Plentyoffish at the top of the Online Dating ratings

A recent survey by Hitwise showed Plentyoffish.com to be the highest ranked online dating site in the USA and the UK.

Plentyoffish is a cost-free dating site created by Markus Frind in 2003. Mr. Frind, who remains the only employee of POF, declared about this recent mark of success:

“The notion that people have to pay a dating site big money to meet somebody is outdated. The truth of the matter is that POF.com offers people the chance to meet and interact with over ten million singles without having to add more to their credit card debt. When our members meet someone on the site, they still have some money for the actual date. That can be a pretty big challenge in this economy.”

POF is an uncharacteristically pared-down site, managed by Frind alone with the help of a few volunteer forum moderators. The software, created and developed by Frind, works by creating personalized niche sites around each user, meaning they only get to see profiles of people who match their search criteria. Frind explained the workings of the site on an interview:

“Other dating sites are attempting to go ‘niche,’ whereas Plentyoffish is the only site that segregates the user database on the spot, so no individual user has access to the whole database. When they login and create their profile, the database is refined and they only access to a limited subset. So basically, as soon as you sign up, a niche is created around you.”

Frind claims this is one of the reasons for his site’s success, since POF’s huge database ensures enough action for any niche, while the large brand attracts more users than any number of niche sites could.

According to Google POF gets around 1 million hits a day, with over 74,000 users online at the time of writing this article.

What’s next for Frind after conquering the USA and the UK? He mentioned Germany was next on his plans, but was still reluctant to increase his one-man workforce.

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