Mashable: Users Vote Plenty of Fish Over Match.com
Published on February 21, 2010
Over at Mashable, there was a poll that asked users which was better: Match.com or Plenty of Fish. Their results showed that, at least among their readers, that Plenty of Fish is the better service. I find this rather disturbing: I look at (or read about) dating services almost every day and I have to say that Plenty of Fish is absolutely my least favorite dating service. My article on 5 Signs Your Dating Service Might Suck was actually based in large part from my experience using and testing Plenty of Fish.
My assumption is that those who voted (which is a much, much lower number than their normal poll results) have little or no experience with these dating services and were voting on the idea that free offers more value since the cost is….well, zero. And yeah, if an online dating service is free and offers nearly the same results as a pay service than it absolutely has more value. However, I feel that Plenty of Fish takes away value for those who use the service. I’ve never heard of any who has had real relationship success with it and it bombards its users with questionable advertising: to me, it’s a big waste of time. I think it gives people who have never dated online previously the very wrong impression as to what online dating is all about and it has convinced a few of my friends online dating doesn’t work at all. In other words, I think that people are worse off after having used the service than before which means, to me, that if Match.com offers any value at all it would have to be considered better.
I’m not against free online dating services, just this one. If they had compared OkCupid with Match.com and that free service had come out on the top, I would have found that much more acceptable. I don’t mean to harp on Plenty of Fish but that service makes a ton of money but apparently none of that money ever finds its way back into improving the user’s experience. I mean, it’s practically the same as it was 5 years ago! That’s like 200 years in internet time!
I’m all for using free services (I recommend them all the time) but I really hope another service can gain in membership so that the competition will encourage Plenty of Fish to clean up their site and concentrate more on helping singles instead of marketing. As someone who tries to convince people they should try online dating, my conversations have shown that previous experience with Plenty of Fish is a major factor for many of the people I speak with to not use online dating services. I find it really annoying that the entire online dating industry is often judged by one of the worst options available.
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
Posted in:
New to Online Dating?
