POF (Plenty of Fish)

Recipient
PlentyOfFish.com

The 2016 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll was closed for voting on December 31, 2016. The poll opened mid October (a little later than planned) and in the 2 and a half months that voting took place it received a total of 407 votes which is a little less than last year (probably due to being open 2 weeks less). This award is the result of the second question from the poll which asks our visitors what is in their opinion is the best free dating service (includes websites and dating apps). The top 8 free dating services where picked by the Editor's to be the options for the visitor to select from. These dating services were selected by meeting a number of criteria. This includes having a review on Dating Sites Reviews, having the core features of the service being free (including, profiles, searching, and messages), and being a service with a large amount of traffic.

The recipient of the 2016 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site is Plenty Of Fish. This is the eighth straight year in a row that Plenty of Fish has won this award. In 2016 POF received 126 votes which is a percent more than last year, and 30 percent of the total votes cast.

Here are the final results of the poll:

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The Editor's Top Pick - Free Award recipient for 2016 is Plenty of Fish (POF). Straight from their online press page, POF lists just how popular the dating service is. Worldwide Plenty of Fish has over 100 million registered members since launch and they are adding 55,000 new members every single day. On average 3.6 million people log into POF either via the website or dating apps, and have over 10 million conversations.

Dating looks vastly different in 2016, even compared to a few decades ago. But while our methods have changed, the mindset remains the same: at the end of it all, most of us are hoping to find “the one.”

Online dating can raise questions. Is it just about hookups? Will I actually meet anyone in person? Are there real people behind those profiles? How do I make a good impression on someone I’ve never seen face to face? Are there any signs that they could be something serious?

PlentyOfFish knows the struggle of finding a soulmate better than most, so they set out in search of answers. The popular dating site surveyed more than 1,100 former users who married someone who met on their site. After all, if those people don’t know the secrets to long-term love, who does?

Match Group released first quarter 2016 financial results on May 3. The company went public last November, and in its first earnings announcement as a publicly-traded company, Match Group fell short of earnings estimates by 5.3%. This time around, things are looking up.

Match Group reported sharply higher sales and profits in Q1 2016. Last quarter, the company’s dating revenues rose 14%, driven by a 30% increase in paid members. With that momentum, Match Group continued to perform well. Highlights of the quarter include:

• Total revenue rose 21% year over year to $285 million
• Dating revenue grew 24%, led by strong contributions from Tinder and PlentyOfFish
• Adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled over the prior year to $64.6 million
• Average PMC (paid member count) grew 36% to 5.1 million
• Tinder surpassed 1 million PMC as of the end of the quarter and successfully launched its first à la carte paid feature
• Operating income was up 8%, reflecting the strong Adjusted EBITDA growth
• Adjusted Net Income increased 30% as a result of the increase in Adjusted EBITDA
• Cash Flow nearly doubled to $68.5 million, while operating cash flow increased 88% to $75.0 million

Leading the charge is Tinder. “Tinder is really killing it. The numbers are great,” said Chairman and CEO Greg Blatt in an earnings call. “We're spending a lot of time improving the core product experience, experimenting with new product experiences, and yet continuing to rollout modernization initiatives, each of which has basically exceeded our expectations at the time of rolling it out.”

Along with its successes, the quarter saw Match Group slip in a few areas. Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) declined 10% to $0.54, mostly due to the growth of relatively low-cost services such as Tinder, as well as the continued shift to mobile platforms. Non-dating revenue was flat at $25 million as a result of lower SAT test preparation course volume at The Princeton Review.

Looking forward, Match Group management expects second quarter dating revenue to grow by between 4% and 5% compared to Q1, with EBITDA margin percentage in the low to mid-30s. For the full year, the company predicts total dating revenue between $1.1 billion and $1.14 billion and overall adjusted EBITDA between $410 million and $425 million.

"Match Group posted very strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition," Blatt said in a press release. "We expect solid year over year performance throughout the balance of 2016."

The Match Group list of dating services which we have reviewed include Match, OkCupid, Tinder, and Plenty of Fish.

