
2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US. - jasonlbaptiste
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/2008-was-a-good-year-now-13-in-the-us/
======
timr
This is absolute nonsense.

Alexa doesn't place POF anywhere _near_ the top 100 US websites (they have it
at 466, actually). Now, I'm not claiming that Alexa is the gold-standard for
accuracy, but if you're _truly_ a top-20 site, you're going to be so immense
that _nobody_ would confuse you for a top-500 site. It's like confusing an
aircraft carrier for a tugboat.

For whatever it's worth, here's the Alexa 10-20:

10\. AOL 11\. Amazon.com 12\. craiglist.org 13\. Blogger.com 14\. Go.com 15\.
CNN.com 16\. ESPN.com 17\. Photobucket 18\. Microsoft.com 19\. Comcast.net
20\. Flickr.com

Tell me again how plentyoffish is larger than Flickr, Microsoft and CNN -- I
have a bridge to sell you. It's nice.

~~~
dzohrob
Read the fine print -- it's top sites _by pageviews_ , which is a very
different (and less meaningful) metric than top sites by unique visitors.

That same Alexa data you quote has POF at _168_ in the US and 466 worldwide,
with 21+ average pageviews/visit (Compete has them closer to 30). According to
that same data, Flickr has ~9 PVs/visit, and CNN has ~3.5.

It's not inconceivable that with a few differences in the data between Hitwise
and Alexa, you could come up with POF in the top 20. It just shows you how
meaningless pageviews are as a metric of success or engagement.

~~~
timr
Nice catch...didn't see that. He's definitely stretching to make the claim, if
he's using percent of US page-views as his metic.

POF's page-view count per user is so absurdly high that you really have to
wonder what he's doing to get it there. The other major dating sites (which
have roughly the same modality of search-and-view) all have page-views/user of
around 10-13. It's awfully suspicious that he's managed to _double_ that
number....

~~~
symptic
His site is so simple that if every action takes you to a new page it almost
feels seamless. Most other sites make sure the convenience of taking you where
you want in one click is accounted for, but for a site running off of AdSense,
more pageviews = more potential clicks, so you can argue he's stretching it
for the sake of chart rankings; I argue it's to maximize potential revenues.

------
mixmax
I've always been intrigued as to how plentyoffish has done so well. It's one
person with a (in my opinion) suboptimal site that doesn't offer anything
special. There are plenty of free dating sites, and yet this one seems to have
disproportionate success.

Why? Anybody know?

~~~
wyclif
Because it's free as in beer, and it's not intimidating or filled with Flash
like some of the others (the "good enough" design derided by web design
snobs).

But it's still a dating site, and even the best, most functional dating sites
aren't very good. A friend of mine signed up at plentyoffish, he lives in an
urban area and is reasonably attractive.

What he found was a lot of women who like to chat and email, but don't want
(or can't) go out on actual _dates_.

Dating is a lot like teaching. Those who can, do. Those who can't habituate
dating sites.

~~~
rms
There is a certain socioeconomic scale to the people that populate certain
sites and plentyoffish is not at the top of that scale.

Tell your friend to try OKCupid, Craigslist, or one of those sites that cost
actual money. He can probably afford the $20/month. It's cheaper than hip-hop
dance class.

~~~
yummyfajitas
But the hip hop class is more fun, and eventually you've gained a new skill.
Also, this never happens on the internet:

"Tough west African refugee with poor english and a great smile seeks geeky
physics student. Lets go for a bike ride, listen to metallica and teach each
other new recipes."

------
bisi
The point of it all is that POF is the number one dating site in the U.S and
last time I checked he was making over $10 million a year ...obviously he is
doing something right . The reason why a lot of people fail is because they
don't want to acknowledge a formular that works and instead spend "plenty of
time" trying to discredit any news that looks too good .

Thats a formular thats working - He has few servers 1 or 2 employees and he
makes millions ... just learn from what he is doing and hope that you can be
as successful . Dont spend time saying that the number one dating site sucks
because that sounds silly because it is number 1 for a reason and that reason
is not luck .

