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Plenty of Fish (POF) is a Canadian
online dating Online dating, also known as internet dating, virtual dating, or mobile app dating, is a method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An online dating service ...
service, popular primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. It is available in nine languages. The company, which is based in
Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
,
British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...
generates revenue through advertising and premium memberships. While it is free to use, Plenty of Fish offers premium services as part of their upgraded membership, such as allowing users to see who has "liked" a member through the service's MeetMe feature, and whether a message has been read and/or deleted.


History

Markus Frind, CEO of Plenty of Fish Media Inc., graduated in 1999 from
British Columbia Institute of Technology The British Columbia Institute of Technology (also referred to as BCIT), is a public polytechnic institute in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. The technical institute has five campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region, with its main cam ...
with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology, and founded the business in 2003. In 2004, Plenty of Fish became a full-time money making business for Markus. He ran the site independently until 2008, when he began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters. In 2009, Plenty of Fish also launched a contest with
Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her image reinventions and versatility across the entertainment industry, she is an influ ...
allowing single members to go together and meet the singer during
The Fame Ball Tour The Fame Ball Tour was the debut concert tour by American singer Lady Gaga, in support of her debut studio album ''The Fame'' (2008). North American shows began in March, followed by dates in Oceania and a solo trek through Europe. Dates in Asia ...
. The website for Plenty of Fish appeared in several music videos in 2010: in Lady Gaga's "
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's "
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",
Kesha Kesha Rose Sebert (born March 1, 1987), formerly stylized as Ke$ha, is an American singer and songwriter. Her first major success came in 2009 when she was featured on rapper Flo Rida's number-one single, "Right Round". Kesha's music and ima ...
's "
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",
Flo Rida Tramar Lacel Dillard (born September 16, 1979), known professionally as Flo Rida ( ), is an American rapper and singer. His 2007 debut and breakout single "Low (Flo Rida song), Low" was number one for 10 weeks in the United States and broke the ...
and
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's "
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",
Jason Derulo Jason Joel Desrouleaux (born September 21, 1989), known professionally as Jason Derulo (; formerly stylized as Derülo), is an American singer, songwriter and dancer. Since the start of his solo recording career in 2009, he has sold over 250 m ...
's "
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", and
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's "
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". In 2011, it appeared in
Britney Spears Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. Cultural impact of Brit ...
's music video for "
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". Many of these appearances are undisclosed paid
product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of t ...
s which have been met with highly negative reviews. In 2010, Plenty of Fish launched mobile apps for iPhone and Android. A few years later, it was made available for both the iPad and Windows phone. In a June 2014 interview, Frind attributed 85% of all Plenty of Fish traffic to mobile with the number growing weekly. On January 21, 2011, it was discovered that the Plenty of Fish website had been hacked which exposed the personal and password information on nearly 30 million user accounts. Since the alleged hacking incident, Frind alleges he has identified persons he believes are responsible for the hacking, and alleges he is threatening legal action in response to the widespread negative media exposure. At the time this received global media exposure and security experts blamed Plenty of Fish for the security and privacy lapse specifically for keeping users' passwords unsecured. On February 28, 2012, the parents of
US Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...
Lieutenant Peter Burks sued Plenty of Fish. The parents' lawsuit alleges photos of their son, who was killed in Iraq in 2007, were used without permission. The parents were seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Paul Bloudoff, the firm's legal affairs manager responded by saying "Lt. Burks’ image was never used by POF.com in any way, shape or form, third-party advertiser, with no affiliation to Plenty of Fish, ran an advertisement promoting another dating site using Lieutenant Burks’ picture, and one of the places this advertiser ran this advertisement happened to be our site." In an August 2012 Forbes interview, Markus Frind stated that based on the millions of relationships and marriages Plenty of Fish has created over the past several years, it is estimated that over one million babies have been born as a result of the website. On May 20, 2013, Frind implemented several changes to the website with the stated goal of focusing on "meaningful relationships". Among these changes were the removal of the "intimate encounters" option. A related eliminated feature was the option to contact clients of age differences greater than "Markus", presumably Frind, found tasteful. Although the Plenty of Fish site and its "matching" criteria continue to match couples with age differences greater than the 14-year guideline, attempts to contact these "matches" resulted in an inbox message from Markus stating, among other things, " ere is no reason for a 50 year old man to contact a 18 year old woman." Another restriction implemented in the updates is that male users could no longer attach images to messages. Additionally, the site automatically blocks messages from male users containing certain words while showing such messages as being sent. The image sending restriction was apparently reversed after Plenty of Fish was acquired by Match Group (but not "quick messages" directly from the match's profile page) and members outside of the 14-year age limit no longer appear as matches or in searches. Attempting to contact members outside of the 14-year limit now displays a page stating the user does not meet the member's contact criteria (even when untrue) and suggests several matches to contact instead of sending a message to the user's inbox. In March 2015 Plenty of Fish Media Inc. was fined $48,000 for alleged violation of Canada's anti-spam law. On July 14, 2015, Plenty of Fish was sold for $575 million to
Match Group Match Group, Inc. is an American internet and technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It owns and operates the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty ...
(owner of
Match.com Match.com is an online dating service with headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match.com is owned by Match Group, which owns several online d ...
,
OkCupid OkCupid (often abbreviated as OKC, but officially OkC) is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice questions to match members. ...
,
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and
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, based in
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
,
Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
). The headquarters remain in Vancouver and have recently been expanded. In August 2015, POF users were targeted by cyberattacks via a malicious adlink. In December 2019, Plenty of Fish pushed out a fix for its app after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users had set as private on their profiles, including hidden names and postal codes. In March 2020, Plenty of Fish (now owned by Match Group) launched a livestream feature after a partnership to interact with users from other apps MeetMe and Skout (both owned by
The Meet Group The Meet Group, Inc. (formerly MeetMe) owns several dating Dating app, app networking services including MeetMe, hi5, LOVOO, Growlr, Skout, and Tagged (website), Tagged. The company has offices in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, San Francisc ...
) and
Zoosk Zoosk is an online dating service available in 25 languages and in more than 80 countries. The founders of the company are Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr, who ran the company until December 2014. After struggles that year, Kelly Steckelberg became t ...
(owned by
Spark Networks Spark Networks GmbH is an American-German dating company with a portfolio of brands designed for singles seeking serious relationships. These online dating brands include Zoosk, SilverSingles, EliteSingles, Jdate, ChristianMingle, eDarling, JSw ...
).


