MOBILE MARKETING WATCH – Sep 24 – According to a new report from comScore, the preferred methods of access to dating services has gone from being desktop dominant to mobile. In 2013, 65% of all online daters were using desktop, now only 40% are accessing dating sites via desktop. Match.com maintains its lead with 6.1M visitors, POF is #2 with 4.8M, and Tinder hold #3 position in mobile with 3.6M.
by J. Barton
See full article at Mobile Marketing Watch
CLICKZ – Aug 25 – Tinder's massive growth, due largely to its mobile-first approach that appeals to Millennials, is bringing new life to the online dating industry. In just the past year, the online dating category has gone from being desktop-dominant to a mobile-first category.
Match.com has been the market leader for quite some time with ~12M multi-platform unique visitors in July 2014. When looking at the number of visitors on smartphones. Match.com maintains its lead with 6.1M visitors, but POF trails not far behind with 4.8M. Tinder is #3 with 3.6M visitors, up ~1,400% in the past year.
by Eli Goodman
See full article at ClickZ
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BBC – Aug 20 – "Everyone is unique and individual but when it comes to dating and relationships, people follow a very common set of patterns", according to POF founder, Markus Frind. "Nearly 70% of the time we're able to predict exactly who you're going to end up in a relationship with," he says. At POF's headquarters, dozens of TV screens display charts and graphs that monitor, in real-time, the millions of messages that users are sending each minute on the site. With all this data, POF can quickly suggest matches to new users who fill in detailed questionnaires about themselves upon joining. POF gets ~2B page views each month and 29% of users find their partner in less than a month. Frind says the transition of users to mobile phones over the past two years has been one of the biggest challenges the company has faced.
OPW INTERVIEW – June 24 – We spoke to Markus Frind, founder and CEO of POF, about mobile, Tinder, and POF plans for Google Glass…
How are the events working out for you?
They’ve been working out great for the past 10 years now. We host 400-500 events a month with 28-30k showing up.
How is your offering different from Match?
All of our events are user driven. Users create the events, they promote them on the site and then people show up. Match.com plans the events and charges people to attend.
Isn’t that a little more risky though?
I would say theirs is more risky. It’s much easier to hold free events. From a business point of view, our users are advertising the site for free for us.
You had a $10M fund for acquisitions. What’s the ideal profile of a company that you’re looking for?
It was more like $30M that we wanted to invest. We’re looking for a company that has ~1M in revenues, and can massively grow if we send them our traffic.
Online dating is skewing more towards mobile, do you think?
The web is going the way of the dinosaur.
Looking at what Match/IAC has done with Tinder, do you think that this was done with POF in mind? POF is a direct threat for Match.com. So their ultimate response would be to back a free app that focuses on mobile. How much of a threat is Tinder?
I don’t think they have that much foresight. Although Tinder is growing in leaps and bounds, it’s not like it’s affecting traffic of existing dating sites. It is just bringing more people to the category.
Do you think they will launch a site? It seems like a fishing mechanism, but where’s the website? They aren’t sending traffic to Match yet.
95% of our users under the age of 35 are using a mobile phone. So who cares about a website?
How about the high end matchmaking? Aren’t you leaving money on the table?
We will see what happens with eHarmony. Everything is just moving mobile and getting more casual, not serious.
Last year, 70% of your traffic was on mobile, what’s it stand at at this stage?
85%. It still grows a percent a week.
I hear Zoosk is making close to half their revenues on mobile now. How’s that compare with POF in terms of revenues.
We haven’t done a lot of revenue driven features on the apps yet, so we are nowhere near where they are. I think they are at 41% from their filings. We focus mostly on getting users and retaining them.
Was developing an app for iOS less challenging than for Android?
iOS is far more challenging for us. There’s just more things that can go wrong.
If you were going to give some advice to a startup. Which would you advise them to start with?
We make equivalent amounts of money from users. It doesn’t matter if they are Android or iPhone. As far as I know, that applies to all of the major players.
Doesn’t iOS make more money though? Are behaviors a little different?
Android makes a little more money because you don’t have to pay Google 30% that you have to pay to Apple.
Do you have plans for a Google Glass app?
We have no plans for an app yet. Facial recognition is banned. So until there’s a wide install base, we’re not going to play with it.
What’s your thoughts on wearable computing in general? Do you think wearables improve the idating experience in the next 5-10 years?
The technology is still 3-4 years from being the next big thing.
OPW – May 23 – In 2012, PlentyofFish 659K average daily visitors on its app, equating to 68% of time spent on all dating apps. In 2013, Match.com took the top mobile spot with 4.6M total unique visitors. Mobile dating revenue grew from $43M in 2009 to $213M in 2012, a 70% average.
For additional companies and details, please view the video below.
TECH CRUNCH – May 20 – PlentyofFish was the victim of a DSoS attack that affected ~1M users for 5 hours. The 40 GBps attack, which affected the company's website and mobile apps, was much larger than the 8 GBps attack which took Meetup.com offline last month. The attacker demanded $2k to stop the attack. POF has successfully mitigated the attack and is back online.
OPW – Mar 4 – We have just updated Experian Hitwise USA online dating rankings. POF took over the top spot in March 2009 and has remained there since – until today. Zoosk is now the top dating site in USA, according to Experian, with 15.78% of market share, followed by POF (13.51% of market share) and Match.com (9.63% of market share).
THE PROVINCE – Feb 1 – Markus Frind typically sees a 23% jump in sign-ups at POF between Boxing Day and the Wednesday after Feb.14. ~3.5M people log into the site every day, many of them visiting several times. POF’s 70M registered users make it the world’s largest dating site. PlentyofFish was born in 2003. Frind ran the company by himself for five years until it reached $10M in annual revenue. Today, he employs ~75 people. He won’t disclose how much revenue his private company makes but answers “of course” when asked if it makes money. He has put aside $30M for acquisitions.
by Paul Luke
See full article at The Province
MARK BROOKS – Jan 31 – Each year I interview a top dating executive at the iDate
Super Conference in Las Vegas. In this 37 minute exclusive video, OPW interviews Markus Find, CEO of PlentyOfFish. See last year’s interview with Dr. Neil Clark Warren of eHarmony here.
This year, given that Sam Yagan, the Founder of OKCupid, is now the CEO of Match Group, I thought I'd have a fireside chat with his instigator and nemesis, Markus Frind, the Founder of PlentyofFish. He's a controversial figure in the iDating industry executive. Let's hear what he has to say about the past years events and the future of iDating.
Please email me your thoughts on questions you'd like me to ask during the interview, to mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com. Thanks for your consideration.
(Full Disclosure: Markus Frind/POF was a client of Courtland Brooks from Oct '06-Mar '10, and July '11-Mar '13)
