Match Group

Well it has been about a week since Plenty Of Fish (POF) offered its users a paid option that upgraded their profile to serious member status (see Story). There have been mixed reviews from the members of POF. Some complain about the 100% Free tag line on the site should be removed, while others have wondered if users with the badge would receive any more mail as claimed on the POF upgrade page. Most are just shocked that the site has started a paid membership upgrade. I haven't found any glowing recommendations of it yet.

Some members also have been angered that POF have been giving some upgrades away to get the ball rolling. The problem is, some of these giveaways have been to people who didn't know they received them. This has angered many long term POF members who felt left out. I think POF should of offered the upgrade free for a limited time to users that have been using the site regularly for a certain period of time. The upgrade would be offered for free but the user would still have to initiate it. I also would have made the free serious member upgrade for the 3 month term only. With a set of rules in place on who gets the free upgrade people would have less to complain about (but I am sure some still would).

I just checked and the PlentyOfFish.com paid membership option is now available. We first talked about this late last week (see Story). So to recap, according to PlentyOfFish.com this upgrade shows that you are serious about meeting someone. The real value here though, when you pay for the upgrade is your profile will now be highlighted in gold, in the search results. This means your profile will stand out from the others on the list. Advertising will also be removed from your main profile page and in its place a Gold Star will be presented. Thumbnail images from your profile will also contain a star icon.

What we didn't know last week was the cost of all this. Here is the break down (in USD):

• 3 months costs $29.40 or $9.80 a month
• 6 months costs $46.80 or $7.80 a month
• 1 year costs $71.40 or $5.95 a month

Once again PlentyOfFish is planning to offer a paid service. Their previous attempt with Virtual Gifts wasn't too successful. In my opinion it was due in part to the high cost of the gifts, which ranged from $9 to $30. This time around POF will offer an upgrade to the existing free membership which will last 3, 6 or 12 months. Markus, the CEO of PlentyOfFish is calling the new feature the Serious Member Profile Upgrade. It is designed for members to signal to the community that you are serious about meeting your match.

So what do you get when you sign up for the feature? Advertising will be removed from your profile and a Serious Member Star will appear on your profile beside your main profile photo. A star icon will also appear on any image thumbnail of you. Your search result as well, will be highlighted in gold to make it stand out in the standard search results and the gallery search results. We currently do not know the cost of the new features so we will just have to wait for a few days until the new feature goes live on the site.

I think this is a good move for PlentyOfFish as long as they keep the price down, at least in the beginning so the existing members can get use to it. I don't really see members signing up based on showing that they are a serious dater. They will sign up because their profile will be highlighted and stand out more from the crowd.

Will this new feature steal members away from paid dating sites? I don't really think so, most singles who move on from a dating site (Free or Paid) do so because they have run out of other members to contact. Becoming a serious member will not give you any more people to contact.

I was reading The Paradigm Shift and notice some comments about members not being able to access PlentyOfFish.com. I just tried it myself and it looks to be true. Plenty Of Fish appears to have gone down at least an hour ago, around 4pm eastern standard time. The internet browser returns a HTTP 400 error, which seems to suggest that the actual web server is experiencing problems. The last time that we know of when Plenty of Fish went down was mid July 2008, when there was a fire which knocked out power to the building where their servers are housed.

Update #1: As of 8:00pm EST all seems back to normal. PlentyOfFish.com is now back online.

Update #2: March 1, 2009 - I notice this morning that PlentyOfFish.com is still online but is really slow. You also may get server out of memory errors when you attempt to login or perform searches.

Update #3: March 1, 2009 - As of noon, things seem to be back to normal again.

Update #4: August 9, 2010 - For those of you reading this post about POF being offline today, for more information and updates read: Plenty of Fish is Down - August 9, 2010

For more information on this dating site, read our Plenty Of Fish review.

On February 19th, Match.com announced that Greg Blatt had been named Chief Executive Officer of Match.com. His previous job title was InterActiveCorp’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel. As the new CEO, Mr. Blatt:

... will have primary responsibility for the strategic and operational leadership of IAC’s personals businesses, which includes the global operations for its flagship brand, Match.com, as well as Chemistry.com and DowntoEarth.com.

Greg Blatt will be taking over for Thomas Enraght-Moony who has held the CEO position since April 2007. Thomas first started working at Match.com in 2004 which was the same year Greg started at IAC in senior management.

For more information on the dating site, read our Match.com review

Since InterActiveCorp announced the sale of Match.com European Operations on Thursday, February 19th, by Friday IAC's stock price ended the day up 4 percent or 57 cents to $15.05. Match.com European operations are estimated to be valued at $110 million according to analyst Jeetil Patel. Match.com European operations also earned about $12 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 which is 13 percent of Match.com's total revenue.

For a more complete picture, read the Forbes article.