POF (Plenty of Fish)

The dating site Plentyoffish.com can now be found in another music video. The first time this happened was for a song called "Available" by Flo Rida last summer (see Story). Now the Lady Gaga video for the song "Telephone" (featuring Beyonce) has Plentyoffish.com being used by one of the women guards in the video.

The dating site is not the only obvious product placement in the video. You will find Lady Gaga getting her Verizon mobile phone confiscated by jail guards and strangley enough, her eating Wonder Bread in the video as well.

You can find the new video LadyGaga.com. Warning the video is a little strange and has sexual content.

Recipient
Plentyoffish.com

After careful review, we have determined that Plentyoffish.com is the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Free Award. This service is by far the largest of the free dating sites on the internet. While PlentyofFish.com (POF) does offer a paid component now, most features of the dating site continue to be free, including all communication between members.

So why did we decide on POF? The answer is easy, members! This dating site has many active users; no other free dating site even comes close. Part of the reason why PlentyofFish.com is so popular is they offer all the tools needed for online dating. When user's signup you get to fill out a typical profile for yourself that contains most attributes people consider when dating someone. When searching for singles comes into play you will have a number of options available to you, from the basic search which is quick and easy, to the advance search which allows you to search on any attribute in a profile. With members you like, communication is a breeze with the built in and easy to use private messaging system. Privacy and safety is also important on POF, for example you can specify the types of members you do not want contacting you.

PlentyofFish.com also has a few other free relationship services for members. You can take the Relationship Chemistry Predictor which contains 48 questions about yourself and your personality. Once completed POF will then match you with other members based on the answers you have given. There is also a Relationship Needs Assessment which better helps you understand what you require in a relationship. Once you have taken the assessment you are given an action plan to help you discover if your potential partners will meet your needs.

If you are looking for a dating site which is free to use then PlentyofFish.com should be the first service on your list. Chances are they will have plenty of members actively seeking a relationship living in your area.

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

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

OKCupid has released some interesting detailed reports and stats about their members. It looks like a member of Plenty of Fish (see the blog) is following suit by using a built in tool on PlentyofFish to check out the different demographics based on an interest you can type in. This tool is intended to inform potential Advertisers of Plenty Of Fish on what type of people use the site, so they can better target their ads.

POF will return a percentage result for the following attributes for any interest. This information is compiled straight from the members dating profiles and the percentages are based on the answers members have chosen for each profile attribute.

It looks like Plenty of Fish has a new advertising and marketing plan aimed at young adults and it involves celebrities. The first hint of this new tactic was when PlentyOfFish.com appeared in a Flo Rida video for the song Available (see Story). At first I thought it was a strictly a promotional partnership between the dating site and Flo (POF is in the video, so the dating site will then promote Flo Rida) but now I am not so sure. I have a feeling POF basically paid to be included in the video for the publicity.

Plenty Of Fish now has a new promotion featuring Lady Gaga. At each concert stop on The Monster Ball tour, two singles can win a "date of a lifetime". The date includes tickets to the concert and backstage passes. To enter the contest you can visit the Lady Gaga page on POF.

It definitely looks like POF is trying to attract young adults to their dating site by being associated with popular music artists. I wonder if they will be doing other advertising, besides using the internet, to promote this new contest?

For a bit more on the story, read the press release. To find out what singles are saying about POF, read our Plentyoffish.com review.

The Forbes website wrote an article called "The Top Online Meat Markets" which talks a bit about some current online dating statistics and lists the top ten dating sites according to unique visitors in the month of June from a tracking company called Nielsen (more famously known for tracking TV viewers). I wasn't really impressed with the title since they are referring to dating sites as meat markets. The term meat market is not meant as a compliment and it tells me the author is not very interested in the story and doesn't think much of the concept of online dating. He further expresses his point of view in this sentence:

Call it calculating, unromantic and maybe even a bit unnatural ...

For a media company whose authors are suppose to leave their opinions at the door unless the topic calls for it, I wonder how this piece got past the editor's desk.

Every dating site has its own spin on the dating profile format. In this series, I'll take a look at some of the different profile formats and how you can write your best profile for that particular service. PlentyofFish is a free dating service that has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. It has a very basic profile setup, so it's straightforward to fill it out.

Interests

List your top 6-9 interests here. Why 6-9? The default layout is three columns and you want something even and pleasing to the eye. Three interests aren't quite enough to fill out the box, but more than 9 and it starts to get a little bit like a laundry list.

About me

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making on PlentyofFish is being redundant. In other words, repeating information found elsewhere in the profile. In fact, the profile I chose at random to reference for this article is doing just that. In her statistics it lists her age, height, and location, yet she repeats them again in her profile. This is just wasted space!

This is the internet age, folks. We've been trained to skim and then LEAP to a new page if something seems boring within a few seconds. Save those precious words in your profile for things that haven't already been said.

Your profile is the back cover of the Book of You. Tell that interesting tale that gets people intrigued enough to pick you up, but keep it short and don't give away too much. A little mystery is what make people want to get to know you better!

Even though this says "About me," you will want to write about the type of match you seek here as well. After all, there's no other place in the profile to put it!

First date

What a random choice for a second section. What I'd do here is give potential matches a variety of ideas of places that you'd like to go for a first date. Bonus points if you can keep this section fresh and updated with local events!

For example: "There's a great film festival going on Downtown on Saturdays through the end of the summer. I'd love to go check it out!"

Having a good selection of date ideas puts a potential match at ease. You've done some of the work for them! Instead of suggesting a film festival and wondering if you hate movies, they'll know for sure that you want to go and would enjoy it!

Photos

Be sure your photos for your PlentyofFish profile include a close-up of your face, one full-body shot, and at least two other good photos of yourself. Avoid self-portraits, webcam photos, and group shots when you can and please, please, please, be sure your photos are recent so you are advertising exactly what you look like now.

Good luck going fishing at PlentyofFish! I hope you catch the big one!

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