POF (Plenty of Fish)

Recipient
PlentyOfFish.com

The 2014 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll was closed for voting in January (it ran for almost 4 months). The 2 question poll received 359 votes. The second question is about which dating service you think deserves the 2014 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site. For the first time the candidates included a service available only as a dating app, which is Tinder. A dating service is eligible for this award if it has already been reviewed by Dating Sites Reviews and, all of its main core features are free. This includes creating a profile, searching for members and communicating with those members by sending messages. If any of these features require the member to pay to use or are severally hampered (unless the member pays) then we don’t consider the service to be free.

The recipient of the Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site in 2014 is Plenty Of Fish (POF). This is the sixth straight year in a row that Plenty of Fish (POF) has won this award but, this year was the closest race yet. Tinder was within 4% of the total vote in taking the top spot. In 2014 POF received 99 votes which is 27.5% of all votes.

Here are the final results of the poll:

1. Plenty Of Fish (POF)
2. Tinder
3. OkCupid
4. DateHookUp.com
5. Meetup
6. Mingle 2
7. Craigslist

The top 3 dating services received almost 75 percent of all votes. It only took 22 votes to make the difference between first place and third.

Read our review of PlentyOfFish.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

You think I'm insane, right?

There's no possible way there could be one day that's better for online dating than all the others. That's just crazy.

Except it isn't crazy. It's a real thing.

Online dating is there for you all year round, but there's one window of time each year that's more active than any other. Match.com and Plenty of Fish – two of the biggest dating companies in the game, so rest assured they know what they're talking about – say that the single most popular day for online dating is (drumroll please):

January 4.

And it gets even more impressive than that. They've even narrowed it down to an exact time period. (Are they sorcerers over there?) Roughly 5pm to 8pm are the magic hours in which the largest number of people sign up, log on, and start searching for online love. If you're still skeptical, Zoosk backs the estimated timeframe up. In 2014, its most trafficked time was the Sunday after New Year's.

Across the board, online dating sites see a huge boost in action between New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. And it's not hard to imagine why. There's an obvious seasonal sentimentality that takes over during that time, and its natural manifestation in the techno-obsessed 21^st century is online dating.

Although the exact reason is unclear, we can easily speculate. The new year is a time for a fresh start, for new goals, for making positive changes. For many people, those things mean a renewed focus on finding love – and what better way to kick your love life into gear than joining an online dating site?

On the other hand, the holiday season is a notoriously lonely time, and that could also explain why online dating sites see a serious boost in action. Hitting a low point could be the motivator needed to finally try out online dating after all.

Interestingly, it's not just online dating that feels the effects of the holidays. The Washington Post reports that researchers have also observed a post-holiday spike in searches for porn, and that “a 2012 study by Facebook’s data team found that people are far more likely to change their relationship status in January or February than they are at any other time of year.”

And lest you think this is merely an online phenomenon, a study also found that “the holiday season tends to see a jump in both condom sales and conceptions.”

So what are you waiting for? The time is NOW.

Recipient
POF

The Top Pick - Free Award for 2014 goes to POF (Plenty of Fish). POF is the largest free dating site in the world and they have continued to improve and upgrade their existing website and dating apps to bring the best experience to their members.

With over 3 million active daily users and 50,000 new singles joining the site every day from North America, the UK, France, Brazil, Spain, and Germany you have the widest selection of singles to choose from. Not only can you access the service from their website you have the option to use their dating app which is available on iTunes, Google Play and the Windows Phone store. In total since Plenty of Fish launched in 2003 the website has had over 90 million singles register as a member and on average every 2 minutes a couple confirms their relationship started on the service. How can you beat statistics like this? No other free dating service can.

POF is free to create a membership, receive automated matches and search for profiles. You can also receive and send as many messages as you want. They do offer an upgraded membership as well that costs a small monthly fee. The upgraded membership doubles your chances of meeting your potential partner. This is achieved by making your profile stand out in searches and having your profile show up first in the Meet Me feature. You also get additional features that makes it easier to figure out who is interested in you. The most noted includes seeing what emails have been read, and finding out when someone has viewed your profile.

Read our review of POF for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: OkCupid

There was a time when Plenty of Fish was squarely at the top of the online dating heap. Founder Markus Frind attributes the site's explosive success to a surprisingly simple formula: in 2003, when rival dating sites paywalled, POF kept things free. Instead of charging customers, POF relied entirely on advertising for revenue.

The model worked like a charm. Frind famously claimed he spent only an hour a day working, while POF blew past the competition to become one of the world's most popular dating sites.

These days, things aren't quite so simple. Five years ago POF had just 3 people on its payroll; today it has 80. No longer does Frind devote only an hour a day to work; now he works half-days. Revenue has grown alongside both of those changes, but not without challenges. Namely, the smartphone.

POF's iPhone and Android apps are incredible popular – second only to Tinder – but they aren't compatible with the revenue model that made the company a success in the first place. Advertising just doesn't work well on the smaller screens of mobile phones, and now POF is faced with a decision: evolve or go extinct.