You have to change the way you think by studying the way other successful
people think . If they way you think is not bringing you success then maybe
you should consider thinking like people that are successful think .

Goooooooooood Luuuuuuuuuuuck

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vlad
To people who wonder how a company like this might happen, here's my take.

A developer constantly talks about his company (that also happens to cater to
software developers/hackers) under the pretenses of how well a small software
company is growing, which attracts software developers/hackers to read about
it from blogs and hear speeches mentioning it at startup conferences, causing
them to join the site to see how the site actually works, play around, and
report how well they liked the site on their own blogs. This increases the
userbase, which of course increases growth, which leads to more blog posts and
speeches about how fast the company is growing (same content, but different
and much more impressive numbers every month, so the story only continues to
get more and more interesting.) Eventually, word grows about it and regular
folks start caring after hearing about the user numbers. Mainstream media
becomes interested, causing more growth, and so on.

The approach for creating something for fellow hackers, growing the user base,
and telling fellow hackers information about how well it's doing for marketing
purposes is the approach taken by 37Signals, FogCreek (JoelOnSoftware), and
some less known but up and coming startups. Creating something for fellow
hackers has been described by Paul in his essays. One young company that I can
think of right now that is good at this cycle is GitHub.

The key is to be the one who starts something, not the one who keeps reading
and reading about others'.

~~~
mtw
interesting but this didn't apply to plentyoffish, which didn't come up with
new technology or new marketing hacks.

it was just the only free dating website at the time, and also with the right
design (read=no design) to be trusted by its users

~~~
vlad
I didn't say anything about new technology or marketing hacks, but about
publicizing itself to other developers, which are also either the target
market or a big part of the initial target market. Plenty of fish used the
strategy of blogging about its growth, which was picked up by none other than
other developers and posted about in developer and indie forums on a regular
basis over the past few years. This is exactly what I described--a developer
talking about how successful their app is, which causes developers to sign up
for it. Remember, the 20-30 year old software developer demographic who would
hear about the site is most likely single and with money, making them the
perfect target market to seed. This is exactly the same as creating a project
management site for developers that grows in popularity to the point most
users are no longer developers, or a social news site like reddit.

------
helveticaman
AOL mail #14? Sweet mercy.

------
sker
And nobody has mentioned it but PoF is written in .NET. I don't normally see
startups using ASP.NET around here so I thought it was worth mentioning.

------
matthewking
He's done unbelievably well, apparently in 2006 he was making $10k a day from
adsense, you can only wonder what that is now.

~~~
symptic
I assume it's less. AdSense was roaring more so back in 06' but has settled
and matured now. A lot of publishers who minted earlier on are now looking for
better alternatives once more.

------
dcurtis
This is an atrocity.

~~~
tlrobinson
MySpace being #1 is worse.

~~~
dcurtis
MySpace isn't nearly as bad.

~~~
samson
You need to get over whatever that emotion you want to call it that is causing
you to react like this, and come to the realization that regardless of what
you think of the design or even genre as a whole it is one person operation
doing what he's doing.

~~~
jkkramer
Reading the comments, I'm confused by the apparent hate. When I saw the
article, I thought, "Hey, isn't this a mostly-solo operation? That's
impressive."

Am I missing something? Is it just that people think the site is low class?

~~~
Timothee
I agree. This site's story is pretty inspiring to me. I don't know all the
details but it really seems to be as simple as: one guy decides to create a
website from his home, it becomes very successful and he makes millions.

I think the hate is mostly jealousy coming from the fact that this guy didn't
seem to know what he was doing (he admits it himself), and that the design is
pretty plain (now. A few years ago, it was actually terrible) but still made
it huge.

I'm thinking that the story sounds actually similar to Craigslist but Craig
Newmark is royalty: I suppose one difference is that the PoF guy talks about
how much money he makes a lot more. People never likes that...

