POF (Plenty of Fish)

Our poll for the 2010 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award which we started October 2nd, 2010 had almost 800 people cast their votes by the beginning of January 2011. This is the second year in which we asked our visitors to recommend the best free dating site for the year. A free dating site has to offer most features of the dating service for free. This includes creating a profile, advanced searching and communication by mail messages. Some of these free services may offer a paid upgrade of a membership which gives the user additional features but in order to be considered free by us, a free member should still be able to use the site to find and communicate with their matches at no cost.

The recipient of the 2010 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site is PlentyOfFish.com. This is the second year in the row that they have received this award. In total they gathered 267 votes which is 33 percent of the total and they were recommended 14 percent more than the second most recommended free dating site. When you compare the results to the previous year’s poll, in 2010 singles preferred PlentyOfFish.com 4 percent more than in 2009.

Here are the final results of the poll:

1. PlentyOfFish.com
2. Craigslist
3. OkCupid.com
4. DateHookUp.com
5. Mingle 2
6. Matchdoctor.com

This year's runner up was Craigslist with 19 percent of the vote followed by OkCupid with 18 percent of the vote. PlentyofFish.com had an additional 114 votes (or 14% more) over the runner up Craigslist. Following OkCupid was Datehookup.com with just over 12 percent of the vote. Mingle 2 came in at 7 percent followed by Matchdoctor.com with 5.5 percent.

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

I have not seen this commercial on TV yet for PlentyOfFish.com but it was suppose to start airing last week in North America. This is PlentyOfFish's first TV commercial.

For more on this dating service take a look at our review of PlentyOfFish.com.

Back in July we mentioned that the PlentyOfFish iPhone App would be here in a few weeks. Well it is now December and I must confess, I forgot all about it.

It looks like the iPhone PlentyOfFish Mobile App has been available on iTunes since August. The current version is 1.02 which was released on Oct 22, 2010. It is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad as long as they have iOS 3.0 or later installed on them. Most of the reviews of this iPhone dating app seem to indicate that is okay (it has a 3 out of 5 star rating) but lacks a few features and should just be used as a supplement if you can't use your laptop at the moment.

Features of the app include searching, checking your matches and sending and receiving PlentyOfFish email messages.

For more information on this dating site, read our review of PlentyOfFish.

It looks like PlentyofFish.com has a new payment option that enables members to purchase credits to use on gifts and other features of the dating site. To buy these Goldfish Credits (they are also called PlentyOfFish Credits or POF Credits on the site) you will need to try sending a Gift, Ice Breaker or attempt to view the Sent Message Status. From any of these pages you will be shown your Goldfish Credit status and have the option to visit a page to buy some.

POF updated their site a few days ago with this new credit system. There was no official word as far as I could find on the topic so I am sure it caught a few members off guard. I think members will probably complain most about requiring credits for the View Sent Message Status. Since, this means free members of POF will now not be able to tell if a member has read or deleted their message anymore unless they pay for the privilege first.

The cost of Goldfish credits vary on the amount you buy. The costs listed are in USD:

• 100 credits for $9.95 (10 cents a credit)
• 215 credits for $18.95 (9 cents a credit)
• 500 credits for $37.95 (8 cents a credit)

Now don't confuse Goldfish credits with POF points. Points still do exist and are earned by doing certain activities on the site like creating an account, and every time you login.

On a related note, the first time POF wasn't 100% free happened in March 2009 when they first offered the Serious Member Profile Upgrade (see Story).

For more information on this story you can visit Bonny's Dating Blog who got the scoop first. To find out more about this popular dating site, you can read our PlentyOfFish review.

A recent post from Markus, the owner of PlentyofFish.com, over on his blog commented on Mark Brooks view that free dating sites are going to kill off paid dating sites. It looks like Markus doesn't see that happening (which I agree) since he mentions the fact that the rankings for dating sites over the last few years have remained relatively stable.

What he did say is Facebook has been taking traffic from all dating sites. According to Markus, his Google Analytics account shows that page views per user (a free dating sites bread and butter since they make money on displaying ads) have declined 30 percent in the last 2 years. He also reported that PlentyOfFish.com's traffic increased by 15 percent on September 23 when Facebook went offline for 4 hours.

I was actually surprised to see Markus refute Mark Brooks in public like that since he was a client of Marks dating consulting business for a while a year or two ago. It looks like their working relationship may not have ended on a high note.

For more information on the online dating site mentioned in this article, read our review of PlentyofFish.com.

Plenty of fish launched a new dating website called eVow early this September. It is a service which allows singles to find long term relationships only. Instead of focusing on providing matches like other dating sites which specialize in long term relationships and marriage, eVow plans to allow searching of their profiles. This is the main selling feature of the site at the moment.

In less than 7 days of operation, more than 100,000 people signed up to eVow (thanks to being advertised on POF). The site is currently free but there is a plan to make it a paid dating site soon. New features are also planned for the site which took just under 30 days to create (from when programming started).

You can expect a review of this new relationship site to be available soon.

For more on the story read the POF Blog and to find out further details on the largest free dating site in the world, read our Plenty of Fish review.