2008 Woodie Awards
Website of the Week
Plentyoffish.com
Toria Savey
Issue date: 2/26/08 Section: Features
Plentyoffish.com looks like some kind of scam website - the kind you would get to if you clicked an email offering "V1@GR@ FROM TJ!!!1." In fact, if you've ever dabbled in web developing, the user non-friendliness of it will probably burn your retinas.
Despite its inherent fugliness, this dating website has one valuable thing going for it: the price. Plenty of Fish's (POF) founder, Markus Frind, states the site's mission as trying to "cut the crap and do the work for singles who want to meet without shelling out hundreds of dollars for services that should be free."
Frind founded the site in 2003 as an attempt to teach himself the Asp.net programming language.
Roughly 250,000 to 300,000 people log onto the website each day, with the membership base growing about 7.5% each month. Of course, before you sign up to find true love, there are a few things you should know.
First of all, if there at 300,000 people signing on every day, 270,000 of them have lied about something. A study by Cornell University found that 9 out of 10 people lie somewhere in their profiles on dating websites. In fact, the lies are usually about an average of 30 pounds in weight difference or 11 years in age; not exactly tiny white lies.
If POF's $10 million in net profits a year are any indication, there are a lot of fish (providing plenty of Google advertising revenue) in the sea, and this website might help you find your very own. Or it might turn out to be a complete disaster that you can write a delightful blog post about. Happy fishing!
Despite its inherent fugliness, this dating website has one valuable thing going for it: the price. Plenty of Fish's (POF) founder, Markus Frind, states the site's mission as trying to "cut the crap and do the work for singles who want to meet without shelling out hundreds of dollars for services that should be free."
Frind founded the site in 2003 as an attempt to teach himself the Asp.net programming language.
Roughly 250,000 to 300,000 people log onto the website each day, with the membership base growing about 7.5% each month. Of course, before you sign up to find true love, there are a few things you should know.
First of all, if there at 300,000 people signing on every day, 270,000 of them have lied about something. A study by Cornell University found that 9 out of 10 people lie somewhere in their profiles on dating websites. In fact, the lies are usually about an average of 30 pounds in weight difference or 11 years in age; not exactly tiny white lies.
If POF's $10 million in net profits a year are any indication, there are a lot of fish (providing plenty of Google advertising revenue) in the sea, and this website might help you find your very own. Or it might turn out to be a complete disaster that you can write a delightful blog post about. Happy fishing!
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