Plenty of Fish was sold for $575 million to Match Group (owner of Match.com, OKCupid and Tinder, based in Dallas).[7] The headquarters remain in Vancouver and have recently been expanded.[8]

Plenty of Fish
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryInternet
Founded2003
HeadquartersVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Area served
  • Australia
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Ireland
  • New Zealand
  • Spain
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
Key people
Markus Frind (Founder)
RevenueUS$100 million[1] (2014 estimated)
OwnerMatch Group
Number of employees
100[1]
Websitewww.pof.com

History

Markus Frind, CEO and Founder of Plenty of Fish Media Inc., graduated in 1999 from British Columbia Institute of Technology with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology.[9]

In 2004, Plenty of Fish became a full-time money making business for Markus.[10] He ran the site independently until 2008, when he began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters. In 2009, Plenty of Fish also launched a contest with Lady Gaga allowing single members to go together and meet the singer during The Fame Ball Tour.[11]

The website for Plenty of Fish appeared in several music videos in 2010: in Lady Gaga's "Telephone", Natasha Bedingfield's "Touch", Ke$ha's "We R Who We R", Flo Rida and Akon's "Available", Jason Derulo's "Ridin' Solo",[12] and 3OH!3's "Double Vision". In 2011, it appeared in Britney Spears's music video for "Hold It Against Me". Many of these appearances are undisclosed paid product placements[13][14] which have been met with highly negative reviews.[15][16]

In 2010, Plenty of Fish launched mobile apps for iPhone and Android. A few years later, it was made available for both the iPad and Windows phone.[17][18] In a June 2014 interview Frind attributed 85% of all Plenty of Fish traffic to mobile with the number growing weekly.[19]

On January 21, 2011, it was discovered that the Plenty of Fish website had been hacked which exposed the personal and password information on nearly 30 million user accounts.[20] Since the alleged hacking incident, Frind alleges he has identified persons he believes are responsible for the hacking, and alleges he is threatening legal action in response to the widespread negative media exposure. At the time this received global media exposure and security experts blamed Plenty of Fish for the security and privacy lapse specifically for keeping users' passwords unsecured.[20][21]

On February 28, 2012, the parents of US Army Lieutenant Peter Burks sued Plenty of Fish. The parents' lawsuit alleges photos of their son, who was killed in Iraq in 2007, were used without permission. The parents were seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Paul Bloudoff, the firm's legal affairs manager responded by saying "Lt. Burks’ image was never used by POF.com in any way, shape or form, [a] third-party advertiser, with no affiliation to Plenty of Fish, ran an ad promoting another dating site using Lt. Burks’ picture, and one of the places this advertiser ran this ad happened to be our site."[22]

In an August 2012 interview, Markus Frind stated that based on the millions of relationships and marriages Plenty of Fish has created over the past several years, it is estimated that over one million babies have been born as a result of the website.[23]

On May 20, 2013, Frind implemented several changes to the website with the stated goal of focusing on "meaningful relationships". Among these changes were the removal of the "intimate encounters" option.[24] A related eliminated feature was the option to contact clients of age differences greater than "Markus", presumably Frind, found tasteful. Although the Plenty of Fish site and its "matching" criteria continue to match couples with age differences greater than the 14 year guideline, attempts to contact these "matches" resulted in an inbox message from Markus stating, among other things, "[t]here is no reason for a 50 year old man to contact a 18 year old woman."[25] Another implementation included with the changes is no longer allowing male users to attach images to messages.[26] Additionally, the site automatically blocks messages from male users containing certain words while showing such messages as being sent.[27]

The image sending restriction was apparently reversed after Plenty of Fish was acquired by Match Group (but not "quick messages" directly from the match's profile page) and members outside of the 14 year age limit no longer appear as matches or in searches. Attempting to contact members outside of the 14 year limit now displays a page stating the user does not meet the member's contact criteria (even when untrue) and suggests several matches to contact instead of sending a message to the user's inbox.

Staff

The site relied on volunteers to monitor forums and sort through the 50,000 new photos that come in each day.[28] By 2019 Plenty of Fish employed over 100 people, including programmers, marketing managers, product managers, designers and customer success representatives.[29]

Technical details

Plenty of Fish uses a Microsoft-based platform for itself, including IIS, ASP.NET, and Microsoft SQL.[30][31]

Statistics
  • Registered users: 100,000,000 (March 2015)[1]
  • Dating site ranking in the UK: 1 (Comscore May 2011)[32]
  • Dating site ranking Worldwide: 1 (Hitwise, August 2011)[33]
  • U.S. site by market share: 1, with 18.57% of the market (Hitwise, August 2012)[34]
  • Number of page views a month: 2 Billion (April 2012)[35]

Issues

In 2015, users were targeted by cyberattacks via a malicious adlink.[36][37]

In 2015 Plenty of Fish Media Inc. was fined $48,000 for alleged violation of Canada's anti-spam law.[38][39]

In December 2019, Plenty of Fish pushed out a fix for its app after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users had set as private on their profiles, including hidden names and postal codes.[40]

