How has the POF Paid Upgrade Gone So Far?

Well it has been about a week since Plenty Of Fish (POF) offered its users a paid option that upgraded their profile to serious member status (see Story). There have been mixed reviews from the members of POF. Some complain about the 100% Free tag line on the site should be removed, while others have wondered if users with the badge would receive any more mail as claimed on the POF upgrade page. Most are just shocked that the site has started a paid membership upgrade. I haven't found any glowing recommendations of it yet.

Some members also have been angered that POF have been giving some upgrades away to get the ball rolling. The problem is, some of these giveaways have been to people who didn't know they received them. This has angered many long term POF members who felt left out. I think POF should of offered the upgrade free for a limited time to users that have been using the site regularly for a certain period of time. The upgrade would be offered for free but the user would still have to initiate it. I also would have made the free serious member upgrade for the 3 month term only. With a set of rules in place on who gets the free upgrade people would have less to complain about (but I am sure some still would).

The owner of Plenty Of Fish, Markus, posted the following message in his forums:

I just upgraded serious members to allow them to have 16 images instead of the standard 8. There are a lot of little things I can give serious members that simply aren't practical to roll out to the whole userbase.

What do you guys think of being able to edit your sent messages, as long as the reciever hasn't read them? Doing this for all users is simply not possible but since serious members are such a small portion of the site I might be able to get away with it. Just depends on how many people actually try and edit messages.

Any other features that might be useful to ad?

This means that now the serious member upgrade is more than showing your intent of being someone actually looking for a relationship. Not only do you get a highlighted profile but now you get to be have a larger gallery of images, and more features appear to be on the way for paid users only.

For more on this dating site, read our POF review.