Frind says that 90% of POF's visits from people under the age of 35 now come from phones rather than web browsers, so it's clear which option the company must choose. Most of its developers are now focused on improving the mobile apps, although Frind says up to 60% of the company's “tens of millions of EBITDA” still comes from the website.

POF's app revenue comes instead from upgraded memberships. Users can pay a monthly fee for extra features, like the ability to add more photos, but the new business model for monetization on mobile is still in its infancy. And while revenue overall is reaching an all-time high for the company, this year also marks the first time the number of people visiting the website is declining. According to web data firm Alexa, OkCupid has now caught up to POF on desktop in the free dating site market.

Can POF hold its own against a site backed by IAC? Mark Brooks, a consultant for the online dating industry, acknowledges that POF lacks the financial resources of IAC, but believes POF's mobile numbers are promising. What's left now is for POF to figure out how to make those mobile visitors as valuable as their desktop counterparts.

POF must now find ways to increase the number of users who upgrade to paid accounts. Exactly what those ways will be remains to be seen.

It seems dating site Plenty of Fish (POF) is staying true to its word of turning its image around. Known by many daters as a hook-up site, in the last couple of years the company's founder has promised that the site is cleaning up and wants to go back to its original purpose - helping singles meet people for relationships, not one-night stands.

The company recently shared on its blog exactly how they are enforcing their mission, and it seems they are doing this by deleting the accounts of members who violate site rules. According to POF, many users are in the dark about why their accounts are deleted, but they don't have the staff to respond to these requests individually. Just how many people are violating POF rules? About 5% of members, which considering the thousands of people signing up for the free site on a regular basis, amounts to more than its 75-person staff can handle. So, they decided to post the most common reasons on their blog.

Following are some of the rules that POF enforces. Be warned, if you violate their rules, the company claims that it can find out through its technology and advanced software. They can even detect if you're a scammer when you sign up.

Here are some reasons why your POF account may have been deleted:

1. You were looking for casual sex. The example the site gives is pretty cut and dry - one user was asking another user if he could pay her for having sex with him. While many lewd messages have double meaning and can be argued, if you are propositioning anyone on the site, you won't have your account for long.

2. You're married. The site is strict about this, and if POF discovers you are married, your account will be deleted.

3. You are a "scammer, a spammer, a fake, underage, or are soliciting a business." This can get a little murky, as scammers generally tend to hide beneath their online dating persona. But POF claims to catch 98% of them before they can even sign up on the website, captured through their "sophisticated spam detection system."

4. You are rude to users. If you put someone down because of how they look, or make discriminating remarks, or are blocked by other users often, you risk being deleted.

5. You post inappropriate photos. This includes the infamous "shirtless" photo that guys tend to gravitate to in online dating. If you are a woman, don't advertise your body with revealing clothing. If you question whether you should upload a particular photo, then don't.

6. You login from a country where POF doesn't exist yet. While POF is in many countries, they aren't in all and they can't support a user account in places where they aren't set up. So, check the site to see if your country is included before attempting to sign up.

When it comes to our personal lives and how we spend our time – many of us like to share what we’re doing over social media. We post pictures of the food we eat, talk about the five miles we ran in the morning, and want our friends and followers to know if we’ve started a cleanse or just lost ten pounds.

While these are good updates for your friends to rally around, offering supportive comments over Facebook and likes on Instagram, is it really helping your dating life? According to a new study by dating site PlentyofFish, fad diets and talking about your health routines are a huge turn-off for daters.

Gen Xers and Millennials believe their followers want to see and hear everything about the healthy lifestyles they adopt, but this survey shows that the diet and fitness craze is not only driving couples apart, but preventing singles from creating new relationships.

In terms of restrictive diets, 70% of women and 75% of men don’t want to date someone on a gluten-free, low/no carb or vegetarian diet. In addition, 47% of singles surveyed don’t want to date a vegan, either. (Sorry animal lovers.) While the jury is out on why this is the case, at least among POF users, perhaps most people don’t want to limit their own options or vary their routines, especially if they don’t know the relationship will work out in the end.

Exercise is another challenge for daters, with men being less than supportive of their girlfriends and dates than many people might think. Thirty percent of women have felt pressure from a partner to improve their exercise habits. Even more alarming – men admit it. Twenty-eight percent of men said they pressured a woman they were dating to exercise more, 32% pressured a woman to improve her eating habits, and 11% have broken up with a woman over exercise.

Women are the first to deprive themselves in preparation for a date, too. Twenty-two percent have dieted or not eaten in the time leading up to a big date.

When it comes to keeping fit – men and women differ on what it means to exercise. Thirty-nine percent of women walk, while 40% of men lift weights.

Interestingly, the PlentyOfFish survey targeted the most health-conscious users in North America's 10 fittest cities to reveal how singles view fitness and diet when it comes to forming romantic relationships. As it turns out, the most health-conscious daters are not the most tolerant of others who might be good romantic partners in other ways. Maybe it’s time we went a bit outside our comfort zones.

For more on the dating site which brought us this study you can read our POF review.