Plenty of Fish is a Canadian

online dating service Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...

, popular primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, the

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...

, Australia,

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, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. It is available in nine languages. The company, which is based in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

generates revenue through advertising and premium memberships. While it is free to use, Plenty of Fish offers premium services as part of their upgraded membership, such as allowing users to see who has "liked" a member through the service's MeetMe feature, and whether a message has been read and/or deleted.

History

Markus Frind, CEO of Plenty of Fish Media Inc., graduated in 1999 from

British Columbia Institute of Technology The British Columbia Institute of Technology (also referred to as BCIT), is a public polytechnic institute in Burnaby, British Columbia. The technical institute has five campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region, with its main campus in Burn ...

with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology, and founded the business in 2003. In 2004, Plenty of Fish became a full-time money making business for Markus. He ran the site independently until 2008, when he began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters. In 2009, Plenty of Fish also launched a contest with

Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...

allowing single members to go together and meet the singer during

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. The website for Plenty of Fish appeared in several music videos in 2010: in Lady Gaga's "

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's "

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's "

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Flo Rida Tramar Lacel Dillard (born September 16, 1979), better known by his stage name Flo Rida (, ), is an American rapper and singer. His 2007 breakout single " Low" was number one for 10 weeks in the United States and broke the record for digital dow ...

and

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's "

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Jason Derulo Jason Joel Desrouleaux (born September 21, 1989), known professionally as Jason Derulo (; formerly stylized as Derülo), is an American singer and songwriter.

's "

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", and

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's "

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". In 2011, it appeared in

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's music video for "

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". Many of these appearances are undisclosed paid

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s which have been met with highly negative reviews. In 2010, Plenty of Fish launched mobile apps for iPhone and Android. A few years later, it was made available for both the iPad and Windows phone. In a June 2014 interview, Frind attributed 85% of all Plenty of Fish traffic to mobile with the number growing weekly. On January 21, 2011, it was discovered that the Plenty of Fish website had been hacked which exposed the personal and password information on nearly 30 million user accounts. Since the alleged hacking incident, Frind alleges he has identified persons he believes are responsible for the hacking, and alleges he is threatening legal action in response to the widespread negative media exposure. At the time this received global media exposure and security experts blamed Plenty of Fish for the security and privacy lapse specifically for keeping users' passwords unsecured. On February 28, 2012, the parents of

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Lieutenant Peter Burks sued Plenty of Fish. The parents' lawsuit alleges photos of their son, who was killed in Iraq in 2007, were used without permission. The parents were seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Paul Bloudoff, the firm's legal affairs manager responded by saying "Lt. Burks’ image was never used by POF.com in any way, shape or form, third-party advertiser, with no affiliation to Plenty of Fish, ran an ad promoting another dating site using Lt. Burks’ picture, and one of the places this advertiser ran this ad happened to be our site." In an August 2012 Forbes interview, Markus Frind stated that based on the millions of relationships and marriages Plenty of Fish has created over the past several years, it is estimated that over one million babies have been born as a result of the website. On May 20, 2013, Frind implemented several changes to the website with the stated goal of focusing on "meaningful relationships". Among these changes were the removal of the "intimate encounters" option. A related eliminated feature was the option to contact clients of age differences greater than "Markus", presumably Frind, found tasteful. Although the Plenty of Fish site and its "matching" criteria continue to match couples with age differences greater than the 14-year guideline, attempts to contact these "matches" resulted in an inbox message from Markus stating, among other things, " ere is no reason for a 50 year old man to contact a 18 year old woman." Another restriction implemented in the updates is that male users could no longer attach images to messages. Additionally, the site automatically blocks messages from male users containing certain words while showing such messages as being sent. The image sending restriction was apparently reversed after Plenty of Fish was acquired by Match Group (but not "quick messages" directly from the match's profile page) and members outside of the 14-year age limit no longer appear as matches or in searches. Attempting to contact members outside of the 14-year limit now displays a page stating the user does not meet the member's contact criteria (even when untrue) and suggests several matches to contact instead of sending a message to the user's inbox. On July 14, 2015, Plenty of Fish was sold for $575 million to

Match Group Match Group, Inc. is an American internet and technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It owns and operates the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFi ...

(owner of

Match.com Match is an online dating service with web sites serving over 50 countries in twelve languages. Its headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match is ...

OkCupid OkCupid (often abbreviated as OKC, but officially OkC) is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice questions to match members. ...

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and

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, based in

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). The headquarters remain in Vancouver and have recently been expanded. In March 2020, Plenty of Fish (now owned by Match Group) launched a livestream feature after a partnership to interact with users from other apps MeetMe and

Skout SKOUT is the developer of a location-based social networking and dating application and website. SKOUT was one of the first dating and mobile people discovery applications to emphasize generalized user location. SKOUT is available on both iOS an ...

(both owned by

The Meet Group The Meet Group, Inc. (formerly MeetMe) owns several mobile social networking services including MeetMe, hi5, LOVOO, Growlr, Skout, and Tagged. The company has offices in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dresden, and Berlin. O ...

) and

Zoosk Zoosk is an online dating service available in 25 languages and in more than 80 countries. The founders of the company are Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr, who ran the company until December 2014. After struggles that year, Kelly Steckelberg became ...

(owned by Spark Networks SE).

Staff

The site relied on volunteers to monitor forums and sort through the 50,000 new photos that, at most come in each day. By 2019, Plenty of Fish employed over 100 people, including programmers, marketing managers, product managers, designers and customer success representatives.

Technical details

Plenty of Fish uses a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

-based platform for itself, including IIS,

ASP.NET ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name s ...

, and Microsoft SQL.

Statistics

* Registered users: 100,000,000 (March 2015) * Dating site ranking in the UK: 1 (Comscore May 2011) * Dating site ranking Worldwide: 1 (Hitwise, August 2011) * U.S. site by market share: 1, with 18.57% of the market (Hitwise, August 2012) * Number of page views a month: 2 Billion (April 2012) * Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Plenty of Fish reported a 0.7% increase in monthly active users in the final quarter of 2020.

Issues

In 2015, users were targeted by cyberattacks via a malicious adlink. In 2015 Plenty of Fish Media Inc. was fined $48,000 for alleged violation of Canada's anti-spam law. In December 2019, Plenty of Fish pushed out a fix for its app after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users had set as private on their profiles, including hidden names and postal codes.

References

External links

*
Inc. Magazine profile of Markus Frind
{{Vancouver Corporations Companies based in Vancouver IAC (company) Internet properties established in 2003 Online dating applications Online dating services of Canada

History

Staff

Technical details

Statistics

Issues

See also

References

External links