

From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year - michaelkscott
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?pagewanted=all

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pg
There are a lot of similarities to Craigslist. The lesson here is that while
marketplaces are very hard to start, they are also very hard to kill.

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sjtgraham
What is your position on investing in marketplace startups, i.e. all other
things being equal is a YC application describing a marketplace idea
disadvantaged in anyway or scrutinised any harder than an idea not predicated
on marketplace economics or the network effect?

~~~
pg
If we love them if the founders have a plan to beat the chicken and egg
problem, and not if they don't.

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elchief
1\. Article 4 years old

2\. 20 employees no, not one

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mohene1
I checked out this plenty of fish website. It is amazing because most dating
websites cannot get people to upload pictures of themselves. Plenty of Fish
has broken the personal photo stigma.

The odd thing is that, according to their website, Plenty of Fish is actually
hiring despite what is printed in the New York Times.

On face value, Plenty of Fish is a standard dating website (compare to
OKCupid) which makes its success more impressive.

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paulhauggis
When the site started there weren't very many competitors. They were also
unique in the fact that they are absolutely free.

Sites like match.com and the other dating sites at the time (most were bought
out by match.com) allow you to search, but messaging costs money. It was the
standard model of the dating site for many years.

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neilk
I don't know how you can say there weren't many competitors. There were tons.
You're right about the business models though. But they were all created
before Google and similar ad networks. Perhaps that is the major distinction
with PoF.

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gopi
I used to hangout with Markus in the old webmasterworld forum. Yes, POF site
was a one man show until 2008 but not anymore. The last i heard POF has around
20 employees and generate $30 million revenue!...BTB, POF's initial growth was
mainly from SEO especially ranking for 'free dating' related keywords.

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mva
Here some more information on their architecture:
<http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture>

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erikb
I can't imagine that there are interesting women on this website. Are
smart+goodlooking women not actually interested in the dating site fees,
because they want to find men who are willing (and able) to spend some money
on their relationship?

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danneu
I used OKCupid (free) to give more spontaneity to my dating and the vibe I get
is that nobody identifies with it as a serious pursuit. Paying for a site can
seem try-hard if you aren't one that feels very invested in it (despite how
invested you might actually be).

Whenever OKCupid itself comes up in conversation with a girl I hang out with
from there, they always say that they registered to just see what it was like
-- "might as well". No perception of personal investment that would validate
spending money. If it comes up, girls even mention that premium membership
comes off as sorta tacky/corny and that's my feeling as well.

I have no idea how PoF works, though.

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neilk
_they always say that they registered to just see what it was like_

Yeah, it's just an amazing coincidence that they ended up going on dates, with
people they discovered on a dating site. Maciej Ceglowski (idlewords here)
once commented that part of OKCupid's strategy is to give you other things to
do on the site, like quizzes, for plausible deniability.

But you're right, being identified as a premium member is probably bad social
signalling, too.

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flaviojuvenal
1500 days ago discussion about the same article:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97709>

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tikhonj
Completely irrelevant, but I thought it was "Plenty Offish" before reading
this article. Never did get the name :P...

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willvarfar
"Mr. Frind says that close to 50,000 new photos come in every day, each one of
which needs to be checked to verify that it is an actual person and that it
does not

not contain nudity."

Double negative split over a line-break :)

~~~
willvarfar
(info for downvoter: point being, that's an actual quote from the article; its
been sitting there in the article for years)

