POF (Plenty of Fish)

We have lots of online dating statistics for you today. Most of them have been compiled by comScore which is a company that measures internet traffic worldwide. This will make a nice wrap-up for the year 2012.

To start things, off did you know for the month of September 1 in 10 users on the internet visited a dating site? Well they did. For users of smartphones this statistic doubled to 2 visitors in every 10. Interestingly in quarter 2 of 2010 only 2 percent of every e-Commerce dollar was spent via a mobile device. In 2 short years this has risen to 10 percent which is 1 in every 10 dollars. I would bet that the online dating segment breaks down in a similar fashion since most dating sites have dating apps now.

Anyways, did you know visitors of online dating sites are not a fickle bunch? 26 percent of them visited more than one in a given month. Personal computers still win for quality time though with on average a user spending 80 minutes using online dating sites. This compares to mobile phone users who spent only 70 minutes. Facebook is a target rich environment for the dating site marking machine. 38 percent of all dating site ads are on Facebook. These ads reach almost half (47%) of their target users.

So what are the top ten dating site companies worldwide at the end of 2012 from comScore? Well compared to last year of the top 50 dating sites, 28 percent are new to the list! That is a lot for any industry.

• 1 - Match.com Sites
• 2 - Plenty of Fish Sites
• 3 - Zoosk.com
• 4 - Xpress.com
• 5 - Spark Networks
• 6 - eHarmony
• 7 - SpeedDate.com
• 8 - DateHookup.com
• 9 - Mate1.com
• 10 - Ashley Madison

So how do our English speaking friends overseas feel about online dating? In September of this year 5.7 million people in the United Kingdom (which has a total population of almost 63 million) visited an online dating site. This is a staggering 22 percent increase over the same time period last year. The 55 plus age group demographic led the charge with a 39 percent increase in visitors which topped 1 million unique visitors. The most active age group visiting dating sites was the 25 to 34 year olds with 1.3 million users which works out to 23 percent of all visitors. What was the most popular dating site in the UK? Why Plenty of Fish of course with almost 1.5 million visitors who spent on average for the entire month 115 minutes on POF.com.

A subject related to online dating is social networking. Worldwide for the month of November in 2012, on average a visitor spent 5.2 hours on one or more social network (excludes mobile phones). Over the past 3 months according to Alexa, Facebook came out on top followed by Twitter and then LinkedIn. In the top ten country list (see this) Argentina came out on top with an average of 9.8 hours in a month. Second went to Brazil with 9.7 hours and third was Russia with 9.6 hours. Canada came in 6th with 7.9 hours and the United States was nowhere on the list. This means in the U.S. visitors spent under 7.5 hours a month on social networking sites.

To find out more about the state of online dating in 2012 you can check out this page and view a presentation here. For more information about online dating and dating sites you can read our Statistics and Facts page.

Our review for the dating site Plenty of Fish has just received a major update and is now available online. Our last significant update to this review was completed under a year and a half ago. Beyond shortening there name from Plenty of Fish to POF this dating site has gone through a number of changes since May 2011.

So what has POF updated with their service since the last time we did a review? Here is a quick list of some of the more important changes:

• Profile questions modified and added
• Photo rating removed
• Relationship chemistry predictor went from 28 to 73 questions
• Profile themes now requires a paid membership
• The ability to see who viewed your profile find out the date and time it was viewed now requires a paid membership
• The amount of credits you get has changed for the 3 price points
• Additional relationship statuses have been added
• Some limits to what users can contact you via private messaging has been removed. You can no longer specify that the sender’s profile must have an image and that the message must be a certain size
• New "Hottest Girls" feature that lists women who consistently reply to messages
• New "Most Attracted" feature that lists men who have a high likelihood of being attracted to you
• There are now 5 different Personality Tests

To find out more about this popular free dating site and the changes please read our updated POF.com review now.

On August 31, 2012 Plenty of Fish released a new update for their Android dating app. The new version number is 1.4.1.9627 and it includes a number of new features and bug fixes. The new features include:

• Username search
• Additional search filters on profile attributes
• You can now register on POF through the App (done through web before)
• Auto-refresh for conversations
• Local event notifications
• User interface modifications

I haven't had any problems logging in with the new version but more than a few members have complained about not being able to use the app due to time out issues or notifications that the service is down for scheduled maintenance. A reviewer also mention that the Apps MeetMe feature could use additional search filters so you can have tighter control on which members are displayed.

Check out the Google Play Store on your Android phone and search for POF to download the app. To find out more about this popular free dating site you can read our POF.com review.

It looks like the dating site Plenty of Fish is currently down. It appears to have gone offline sometime late July 6th PST. No official information is available at the moment for the dating site outage. When you try to access POF.com or Plentyoffish.com visitors will receive some sort of “Service is unavailable” message (depends on your browser).

A few people have also reported to us that they have received a database error message. These messages seem to indicate a server problem and not a DNS issue. These problems could range from a hardware or software failure to some sort of denial of service or hacker attack (seems unlikely at this point).

If you have any new information on why Plenty of fish is down, please post a comment. This article will be updated when we receive any more news on why Plenty of fish is down and when it goes back online.

It appears that online dating has become very popular in Brazil. There are currently 62 million singles living in Brazil and according to ComScore, 5.6 million of these singles visit online dating sites every month.

Plenty of Fish launched their dating service in Brazil last September and in 9 months they have grown to have about 80,000 Brazilian members logging in each day. This is a huge accomplishment and probably makes them the most popular dating site in Brazil. Since January of 2012 visits from Brazil to POF.com have increased by 64 percent.

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

I notice several comments this week about users not liking the fact that Plenty Of Fish has now made the dating feature "Viewed Me" for paid users only. I had thought this was done a while ago but after some further research it looks like only the ability to see when someone had looked at your profile was removed. You could still see who had viewed you, not just when.

Well earlier this week it looks like you now cannot see who has viewed your profile anymore on POF.com, if you are a free member. You will now have to pay for this privilege.

For more information on this popular dating site, you can read our POF.com review.