POF (Plenty of Fish)

Longtime denizens of the online dating world are marking the loss of an institution. With neither fanfare nor explanation, Plenty of Fish has announced that it has shuttered its forums. Visitors to the forum page are now greeted with a terse message announcing the shutdown:

“To focus on better serving our members, we've decided to shut down the POF forums. While regular posting is now disabled, you can continue to view all threads until the end of June 2019. Event Hosts can still create and promote events while we work on a new and improved event creation service for you.”

The POF forums were an active destination for digital daters for 15 years. Users created more than 10 million posts before the closure, covering a broad spectrum of topics including dating, love, relationships, marriage, parenting and breakups. The forums proved equally popular for general discussions that ran the gamut from cooking and creative writing, to sports and science, to travel and humor, to music and philosophy.

Image: Sensor Tower

After more than two years in the top spot, Netflix is no longer the world’s highest-grossing non-gaming mobile app. That title now goes to Tinder, which grossed $260.7 million from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in the first quarter of this year.

App store intelligence firm Sensor Tower recently released its rankings of the highest grossing apps in the United States and worldwide for Q1 2019. Overall, global app revenue reached $19.5 billion last quarter, up nearly 17 percent year-over-year. Consumer spending on Apple’s App Store totaled approximately $12.4 billion globally, while Google Play revenue grew 20.2 percent year-over-year to approximately $7.1 billion. The world is increasingly moving to mobile, and for companies that are prepared to capitalize on the change, the potential for profit is huge.

Recipient of Gold
Tinder

Recipient of Silver
POF

Recipient of Bronze
OkCupid

The 2019 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll was launched in the afternoon of October 1^st, 2018. It ran for 3 months and then closed for voting on December 31^st, 2018. 437 people cast their votes in the poll. The poll asks the following question:

Which dating app or site would you recommend for the Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award?

Voters could choose 1 dating service from a selection of 10 of the top dating services in 2018 as selected by the Editors. For this award the top voted dating service for the above question receives the Gold, second place gets Silver, and for third, Bronze.

In previous years for this award we had split the poll into 2 questions asking which free and then which paid dating service the voter would recommend. This year we decided on one question which the selection includes both free and paid services. We feel this better reflects the current online dating industry. This year also marked a fairly big change in the results. The top 3 results differed by only 5% in votes. The Gold recipient only differed by less than 10% with the service which came in last place (10^th). In previous polls the difference is around 30%. The race for the most recommended dating service was very tight this year.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Gold Award is Tinder. Tinder received almost 17% of the vote which works out to 73 votes. Last year Tinder came in second of the free services, so this is a step up for them.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Silver Award is POF (Plenty of Fish). Another free dating service in the top 3. POF drops to second place this year with almost 13% of the vote (56 votes). This is just 4% less than the Gold recipient.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Bronze Award is OkCupid. It was a tight race between Silver and Bronze this year with only a 1.5% difference in votes. OkCupid got 11.5% of the votes which works out to 50 votes exactly.

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The 2019 Top Pick - Over All Award recipient in most cases will either be the best paid dating service or the best free dating service of 2019, since all dating services fall in one of these two categories. This year is no exception, we have once again chosen to go with POF (Plenty of Fish).

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The 2019 Editor's Top Pick - Free award winner is Plenty of Fish (POF). This is one of the harder categories to figure out. The top 3 free dating apps have lots of members but it is the combination of features and user feedback that in the end helped us make the decision. POF does not lack the features which make it easy to use and allow its members to find matches and start conversations quickly. In fact every day on the service on average 2.5 million users message each other. If you are in your thirties to forties then you will feel right at home on POF as a large portion of members are in this age range. Remember within a month of using the service, 30% of POF members report that they have found a partner, so it does not take long before you see results.

Online dating has become the most popular way for people to meet, but according to a recent article in Forbes, this doesn’t mean they’re are satisfied with the experience. Many are skeptical that technology will help them find love – and in fact, might make it harder.

The Forbes article focused on ghosting, a practice that has become ubiquitous among online daters. Ghosting happens when one person stops communicating with another with no explanation.

The problem with ghosting according to the Forbes article, is not the act itself, which has been around for a while, it’s how prevalent it has become. It has become such a problem among online daters that Plenty of Fish did a study, and reported that 78% of its users admitted to being ghosted at least once.