POF (Plenty of Fish)

Dating apps happily boast about their sign-up rates or the number of marriages they’ve created, but they’re understandably reluctant to release less flattering figures. How many users actually stick with an app once they’ve created a profile? How many let their account lapse, or delete the app altogether? Which apps are most quickly abandoned?

In pursuit of more juicy data, mobile data company Ogury sampled more than six million mobile user profiles from its network to take a deep dive into usage habits around the world. They focused on users in the US, UK, France, Italy, and Spain who had used dating apps within the six months between January and June 2017. To present the most balanced findings, they were were careful to maintain an identical male to female ratio in each region.

Ogury’s results reveal a landscape that may surprise online dating’s biggest advocates. One chart in the report shows that dating app longevity leaves something to be desired, with most app uninstalls occuring within the first day of usage. Zoosk users, at 44.1%, are most likely to uninstall in less than 24 hours, followed by Grindr at 33.6% and Tinder at 32.9%.

Recipient
PlentyOfFish.com

The 2018 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll open for voting on October 1, 2017 and was closed for voting on December 31, 2017. In the 3 months that voting took place the poll received a total of 393 votes from visitors to our site.

This award is the result of the votes on the second question from the poll which asks the reader what in their opinion is the best free dating service (includes websites and dating apps). The top 10 free dating services as choosen by our Editorial team are given as options for the visitor to select from. The dating services selected met a number of criteria. This includes having the core features of the service being free (like profiles, searching, and messages), and having enough members and visitors everyday which would give the average user a good chance of finding a partner within a couple of months.

The recipient of the 2018 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site or App is Plenty Of Fish. This is the 9^th straight year in a row that Plenty of Fish has won this award. Plenty of Fish received 109 votes which is almost 28 percent of the total vote. This is down 3 percent compared to last year.

Here are the final results of the poll:

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

POF (Plenty of Fish) is the Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award recipient for 2018. There was a bunch of stand out dating services this year but we felt POF landed on top thanks to a list of improvements we saw in 2017 and the large number of our visitors who spoke up saying that POF was the service which helped them to find their current partner.

POF launched in 2003 and since then they have had over 150 million people register on their service who have had over 1 billion conversations using either the website or dating apps (available for iOS and Android). Being a free dating service helps them succeed since users do not have to worry if the person they are sending a message to can reply or not (on paid services usually only paid members can reply). With the tools POF provides and their ease of use, members find dates so quickly that in less than a month 30% of members have already found their match.

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish (POF) is the recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Free Award for 2018. Just like last year, Plenty of Fish continues to give members a great platform to meet and communicate on. This year the statistics are even more impressive. POF now has more than 150 million registered users of which they add 65,000 new ones every day. On average 4 million users log into and use POF every day (website and app). With all of this activity, POF says, every year 1 million relationships are the result of members meeting on their service.

Update 2020-03-30: Please note that POF has announced a new feature available by the end of April called POF Live. It allows live video streaming and private 1 on 1 video chatting (for those who play NextDate). More information can be found here: Plenty of Fish Adds Livestream Feature

Update 2019-08-03: POF has since removed the video calling functionality in their app from Conversation Powers.

Plenty Of Fish made 2017 the year of getting back to basics. While other dating services introduced features seemingly designed to require less communication (looking at you, Tinder Reactions), POF has been all about the chitchat.

First, the company sponsored Conversation Nation, which it claims is the largest study ever conducted on the importance of conversation in the search for love. Inspired by what it learned from the survey, POF went on to update its iOS and Android apps with a new feature called Spark designed to help singles break the ice easily.

"With more conversations than any other dating app, Plenty of Fish is focused on bringing conversation back to singles," Hesam Hosseini, POF’s CEO, said at the time. "In the short time we've been testing Spark, we've seen a 15 percent increase in conversations. Given our scale, this can result in an increase of hundreds of thousands of conversations happening every day on the app, leading to more dates and more relationships – and it is just our first step to bring the art of conversation back to dating."

Add dating to your list of New Year resolutions, because chances are, you’ll meet someone in January.

Online dating has a high season, and it seems the spirit of the holidays all the way through Valentine’s Day puts people in the mood for finding love.

A study by dating site Match revealed that more than any other time of year, people flock to dating sites between December 26^th and February 14^th. The numbers are telling – 50 million messages sent and 1 million dates happen during this time, and Sunday January 7^th is apparently the busiest day (and the best time to join – specifically 8:55pm EST).