Last year’s infamous Ashley Madison hack revealed a statistic that seemed to confirm what many already feared about online dating. The site’s database included over 31 million male users and just 5.5 million female users. Of those profiles, only a small percentage were real and active: around 20 million men and 2,500 women.

You don’t need to be a mathematician to know those numbers are bad.

The vast majority of Ashley Madison’s female users were inactive or, worse, not real to begin with. Since then, singles have become even more skeptical of the veracity of women’s profiles on dating sites. SurveyMonkey Intelligence recently put those suspicions to the test by studying which dating apps have the highest proportion of women.

The bottom of the bunch is no surprise: Grindr, an app geared towards gay and bisexual men. Some of the entries farther up on the list are equally unsurprising. Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble, both female-friendly apps, scored relatively high. Tinder and PlentyOfFish found themselves in the middle of the pack, despite having more users than any of the other apps tested.

But the number one spot is where things get interesting. Topping the list, with a userbase that’s 58.6% female, is Christian Mingle. Christian Mingle, Coffee Meets Bagel, and eHarmony are the only apps that have a majority of female users. Who would have guessed that a niche, faith-focused dating app would rank so highly?

SurveyMonkey Intelligence also found that men and women use dating apps differently. Looking at what percentage of users engage with an app on a daily basis, the results are almost flipped. Grindr is the clear leader, with 70.3% of users engaged each day. Christian Mingle and eHarmony bring up the rear with 33.7% and 28.7%, respectively.

It could be that men are generally more engaged daters than women or, as SurveyMonkey Intelligence speculates, it could down to Grindr’s demographic. Because the app is geared towards a targeted market, Grindr users may stick to one app while other demographics spread their efforts among multiple services.

SurveyMonkey Intelligence tested a variety of other factors (read the full report here) and closed with a few tips. “Straight men may want to check out Coffee Meets Bagel, while straight women can confidently choose between a number of apps where the gender ratio is favorable,” the report advises.

It’s also important to take your dating style into account. If you’re the spontaneous type who wants dating to be part of your daily life, SurveyMonkey suggests trying your luck with the highly-engaged users of Happn. If, on the other hand, you take a more relaxed approach, the more infrequent users of Coffee Meets Bagel could be more your speed.

There has been speculation that Match Group’s star performer in the online dating space – dating app Tinder – would cannibalize its other online dating companies. But so far, contrary to analysts’ reports, this hasn’t happened.

Tinder is by far the dating app industry giant, with over 25 million active users and about 1 million paid subscribers in its tiered program. Some analysts have feared that because of Tinder’s rapid growth and free platform, it would mean users would leave other popular online dating sites in Match Group (like Match, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid) to join Tinder, making them obsolete.

What they found instead was that Match Group’s overall earnings were up in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to the POF acquisition and Match Group’s strategy to grow and invest in Tinder’s rivals.

Overall revenue came in at $285 million in its first quarter, $3 million over expected revenues.

Greg Blatt, chairman and CEO of Match Group, said in the first quarter earnings release: "Match Group posted very strong revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch explained that "even without Tinder, Match would have grown its core Dating subscribers by 6% (up from about 1% last quarter) and its Dating revenue by significantly more."

The POF acquisition is an important factor in the revenue numbers. The dating website grew tremendously itself over the years with 70 million registered users, and operated for many years on a shoestring budget with one employee, Markus Frind, who created the dating site and sold it to IAC (Match Group’s parent company) for $575 million in 2015.

Over time if Tinder’s popularity continues to grow, and the app itself makes improvements that resonate with its users, then there could be an impact to Match Group’s other businesses. For now, POF, Match, and OkCupid are still going strong.

One solution that has been floated in the media is for Tinder to advertise other Match Group properties on its app. (Tinder’s revenue comes mainly from paid advertising, rather than its tiered service.)

For the most part, online daters are not beholden to one site or app, preferring to join two or more at any given time. Because of Tinder’s growth, it has grown the entire online dating industry in just three short years, and made online dating a more acceptable practice. Numerous dating apps are launching every week, hoping to cash in on Tinder’s market share and success.

It seems to be a win-win for the online dating industry as a whole, even in a saturated market.