United States

While POF has garnered a lot of attention over the years for its free online dating service and hook-up potential, its founder wants to get back to basics and is focused on the goal – finding people matches for the long-term.

POF does have an advantage over other dating sites: namely, its user base. With 70 million registered users all over the world, it can rightly call itself the largest online dating site. Three and a half million people log on to the site every day to look for matches and communicate with others. The company also estimates that over one million relationships a year begin on its website.

What does this mean for daters? For one thing, the sheer numbers POF draws from memberships means the company can determine how people date from country to country, including their cultural preferences and overall approach to dating. They’ve found that while daters in the U.K. largely embrace online dating, the rest of Europe is a bit behind. They can focus on areas of growth and potential.

POF began in Canada, but the U.S. is by far its biggest market, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and Australia.

“People in the United Kingdom will wear turtlenecks in the photos they send,” POF founder Markus Frind told The Provence, commenting on the cultural differences of dating he’s witnessed through the POF user base. “Women are way more aggressive in Brazil. They initiate as much as men.”

POF was started in 2003 when Frind was working for another technology company, and created the dating site in his spare time. He ran the company out of his apartment for five years until it reached ten million in annual revenue. Today he employs about 75 people in a large office space in Vancouver, and since POF remains a free service for daters, most of the revenue generated is from advertising.

Though Frind won’t disclose how much revenue his private company makes, he has put aside $30 million for acquisitions and intends to keep growing. In September of last year, he bought speed dating company Fast Life, hoping to add value to his online dating service by getting into singles events.

And as for success stories? Frind met his own partner through work, not over an online dating site. But he has gathered some success stories resulting from POF matches, including a young married couple who met each other five years ago on the site.

With its popularity unwavering, POF is focusing its efforts on technology and growth. The goal according to Frind is still to help people find long-term relationships.

Online daters routinely choose matches based on criteria that are highly correlated with political preferences.

That sounds like a good thing, right? It seems only natural that we would gravitate to partners who share our political beliefs, and it stands to reason that relationships made up of partners with the same political leanings are more likely to last.

But social scientists fear that, where politics are concerned, our online dating habits are ultimately making us less tolerant citizens. A report in the journal Political Behavior suggests the increasing use of online dating and social media sites is preventing people from meeting potential partners who don't share their political preference, because it's easy to filter out potential partners with differing viewpoints. Once you move past the idea of improved compatibility, what you're left with is more couples that lean toward political extremism.

It doesn't stop there. Not only are such couples more likely to shift to the ideological extremes because they lack access to contradictory opinions, they are also more likely to have children who hold the same ideologically extreme positions. And what do you get when you put it all together? A more polarized America, where fewer and fewer people are able to understand how others could possibly think differently from themselves.

Now that's a scary thought. And possibly the plot to the next best-seller dystopian novel.

The importance of mixed political partnering cannot be understated. When political views in a relationship are mixed, the individuals involved tend to be moderated by their partners and less fixed in their ideas. One might even change their party identification in order to match the other's preferences, or because conversations with their partner have genuinely changed their beliefs. But even if no such change occurs, people tend to be far more tolerant of opposing views when they are exposed to divergent opinions from people they hold dear.

We all want to live in a world of more tolerance, don't we?

The report also notes that the demographic makeup of the people who are most likely to meet their partners online are upper income college graduates - a.k.a. the exact same people who are most likely to vote, contact their congressmen, and be members of the interest groups that influence Washington lawmaking.

What consequences will it mean for democracy, if online dating causes our political process to become even more divisive than it already is? And how can "opposites attract," if they're never given the chance to?

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Looking for the best online dating site? There are many out there, but how do you know which sites are the ones most people are checking out? After all, you want a lot of choice when it comes to searching for love.

According to website Mashable.com, Yahoo has revealed the top 10 dating sites that people have searched for using their search engine. And surprisingly, OkCupid topped the list (with even more searches than standards like Match.com or eHarmony).

Another surprise? Men seem to be more interested in online dating, or at least, searching for sites and checking them out.

Here's the complete list:

OkCupid. This site tops the list, and maybe because their demographic skews younger and it's a little more engaging with members than some of the classic dating sites. Most of the searches were conducted by men (68%).

Match. This website is almost synonymous with online dating. It's been around a while, and is still going strong. Again, the majority of searches (73%) came from men.

MeetMe. A more casual site for dating and friendship, MeetMe is gaining marketshare when it comes to online dating. Or at least, people seem to be searching for the site. A hefty 67% of men (primarily from Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia) searched for it according to Yahoo.

Zoosk. This popular website touts is algorithms which allow members to "date smarter." Again, more than 70% of its searches came from men.

eHarmony. The go-to destination for those looking for committed relationships, eHarmony has remained near the top of the pack for a long time. Surprisingly, more men (54%) than women were searching for this website.

PlentyofFish. This dating site has a bit of a reputation, but that hasn't stopped people from checking it out. Formerly known for its "intimate encounters" section, POF has recently undergone an image change to focus on matching people with relationship potential.

