How was PlentyOfFish "early"? According to Wikipedia, it was founded in 2003. Similar sites had been around long before that, e.g. eHarmony (2000) and match.com (1994).
As has been said. Match / eHarmony were not free services. That was what made PlentyOfFish unique at the time.
If you go and find the founders blog you can track the entire process of the site (like BingoCreator), including his girlfriend holding a (2 month) paycheck from google adsense for $450,000
