BUSINESS INSIDER – May 20 – After establishing online furniture site Zanui in Australia, founder Dean Kelly went to San Fran and met his future business partner, Justin Parfitt, who at the time was working on high-end speed dating events called Fast Impressions which he later sold to POF. They launched HeyLets after they wondered why they were reading negative reviews about experiences from people they had nothing in common with. The founders recently closed $1.65M in seed funding from Blue Sky Ventures and a handful of angel investors. The app startup is aiming to raise its series A round in the next three to six months. There have been ~100K downloads to date and an Android version is on the way. Built for mobile, users upload a photo and 200 characters about an experience they enjoyed, rather than a review of a place so it focuses on recommendations.
Category: POF
PlentyofFish Kills eVow.com
OPW – May 13 – POF has pulled the plug on its property eVow. The eVow website was developed as a direct competitor to eHarmony in September 2010. But POF is sticking to its knitting and focusing on growing its core offering, their mobile apps and POF.com. According to WayBackMachine, the last recorded date that eVow was live was March 25th. So eHarmony has one less competitor to think about. I hear eHarmony is in growth mode and doing very well now. Chemistry and PerfectMatch are becoming less of a concern for them as well. I still think we're leaving money on the table. Serious singles want more service, are willing to pay for it, but we're just not delivering. I hope to learn more about how Zhenai and Baihe are outperforming the Western markets in this respect, at iDate Beijing.
Post by Mark Brooks @
Review & Highlights From iDate Las Vegas
OPW – Mar 26 – Here is the review and highlights from the last iDate that took place in January in Las Vegas. Executives from Match.com (including Tinder), eHarmony, Zoosk, JDate (Osmium Partners) and POF attended this year.
POF Fined For Violation Of Anti-Spam Law
KELOWNANOW – Mar 25 - POF has been ordered to pay $48K for alleged violation of Canada’s new anti-spam law. Complaints received by the CRTC (The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) launched an investigation into the email practices. Last summer, POF users were sent commercial emails with an unsubscribe mechanism that was not clearly and prominently set out.
by Anita Sthankiya
See full article at KelownaNow
85% Of POF Usage Is Mobile
VANCOUVER COURIER – Mar 19 – "The idea of finding love on a desktop computer is quickly vanishing", says Markus Frind. He’s not referring to a decline in online dating services but about the massive shift of its user-base to mobile devices. POF announced this week it now has 100M users worldwide and its annual run rate is at $100M for 2015. 80-85% of users are using mobile devices instead of desktop computers.
PlentyOfFish Surpasses 100 Million Users
THE CANADIAN PRESS – Mar 16 – It's been a steady ascent for the homegrown startup which CEO and founder Markus Frind launched from his Vancouver apartment in 2003. By 2008, Frind had 15M signups, $10M in revenue and doubled his workforce – to two. The company has doubled its revenue since 2012. There are 4M users daily, and POF employs ~70 people now.
by Lauren La Rose
The full article was originally published at Edmonton Journal, but is no longer available.
Which Dating Sites Received The Best And Worst PR In 2014?
CB – Feb 7 – A lot of companies that traditionally receive a lot of press hits appeared to be lacking this year, including POF, Badoo, SNAP Interactive and Zoosk. Tinder got the most press coverage in 2014, followed by Match.com. Articles mainly highlighted Tinder's impressive growth. It also scored some negative press, most notably the Whitney Wolfe lawsuit. We heard a little less about eHarmony last year, but they still received solid press coverage thanks to their new eH+ service and the announcement of a plan to launch a "jobs matchmaker". OkCupid, as usual, made the list along with AshleyMadison, Grindr and Hinge. There were also companies with more sad than good news. Cupid was one of them. They sold their casual dating sites in 2013, posted weak 2013 annual results, tried unsuccessfully to revive their business, and even launched new services such as LoveBeginsAt and dating app Tangle. In December the news came out that the company decided to sell the remaining mainstream dating sites and quit the dating business. It was not an easy year for Spark Networks either. After some bad news for investors, a fight between the company leadership and Osmium partners began, ending in July with Osmium appointing 4 new directors to the Spark´s board. CEO Greg Liberman left the company in August and layoffs began in September.
Right Now Is The Peak Time Of The Year For Online Dating
WASHINGTON POST – Jan 3 – According to Match.com and POF, the window when the most people sign up, log on and poke around is January 4th. Dating sites see way more action between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day than they do any other time of the year. This cycle doesn’t just play out on dating sites. According to Facebook, people are far more likely to change their relationship status in January or February than they are at any other time of year. Offline, the holiday season tends to see a jump in both condom sales and conceptions.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Washington Post
Plenty Of Fish Is Responsible For 1M Babies
CBC.CA – Oct 27 – POF (PlentyOfFish.com) is the biggest dating site with 90M users that sends 30K messages a minute. According to POF founder & CEO, Markus Frind, POF is responsible for over 1M babies.
Plenty Of Fish Bets It All On Mobile
BCBUSINESS – Oct 21 - POF grew into one of the world’s most popular dating websites. Despite the popularity of its iPhone and Android apps, POF's old revenue model is under siege, as advertising doesn’t work well on the smaller screens of smartphones. POF will need to evolve to survive. POF CEO & Founder, Markus Frind, says that for people under the age of 35, 90% of POF’s visits now come from phones rather than web browsers. Frind says up to 60% of the company’s “tens of millions of EBITDA” still comes from its website. POF’s apps make money from upgraded memberships Frind is the first to admit monetization on mobile has a ways to catch up. Mark Brooks, one of the Internet dating industry’s few consultants, says that while Frind will never have the deep pockets of IAC, POF’s mobile numbers are promising. Now he just has to figure out how to make mobile visitors as valuable as its declining desktop ones. Brooks points to Craiglist for inspiration. “Most people think it’s entirely free,” he says, “and it is—except for people who want to advertise jobs, and they make a lot of money from that. Mobile is pretty much a land grab right now,” he says. “Grab as many users as you can, then figure out what to do with them.”