POF is recognized for pioneering the concept of free online dating, and remains an industry leader as membership continues to grow exponentially and the business diversifies.
The site has been translated into French, Spanish, German and Portuguese, and is one of the top 100 internet start-ups of all time.
- Founded in 2003
- Owned by Markus Frind
- Headquarters: Vancouver, CA
- Key People: Markus Frind (CEO & Founder), Kate Bilenki (COO)
- Over 45M members
- 40k new signups/day
- 20M messages sent per day
- 1.26M average daily visits per month
- POF is Nr. 1 dating site in Canada, USA, UK and Brazil, it’s also available in Australia, Spain, Germany, France
- Employees: 60+
- Website: http://www.pof.com
History:
- 2003 – site founded by Markus Frind
- 2004 – PlentyofFish became a full-time business for Frind
- 2006 (August) – POF surpassed 10M members, 300k people were logging on to the service every day
- 2008 – Markus began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters – he ran the site independently before
- 2009 – POF enjoyed a 77-per-cent growth in visits from December, 2007,
through December, 2008. About 900k people now log in daily - 2009 (March) – POF added a pay option for serious daters (while it is
still free to use, POF offers premium services as part of their
upgraded membership, such as seeing the date and time a user viewed your
profile and allowing you to see whether a user read and/or deleted your
message.) - 2009 – POF placed No. 6 among all dating
sites in June 2009, with 2.2 million viewers, nearly double the previous
year - 2010 – POF launched mobile apps for iPhone and Android. Over 40% of POF’s log-ins come from mobile devices now (2012)
- 2010 (September) – POF launched eVow
- 2011 (August) – POF was ranked Nr. 1 dating site worldwide (source: Hitwise)