Plenty of Fish’s Complicated History with Video Chats

Dating app Plenty of Fish partnered with The Meet Group to launch a new livestream video feature as more people around the world turn to dating apps for connection. But POF has a rocky history with video chat features, and had come under fire as recently as last year because scammers were creating fake invitations and taking advantage of users trying to access the feature. 

The company hopes that the newest version backed by The Meet Group, which provides livestream technology to apps, will give users a more positive and secure experience. The Meet Group also has a few dating apps of its own – Meet Me, Skout, LOVOO, Tagged and Growlr which use video features. In fact, one of the highlights of the new POF feature is that users can earn diamonds from other users in response to a livestream, which is also a part of Meet Me’s platform. 

Since many around the world are quarantined as the COVID-19 virus spreads, they are turning to livestream to be able to connect with others. Dating apps are also helping users connect as engagement continues to spike, and Plenty of Fish, Badoo and Bumble were among the first to offer livestream chat features within their apps.

POF’s video chat capabilities go back to 2011, but have never quite succeeded. In fact, the company has pulled several versions over the years only to relaunch with a new offering. The most recent problem emerged last year, when users complained about being scammed with fake video chat invitations from potential “matches” who were fishing for financial and personal information. The scammers created invitations to join a POF video chat, asked for the user’s credit card information to sign up, and when the match disappeared, the user was left wondering what happened. 

POF’s previous voice and video chat feature launched in 2017 via something called “Conversation Powers,” which enabled users to communicate without exchanging phone numbers. However, this feature was only accessible with after two people had been messaging each other for a period of time, but many users weren’t aware of this and assumed from the fake invitations that they had to “sign up.” Many Reddit and dating forums like Dating Sites Reviews discussed whether or not the video chat feature even existed after so many had been scammed. 

Plenty of Fish’s new livestream feature isn’t the only interesting development. It was also rumored that earlier this year, after parent company Match Group split with IAC, Match Group reached out to The Meet Group to see if it could be acquired as part of its dating app portfolio. 

The Meet Group was recently purchased by German media company ProSeiben, which also owns eHarmony among other dating apps, as reported by Dating Sites Reviews.