POF (Plenty of Fish)

Recipient of Gold
Tinder

Recipient of Silver
POF

Recipient of Bronze
eHarmony

Once again thanks in part to the pandemic online dating users continue to increase in numbers. In the previous year we saw a lot of dating services add in video chatting to help singles meet at least virtual. This year we didn't get nearly as many new features. Instead most online dating companies have seen their services mature to the point of new features not really affecting how many new users join. Instead these companies are now concentrating on markets outside of North America and Europe to increase revenue. China and India with their huge populations are where the money is at. While the profit per user is lower in these countries, the larger market more than makes up for it.

The 2022 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll went online October 1^st, 2021 and closed for voting on December 31^st, 2021. In 3 months, 338 visitors took time and cast their vote in the poll. This is on par when compared to last year but down by over 20% when compared to the last 5. It is much harder for new dating services to make a dent in the market now thanks to the established brands and their recognition. The only time people consider trying a new dating service is when they have already tried the popular brands and are not seeing the results they like.

For 2022, the poll asked the following question:

Recipient POF (Plenty of Fish)

The recipient for the 2021 Editor's Top Pick - Over All award is Plenty of Fish. With over 50 million app installs on Android phones alone (which means it probably is 100 millions installs if you include Apple who has over a 50% market share in North America) this dating service offers an easy and free way to search and message singles. Tinder may have more app installs but you can only message singles on that app for free if you are a mutual match. Plus POF also has one of the highest app ratings for any of the popular dating apps including Tinder (Apple users give it a 4.2 out of 5).

Recipient Plenty of Fish

The 2022 Editor's Top Pick - Free award winner is Plenty of Fish. Very few dating service that offers free communication by messaging comes close to the number of members POF has. On average 3 million members log in every day to search for members and communicate with them. The POF website and apps are well designed and offer many features including video chat.

Dating apps like Tinder, Plenty of Fish and others under the Match Group umbrella are pushing users to call their Senators to pass the Violence Against Women Act. The Act lapsed in 2019 and has not been reauthorized since.

While the bill has already passed the House with a Democratic majority plus 29 Republicans joining to pass it, so far it has languished in the Senate. Match Group decided to take matters into their own hands and push for passage of the bill to protect users of their apps, especially as the company continues to put more safety measures in place to protect users against harassment and violence.

According to The Hill, the bill would provide funding to state and local governments to address domestic abuse, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking which has become even more of a problem with the increased use of dating apps. It would also narrow a loophole to prevent partners and boyfriends convicted of domestic violence or abuse from buying or owning guns. (Currently only spouses and former spouses are prevented from buying a gun if convicted.) A number of Republicans have opposed the bill because they see it as an infringement on gun rights. 

Dating app conglomerate Match Group announced that it will launch new audio and video chat features to its suite of dating apps over the next two years. The company shared this news on its second quarter earnings call with investors.

The company plans to debut a new audio chat feature and group video chat, along with other “livestreaming technologies” across its apps, according to Tech Crunch. The rollouts will happen over the next 12 to 24 months, with two of their dating apps debuting it before the end of this year, followed by more rollouts in 2022.

Adding new livestream and chat features are the result of the company’s pricey acquisition of social discovery platform Hyperconnect (the acquisition’s officially closed in mid-June). Match Group owns a series of popular dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish among others, and has said that the future of dating apps will likely resemble social platforms, with livestreaming and video being at the forefront.

POF Error Message

We started getting reports that the dating service Plenty of Fish (aka POF) was experiencing some downtime on Thursday July 28th at 6pm EST for about an hour and then the issue seemed to fix itself.

That little blip was a precursor of things to come as by 2am on July 29th both the POF website and apps went down again and stayed down until about 2pm the same day. Most users seem to experience about 12 hours of downtime with others still reporting issues as late as 11pm that Friday night. During Friday afternoon some users experienced POF to be up and working for a bit and then all of a sudden going down again.