Staff

The site relied on volunteers to monitor forums and sort through the 50,000 new photos that, at most come in each day. By 2019, Plenty of Fish employed over 100 people, including programmers, marketing managers, product managers, designers and
customer success Customer success, also known as customer success management or client advocacy, is a business strategy focused on helping customers achieve their goals when using a product or service. It involves providing support and guidance to ensure customers ...
representatives.


Technical details

Plenty of Fish uses a
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
-based platform for itself, including IIS,
ASP.NET ASP.NET is a server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stands for Ac ...
, and
Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Server is a proprietary relational database management system developed by Microsoft using SQL, Structured Query Language (SQL, often pronounced "sequel"). As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function ...
.


Historical statistics

* Registered users: 100,000,000 (March 2015) * Dating site ranking in the UK: 1 (Comscore May 2011) * Dating site ranking Worldwide: 1 (Hitwise, August 2011) * U.S. site by market share: 1, with 18.57% of the market (Hitwise, August 2012) * Number of page views a month: 2 Billion (April 2012) * Amid the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, Plenty of Fish reported a 0.7% increase in monthly active users in the final quarter of 2020.


See also

*
Comparison of online dating services This is a partial, non-exhaustive list of notable online dating websites and mobile apps. __TOC__ Online dating services {, class="sticky-header-multi wikitable sortable sticky-table-row1 sticky-table-col1 mw-collapsible" style="font-size: 9 ...
* Timeline of online dating


References


External links

*
Inc. Magazine profile of Markus Frind
{{Vancouver Corporations Companies based in Vancouver IAC Inc. Internet properties established in 2003 Online dating applications Online dating services of Canada