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According to OPW Plenty of Fish had a Christmas party in which 40 employees went to a high class resort for 2 days and nights. It's good to see that the company values their employees. One of the many ways in which a company can help drive success is to make sure that their employees are happy and passionate about the company's product.

By the way, the last time we had an employee count at POF was in 2009 and it was only 4. They certainly have grown in a few short years.

So how many people visit Plenty of Fish (or POF as now the dating service likes to be called) in a month? Unfortunately they did not release that number but they did share some other related statistics which may help us figure it out. In November of this year the dating site had 6 billion page views and over 32 billion images served. According to Alexa, in the last 3 months the average page view per user was about 30. So this would mean that Plenty of Fish had about 200 million visits in the month of November (6 billion / 30) (this includes repeat visitors). Now Alexa.com statistics are not always exact but at least this gives you a rough idea.

We also found out that instant messaging on POF produced almost 30 billion page views. All of this traffic (including the actual dating site) is run off of just 11 web servers in which it is estimated 6 are only needed. So, what is the total cost to run the web services for POF? Well, according to the Plenty of fish blog it is just shy of $70 thousand Canadian a month.

To find out information about the dating site please read our review of Plenty of Fish

The concept of purchasing virtual goods may not have been around for long, but it has now become one of the fast-growing types of business online. According to the Inside Virtual Goods report, the overall market for virtual goods in the US is on its way to hitting $2.9 billion in 2012 - that's up from $2.2 billion this year and $1.6 billion in 2010.

The virtual goods industry first exploded on Facebook with the popularity of games like FarmVille and CityVille, in which users purchase currency that can be used within the game. Facebook also added a virtual gifts feature that allowed users to buy and send gifts to one another.

Dating sites quickly picked up on the success of the virtual goods game. Plenty of Fish offers "Goldfish Credits" for purchase in packages of 100, 215, or 500. With Goldfish Credits, users can send gifts to other members or find out if someone has opened their messages. Gifts are publically posted on the recipient's profile for 3 three weeks before disappearing. Each Plenty of Fish member also receives 2 virtual roses when they join the site. Roses are sent when composing a message, but each rose may only be used once during a 30 day period. Because they are a rare commodity on the site, roses are considered an especially strong indicator of a user's interest.

HOT or NOT was also an early adopter of virtual goods. The site offered virtual roses ranging from $2 to $10 that could be sent to prospective dates. Though more expensive, the $10 roses became the most popular option because they sent the strongest signals to the recipient. HOT or NOT also found that the recipients of virtual gifts were four times more likely to respond to the sender than users who did not receive a gift.

To date, Zoosk is one of the biggest virtual goods success stories. Zoosk Coins are a virtual currency used to purchase a range of features on the site. According to the site's FAQ, Coins can be used to "purchase Gifts, arrange for a Special Delivery, receive a Delivery Confirmation for your email messages, and Boost your profile." Gifts are cute graphics, like flowers and pets, that can be sent to other members. Special Delivery alerts a message recipient with a pop-up when they have received a message from a user who has purchased the feature. Delivery Confirmation notifies the buyer when their messages have been read, and Boost is a feature that puts the purchaser at the top of someone's search results or in a special place on the homepage of other interested users.

Virtual goods seem poised to become more popular than ever on dating and social networking sites. It looks like your holiday shopping list just got a little bit longer.

For more on this story you can read TechCrunch. For information on the dating sites mentioned in this article you can read our POF.com review and our Zoosk.com review.

I am not sure if I missed this before when PlentyOfFish starting offering a new paid membership but I noticed today this statement from their upgrade page:

PlentyOfFish will automatically continue your subscription for the same period and amount as your current upgrade.

PlentyOfFish previous memberships never automatically renewed, so it looks like PlentyOfFish changed their position on this point.

For more on this dating site you can go ahead and read our Plenty Of Fish review.

Match.com (Match.ca in Canada) is now powering online dating at Yahoo! Canada. Yahoo in the United States has been using Match.com since May of 2010 (see Story). Previously Lavalife had partnered with Yahoo! Canada to provide online dating to their visitors (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site you can check out our Match.com review.

Update 2020-03-30: Good news. POF has announced a new feature called POF Live that allows live video broadcasting to other users including private one on one sessions.

Update 2019-07-09: Please note that POF has since removed the video chat functionality from both their app and website.

After dropping IM for about a year in 2009, PlentyOfFish recently started to offer audio and video chatting. This has been a feature request for a while by many members. To use the new feature you must have Adobe Flash player version 10.1 or higher installed on your computer as well as the required hardware which includes a webcam or microphone.

To start an audio or video chat all you need to do is click the chat link underneath a members thumbnail photo. Once your request to chat is accepted you can then click on the audio or video button found at the top of the chat window.

To find out more about this dating site you can read our POF.com review.