
Conspiracy Theory:The real story behind PlentyofFish - ceonyc
http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/12/conspiracy-theory-the-real-story-behind-plenty-of-fish.html
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smoody
"A scan of Twitter reveals a lot more people talking about actually using
Match.com than Plentyoffish"

There's the biggest flaw in his theory. If you've scanned the people who have
profiles on POF (or any other free dating service), you might draw the
conclusion that the people using such services are not part of the tech elite.
Yes, Twitter has a large user base but it is not mainstream.

Here's why it gets so many clicks: A lot of the ads on POF are for alternate
online dating sites, so there's a 100% match between the people visiting the
service and the people who might click on ads. By definition, if you're
visiting POF, you're not in a relationship and thus POF isn't satisfying your
need to be in a relationship. So what are you going to do? Search for a better
dating site. And, coincidentally, POF has already done that work for you by
surrounding every inch of unused space with dating site ads. It's both a
dating site and a dating site search engine.

It's that simple in my opinion. But I do love a good conspiracy theory!

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timr
Yep. POF is the world's most elaborate _banner ad_ for other dating sites. It
probably gets a bloated CPM for having targeted traffic, and I wouldn't be
surprised if it could support a high click-throgh rates on CPA ads for the
other dating sites -- because it's fairly useless for dating, itself.

I'm not sure if the author was being serious or satirical, but it's kind of a
shame that the article was so dopey, because there's probably a real story
here.

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mechanical_fish
This is so hilarious that it feels wrong to nitpick it. But in the interests
of science, this survey technique:

 _A scan of Twitter reveals a lot more people talking about actually using
Match.com than Plentyoffish..._

... is like a freshman-class exercise in Spot The Sample Bias. Twitter users
are hardly a representative sample of the _online_ population, let alone the
population at large.

~~~
jwesley
Twitter users alone is a small sample, but I think there are other anecdotal
samples that support (but can't prove) the author's hypothesis. I can't
remember anyone talking about PlentyOfFish, and this includes people who have
tried multiple dating sites. Compete, Alexa, Google Trends and other traffic
estimators also show Match having higher traffic. The only statistics showing
PlentyOfFish as bigger than Match are the comScore numbers quoted by Mashable.

It's also important to remember that Markus Frind was accused of overstating
the PlentyOfFish traffic levels to generate buzz years ago when the site first
became popular. Although the post went off into a satirical conspiracy, there
could still be something fishy going on.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, it could certainly be that Frind's stats are off -- accidentally, or on
purpose, or for the same reason that many scientists' stats are off. (They
make an initial mistake, and the positive feedback from that mistake creates a
big disincentive to reexamine the data too closely.)

If so, it's a joke on the web stats industry, which seems to be... well, a
joke. If people had any confidence in the accuracy of these traffic
estimators, there wouldn't be room for a wacky conspiracy theory, right? Does
anybody really know how many people visit a site, besides (perhaps) its owner?
I suppose Google might give me more definitive data if I paid enough and
signed an NDA in blood.

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aston
PlentyofFish's revenue numbers aside, one really has to be amazed at their
sheer traffic numbers. If the market share stats are to be believed, Match.com
and eHarmony are getting trampled on despite their outsize national
advertising budgets, deep-pocketed investors and clearly more polished
products.

I'd really be interested to know how PoF is pulling so much traffic.

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fauigerzigerk
I'm embarrassed to say but my own logical reasoning leads me to the conclusion
that I might actually want to date one of those super intelligent PhD bots.

Google, do you hear me? Or are you just a creature of Microsoft meant to stop
the DoJ from breaking them up?

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fallentimes
Wait is this an actual analysis or a joke? I'm not familiar with the blog.

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dhimes
Clearly reads like a joke to me.

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ceonyc
It's a joke... You know, like... haha... funny. That kind of a thing.

~~~
fallentimes
Right.

But why's half the thread treating it like an actual analysis?

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ceonyc
Because people have no sense of humor? Beats the hell out of me, and I wrote
it. They're debating it on the comments of the post itself, too. I thought it
was pretty obviously tongue-in-cheek, but maybe I should have suggested that
Markus was secretly an alien or something.

~~~
fallentimes
I was equally perplexed. I thought it was hilarious and then I went to the
comments and thought Isiah Thomas was running the Knicks again.

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compay
I've worked in the online dating industry for long time, and yes, POF is
making lots of money, though I don't know _exactly_ how much. Adsense is only
one part of how they are monetizing their site.

The idea that it's all click bots is just silly.

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mrtron
As with any good conspiracy theory, there are chunks of truth in there. There
are many people doing this type of activity on smaller scale.

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markbao
Interesting analysis, though it became a hit outrageous at the end. With the
degree of fakeness he is proposing, how is it possible that the degradation of
content quality went unnoticed? And A.viary?

I'm not one to hate on awesome and successful startupa, we should also
consider this. POF doesn't have the members it says. POF had growth, decent
size. Publicise startup story and millions in income, millions in members.
Press written, and your numbers jump.

Just like the situation with a video on YouTube. It wasn't the video that made
it have high view counts. It was the video being publicised as having a huge
view counts because of an exploit - and people went on the page, and the view
count increased.

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jgilliam
This is completely nuts.

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Fuca
In my experience when the outcome of something is a lot of money, some people
do whatever to make it happen.

I wouldnt bet anything against Google or PoF not messing this

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visdo
Is today April 1st?

