Plenty of Fish (POF) is a Canadian online dating service that is mainly used in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. It is available in nine languages. The company, which is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, makes money through advertisements and special memberships. Using the service is free, but POF offers extra features for those who pay, such as showing who has "liked" a user through the MeetMe tool and letting users know if a message has been read or deleted.

History

Markus Frind, the CEO of Plenty of Fish Media Inc., graduated from British Columbia Institute of Technology in 1999 with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology. He started the company in 2003.

In 2004, Plenty of Fish became a full-time business for Markus. He managed the site alone until 2008, when he began hiring employees at his new office in Vancouver. In 2009, the company partnered with Lady Gaga for a contest that allowed single members to attend events and meet the singer during The Fame Ball Tour.

In 2010, the Plenty of Fish website appeared in several music videos, including Lady Gaga's "Telephone," Natasha Bedingfield's "Touch," Kesha's "We R Who We R," Flo Rida and Akon's "Available," Jason Derulo's "Ridin' Solo," and 3OH!3's "Double Vision." In 2011, it appeared in Britney Spears' music video for "Hold It Against Me." Many of these appearances were unannounced paid promotions, which received negative feedback from critics.

In 2010, Plenty of Fish launched mobile apps for iPhone and Android. Later, the apps became available for iPad and Windows phones. In a June 2014 interview, Frind said that 85% of all traffic to the website came from mobile devices, and this number was increasing each week.

On January 21, 2011, the Plenty of Fish website was hacked, exposing the personal and password information of nearly 30 million user accounts. After the incident, Frind claimed he had identified people he believed were responsible for the hacking and said he would take legal action due to the negative media coverage. At the time, the hacking received global attention, and security experts criticized the company for not securing users' passwords properly.

On February 28, 2012, the parents of US Army Lieutenant Peter Burks sued Plenty of Fish. They claimed photos of their son, who died in Iraq in 2007, were used without permission. They sought financial compensation. Paul Bloudoff, the company's legal affairs manager, said that the image was not used by Plenty of Fish. He explained that a third-party advertiser, not connected to the company, used the photo in an advertisement for another dating site, and the ad was displayed on the Plenty of Fish website.

In an August 2012 interview with Forbes, Markus Frind stated that based on the number of relationships and marriages formed through the website, it is estimated that over one million babies have been born as a result.

On May 20, 2013, Frind made several changes to the website, aiming to focus on "meaningful relationships." These changes included removing the "intimate encounters" option and eliminating the ability for users to contact others with age differences greater than what Markus Frind considered appropriate. The website still matched users with age differences larger than 14 years, but attempts to contact these matches resulted in a message stating, "There is no reason for a 50-year-old man to contact an 18-year-old woman." Another change was that male users could no longer attach images to messages. The site also automatically blocked messages from male users containing certain words.

The image restriction was later reversed after Plenty of Fish was acquired by Match Group, though users could no longer send "quick messages" directly from a match's profile. Members outside the 14-year age limit no longer appeared as matches or in searches. Trying to contact these users now displays a message stating the user does not meet the contact criteria and suggests other matches instead.

In March 2015, Plenty of Fish Media Inc. was fined $48,000 for allegedly breaking Canada's anti-spam law.

On July 14, 2015, Plenty of Fish was sold for $575 million to Match Group, the owner of Match.com, OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge. The company's headquarters remained in Vancouver and were recently expanded.

In August 2015, users of Plenty of Fish were targeted by cyberattacks through a harmful link.

In December 2019, the company fixed an issue in its app after a security researcher found it was leaking private information, such as hidden names and postal codes, from users' profiles.

In March 2020, Plenty of Fish (now owned by Match Group) launched a livestream feature following a partnership to interact with users from other apps, including MeetMe, Skout, and Zoosk.

Staff

The site used volunteers to watch online forums and organize the 50,000 new photos that received up to each day. By 2019, Plenty of Fish had more than 100 workers, including programmers, marketing managers, product managers, designers, and customer success representatives.

Technical details

Plenty of Fish uses software developed by Microsoft, such as IIS, ASP.NET, and Microsoft SQL.

Historical statistics

• Number of registered users: 100,000,000 (March 2015)
• Ranking in the UK: 1 (Comscore, May 2011)
• Ranking worldwide: 1 (Hitwise, August 2011)
• U.S. site by market share: 1, with 18.57% of the market (Hitwise, August 2012)
• Page views each month: 2 billion (April 2012)
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Plenty of Fish reported a 0.7% increase in monthly active users in the last quarter of 2020.