See also

References
  1. Orton, Tyler (March 17, 2015). "PlentyOfFish hits 100 million users, releases revenue numbers for first time". Business in Vancouver. Retrieved May 3, 2015.
  2. "POF Takes Top Spot in Brazil at OPW". Retrieved Feb 16, 2012.
  3. "PlentyOfFish.com How one man beat the big guys at ARCast.TV". Retrieved August 3, 2007.
  4. "Plentyoffish fires darts at eHarmony, Match.com on Valentine's Day". Itbusiness.ca. 2012-02-14. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  5. "Plenty of Fish Fact Sheet at POF". Archived from the original on October 1, 2011. Retrieved February 3, 2009.
  6. "Plenty of Fish Upgrade". Retrieved January 13, 2011.
  7. Bootstrapped dating site PlentyOfFish has fewer than 100 employees and Match just bought it for $575 million in cash. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
  8. "Office Tour: PlentyOfFish – Vancouver Office Expansion". Office Snapshots. 2015-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
  9. "School of Computing and Academic Studies: Computer Systems Technology". B.C. Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on October 12, 2007. Retrieved December 9, 2007.
  10. Lehman, Michael (2007). "IIS Show #10 – PlentyOfFish.com and IIS 6 = Plenty of performance". Channel 9. Retrieved April 12, 2007.
  11. Ein, News (November 2010). "PlentyofFish.com Teams Up With Lady Gaga". Retrieved January 19, 2010.
  12. "Jason Derulo Is Ridin' Solo on PlentyofFish.com". June 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2011.
  13. Hampp, Andrew (2010-03-13). "How Miracle Whip, Plenty of Fish Tap Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'". Advertising Age. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  14. Elliott, Stuart (2011-02-17). "Plenty of Fish, a Dating Site, Promotes Itself in Music Videos". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  15. Weiner, Juli. "PlentyOfFish.com, Get Out of Music Videos and Get Back to the Internet". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  16. Kelly, Liz (2011-02-18). "Celebritology 2.0 - Britney Spears debuts 'Hold It Against Me' video/infomercial". Washington Post. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  17. Torat, Hossain (2017-05-10). "Dating in a Mobile Device". The bNewTech Post. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  18. "Plenty of Fish dating app review". theappzine.com.
  19. Brooks, Mark. "POF Interview With CEO Markus Frind". Online Personals Watch. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  20. "PlentyofFish.com Hacked, Blames Messenger". Krebsonsecurity.com. 2011-01-31. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  21. "Plenty of Fish hacked, CEO recounts bizarre ordeal with hacker in blog post | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post". Business.financialpost.com. 2011-01-31. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  22. "Canadian dating site Plenty of Fish sued for using dead U.S. soldier's photo". National Post. Retrieved 2012-02-20.
  23. Clay, Kelly (August 23, 2012). "How One Man Made A Million Babies With Free Online Dating". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-09-17.
  24. Bignell, Paul; Hastings, Rob (May 2013). "Plenty of Fish dating site founder pulls 'Intimate Encounters' option to ward off sleazy men=Ein". The Independent. Retrieved 2013-05-22.
  25. incognito (May 2013). "POF changes: Age Restrictions +or- 14 years AND intimate encounters". Archived from the original on 2013-10-30. Retrieved 2013-10-28.
  26. "Males can no longer send private images to other users".
  27. "POF automatically blocks messages containing "offensive" words". 2013.
  28. Stross, Randall (2008-01-13). "From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  29. "POF Expands Team To 66, And Creates New Consumer Blog". OnlinePersonalsWatch. Retrieved 2012-08-23.
  30. Frind, Markus (2007). "Looking for 3 Senior Software Developers". PlentyOfFish Blog. Archived from the original on 2007-12-27. Retrieved 2007-12-09.
  31. "PlentyOfFish Architecture - High Scalability -". highscalability.com. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
  32. "PlentyOfFish.com Is the Most Visited Dating Site in the UK & USA". OPW. 2011. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
  33. "Online Trends - Experian Hitwise". Hitwise.com. December 31, 1999. Retrieved May 18, 2012.
  34. "US Online Dating Rankings Update". OPW.com. 2012. Retrieved Sep 17, 2012.
  35. "POF passes 100M weekly messages, 2 Billion Pageviews/Week". Plenty of fish blog. 2012. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  36. "Users of dating site Plenty of Fish targeted by cyber attack". itgovernance.co.uk. August 2015. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  37. Lucian Constantin - Romania Correspondent, IDG News Service (Aug 21, 2015). "Plenty of fish, and exploits, on dating website". computerworld.com. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  38. "Plentyoffish Media Inc. pays $48,000 for alleged violation of Canada's anti-spam law". prnewswire.com. PR Newswire Association. Archived from the original on 13 November 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  39. "Plenty of Fish avis fines show anti-spam law has teeth". thestar.com. Star Business Journal. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  40. "Plenty of Fish app leaked profile data set to private". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-24.
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