JDate. The most popular site for those who are more religiously inclined, JDate has become the go-to source for Jewish singles. Not surprisingly, the most searches came from New Jersey, New York, and Florida, all with more concentrated Jewish populations.

Skout. Mobile apps also figured prominently into searches. Skout is a networking app that focuses on meeting people rather than having specific agendas for dating and relationships. Most of the searches for this site came from men (68%) residing in Texas, California, and Florida.

Christian Mingle. A popular religious-based dating site, Christian Mingle focuses on dating, friendships, and relationships. This is the only site that had more females searching for it, primarily from Texas, California and Pennsylvania.

Tinder. This mobile app was made popular by college students, a sort of "hot or not" version of online dating. With its easy-to-use and convenient set-up, the app has taken off among singles who like to see who's close by and wanting to meet a little more spontaneously.

First there was Singlesnet. Then there was Singlesnet via Match.com. Now there's Kiss.com, the latest evolution of an online dating service that's been in business since 1997.

There was once a time when Singlesnet was the most visited dating site in the United States, but its popularity peaked in December 2008 and steadily declined until a major drop in February 2009. Despite the drastic drop in traffic, Match.com purchased the company in 2010 and Match CEO Greg Blatt had high hopes for the new acquisition.

"While Singlesnet's traffic is currently in decline," he said at the time, "we believe that by applying our category expertise we can reverse that trend, increase the site's profitability and improve the overall user experience."

Quinn Lipin, Singlesnet founder and CEO, was also hopeful that the new partnership would mean a brighter future. "Match.com has been the standard-bearer for the entire online dating industry, so we're excited to team up with them," he said. "I believe working with Match.com will enable us to re-start growth in the business."

Three years have passed, and the company has undergone yet another transformation. The site was rebranded for 2013 as Kiss.com, a sleek, simple, and streamlined dating site better suited to the current online dating climate.

The Kiss.com sign up process begins with an easy fill-in-the-blank questionnaire that makes completing your profile a snap. After you've answered the Mad Libs-style forms, you can then choose the hobbies and interests that most represent you from a selection of cute and colorful cartoon drawings. The list is surprisingly extensive (even pet rocks have an entry!). The same picture-style survey also answers questions about your beliefs regarding politics, religion, and astrology.

Finally, you're given the opportunity to answer in your own words. Two free-response questions let your creativity flow: 'If you only had 4 seconds, what would you say about yourself?' and 'What if you had an hour to describe yourself to someone, what would you say?' If you're not ready to answer every question just yet, you can hit the SKIP button at any point and come back later.

While the look of the site is different, the price structure has barely changed since it was Singlesnet:

• One month for $24.95
• Three months for $16.65 per month ($3.00 cheaper)
• Twelve months for $7.49 per month

Members who choose to upgrade their subscriptions receive better placement in search results, priority access to new features, and unlimited communication with both featured and non-featured members.

Will a makeover prove to be all Kiss.com needs to climb its way back to the top?

The Plenty of fish blog just released some current traffic statistics for their dating site. It's good to see a snapshot of what the user base of Plenty of fish is. Marcus Frind released the statistics to highlight how his dating site has grown and to be more open on the number of members POF has.

The user statistics released are based on active daily registered users. This means that the user must be logged into POF.com to be considered part of the statistic group. I am assuming that the numbers given are an average but it doesn’t say what the timeline is for that. It probably is for last month (January) but I am only guessing that he would release the latest numbers available. The user statistics could very well be for last year, last quarter or some other time period.

Plenty of Fish’s largest market is the United States with 2 million active daily registered users. This is followed by the United Kingdom with 550,000 and then Canada with 450,000. POF estimates that if you take the roughly 1400 dating site (non-adult) found in the United States and combine their paying members you will come out with 2.5 million subscribers. Combining these numbers together sounds like a lot of people and it is, but online dating has a lot of room to grow. The population of the United States sits at about 313 million with about 100 million people actually single. This shows that about 1/3 of the population is single. The United Kingdom has a population of about 63 million and Canada is close to 35 million. If we assume that the proportions of singles in these countries are about the same as the US then there are about 21 million single people in the UK and about 12 million in Canada.

In the US I figure that there are about 5.5 million people actively using a dating site every day. I came up with this number by adding Plenty of Fish’s 2 million active users with 2.5 million US paid subscribers, and then adding in an extra million singles for all of the other free dating sites that people use. This means only 5.5 percent of all singles in the United States are actively using an online dating site. Since about 78% of the US has internet access (according to Wikipedia) then this percentage only slightly improves to about 7 percent. The potential for growth in the online dating industry is still huge when your untapped market sits at over 90 percent.

I also found a few other related statistics. Plenty of Fish currently reports (from July 2012) that they have had 45 million members register since launch in 2003. Their current rate of growth is 40,000 new members signing up every day which works out to about 30 percent a year. Members of POF send out 20 million messages a day generating 7 million conversations. Currently the average age on POF is 35. In 2009 the average member was 40 years old.

To find out more about this dating site you should read our Plenty of fish review.