"A scan of Twitter reveals a lot more people talking about actually using Match.com than Plentyoffish"<p>There's the biggest flaw in his theory. If you've scanned the people who have profiles on POF (or any other free dating service), you might draw the conclusion that the people using such services are not part of the tech elite. Yes, Twitter has a large user base but it is not mainstream.<p>Here's why it gets so many clicks: A lot of the ads on POF are for alternate online dating sites, so there's a 100% match between the people visiting the service and the people who might click on ads. By definition, if you're visiting POF, you're not in a relationship and thus POF isn't satisfying your need to be in a relationship. So what are you going to do? Search for a better dating site. And, coincidentally, POF has already done that work for you by surrounding every inch of unused space with dating site ads. It's both a dating site and a dating site search engine.<p>It's that simple in my opinion. But I do love a good conspiracy theory!
This is so hilarious that it feels wrong to nitpick it. But in the interests of science, this survey technique:<p><i>A scan of Twitter reveals a lot more people talking about actually using Match.com than Plentyoffish...</i><p>... is like a freshman-class exercise in Spot The Sample Bias. Twitter users are hardly a representative sample of the <i>online</i> population, let alone the population at large.
PlentyofFish's revenue numbers aside, one really has to be amazed at their sheer traffic numbers. If the market share stats are to be believed, Match.com and eHarmony are getting trampled on despite their outsize national advertising budgets, deep-pocketed investors and clearly more polished products.<p>I'd really be interested to know how PoF is pulling so much traffic.
I'm embarrassed to say but my own logical reasoning leads me to the conclusion that I might actually want to date one of those super intelligent PhD bots.<p>Google, do you hear me? Or are you just a creature of Microsoft meant to stop the DoJ from breaking them up?
I've worked in the online dating industry for long time, and yes, POF is making lots of money, though I don't know <i>exactly</i> how much. Adsense is only one part of how they are monetizing their site.<p>The idea that it's all click bots is just silly.
Interesting analysis, though it became a hit outrageous at the end. With the degree of fakeness he is proposing, how is it possible that the degradation of content quality went unnoticed? And A.viary?<p>I'm not one to hate on awesome and successful startupa, we should also consider this. POF doesn't have the members it says. POF had growth, decent size. Publicise startup story and millions in income, millions in members. Press written, and your numbers jump.<p>Just like the situation with a video on YouTube. It wasn't the video that made it have high view counts. It was the video being publicised as having a huge view counts because of an exploit - and people went on the page, and the view count increased.
In my experience when the outcome of something is a lot of money, some people do whatever to make it happen.<p>I wouldnt bet anything against Google or PoF not messing this