Reviews of Plentyoffish (Plenty Of Fish)

Because I'm an optimist with a college degree I earned (not slept with the prof for) and new to POF, let me say that it's been so far, so good.

I've met a true Southern gentleman who has a professional and a personal life as well as a lawyer. The first one is looking good and we have a pending lunch date.

My only complaints about POF are the number of motorcycle-riding badasses who, if I met them in person on the street, would likely make me clutch my purse that much tighter as I race-walked by them.

And what's with all the adrenaline junkies? I'm all for a good time, but the weekend warriors who dress like their kids appear to have outnumbered the stable, literate, established men!

I've read complaints here re: women who delete men's emails, comments without giving a reason for their actions. We're entitled to delete as we choose, just like the men, and it's for the same reason: lack of interest. Deal and move on!

Don't waste your time badgering us with "You should've read my email." and other abusive demands. Or keep emailing us. That's harassment. And a chargeable offense. Not to mention hard copy evidence which can be admitted into a court of law!

Lastly, about the profile photos. People, keep them as current as possible and be yourselves. That's probably wishful thinking, but wouldn't it be better than meeting someone you're instantly disappointed with?

If you're expecting Brad Pitt and you meet "It Came from the Pit", how thrilled would you be?

I'm very happy with POF and have met a lot of interesting people there, both IRL and just on-line. It's free, and what you get out of it depends on what you put in: On your effort and initiative, and your own level of intelligence and common sense! *shrug*
Do I recommend it? Yes, absolutely!

I tried plentyoffish.com and in the 6 six months that I've been online only got 3 responces from what I found level of education means zip there and lately they have enforced the requirement that you need to list how much money you make or you will be excluded from searches. As for my experience there it's been horrible and wasted alot of my time.

They also have alot of problems I.T. related such as: poor thought out advanced search options, and a HUGE security problem where they send reminder e-mails with the users passwords all in plain text everytime they wish to remind you. Trolls rule their forums and instead of the trolls posts being deleted the entire thread gets deleted.

PoF is okay. It's definitely more liberal than more popular dating sites like eHarmony and Match, but it also has some of its own flaws (like everything else).

The user interface is quite clunky, but the core functionality works and works well. Searching is pretty flawless, and there is a handful of pre-created categories to browse from. They seem to have strict rules on profile shots, though I'm unsure of how stern they are with them. They also claim to have a mobile variant of it, but every time I've used it to read new messages, it would be the same interface as the main site.

It's matching algorithm is pretty poor. Most of the people I'm matched with are terrible matches for me, at least by profile description. Some of the women I was matched to share very little with me and many that I've initiated conversation with have been very dull at best (at least initially; they could be very different with other people, but that's from my experience). They also have really useful categories, such as users most likely to reply (which is new as of this time of writing) and users who haven't received mail in 24 hours. On a more personal note, I actually recommend searching through these categories FIRST since most of these people haven't gotten too bitten by online dating yet and will be most likely to respond (though there are several more hideous profiles to be found in there as well for the reason).

Messaging, on the other hand, works extremely well. Reading and responding to new messages can be done with one to two clicks (for those that care about those sort of metrics), and one can view the responder's profile and other information right from the message page. Each sent message also has a read/unread/deleted status, which I feel is pretty controversial (and has worked against some users, though they also allow profile blocking to handle edge cases). I think that an interested/not interested status would be more informative, though I suppose discerning that from conversations (or lack thereof) is more natural.

The meeting process is completely unassisted, unlike Match and eHarmony who guide a person through each step of the way. I prefer PoF's approach more because it is so much more realistic, though I have heard that the assisted methods used by the other sites increase the guarantee of a good date happening. Personally, I haven't gone out on many dates from the site, though I've had MANY more conversations go nowhere instead (hence why assisted approaches might work better, since they also facilitate the phone calling stage, which can make a HUGE difference between a fade out and a first date).

Finally, they have forums, which are fantastic and ripe with useful and insightful information...if one doesn't post in them. For some awfully strange reason, any post that a user makes on any of the forums there are summarized and linked ON THEIR PROFILE. For avid PoF users, this probably works well and establishes a sense of community. For the many many MANY others that are not, it reeks of desperation and just doesn't look good. Worse, those links cannot be deleted! I tried to ask the admins to remove them to no avail. I think I had to abandon a profile because of this. I've also heard of their heavy-handed moderators and willy-nilly profile deletion, but I haven't experienced either of those yet and cannot comment.

In short, PoF is quite excellent for a free service, but would be uncompetitive against the eDating titans. Too many small issues. Its founder, however, is quite ingenious and brave for continuing to make all of this free. It's a wonderful service and plenty of fun when bored and single!

Plenty of Fish is a nice website. It's set up well and the features are easy to use. There are a lot of men available in my area. You can see when someone last logged on, so you don't waste your time with old, forgotten profiles. Well done, Plenty of Fish!

I won't review the quality of the people or profiles, as I see so many doing. It's the same scenario as on other sites, maybe you'll hit and maybe you won't. And it's basically the same men, too, so don't waste your money on chemistry or match or whatever.

POF is just another Internet con game. POF doesn't have any useful tools to aid dating/matches etc. It's just a low end social network.

It's just an ad display network. It sets the bait (women) then lowers the probability of success by keeping the system as ineffective/inefficient as possible while trying to retain a high user base. maximizing ad revenue to the extreme.

You would have to be a fool to fall for such nonsense.

Why would a women want to meet guys from there? The only reason would be if the guy is a significantly better than average catch for that particular woman. Of course that means guys would do better pretty much anywhere else and with less effort.

This is common sense. The probability of guys meeting women from there at the level as they would elsewhere far too low to be worth spending any time using the site.

The whole concept is nonsense. Does there exist any guys out there, that are worth knowing, that would need to line up against that much competition to meet women? No, of course not. Why do they do it? Take a guess.

I get a kick out the reviews that say "I spent 6-8 months with a person I met on POF and they turned out to be a $^%&*$%, so POF is responsible"

Let me get this straight.......you spent a few minutes acquainting yourself with someone on POF.....spent 6-8 months with them and it POF's fault the person is a $^%&*$%?

Try taking responsibility for your own actions!

POF still sucks at matching you with potential mates!

POF "forces" you to enter an income level which they say they use only in their searches for matches......BS!

After being on the site for several months I would honestly say that about 5% of the matches they send me actually fit my search criteria entered in to the site.

If there are only 5 matches who fit my criteria, I do not want to wade through 100 matches to find them.

You get what you pay for....................

I haven't been with POF for very long, but so far, it seems to be a pretty average dating site. The only thing that disappoints me is the rarity of good will and respect demonstrated by many users. If I may be so bold as to say, many users have forgotten the original intent of this service: to meet people and overcome the hardships of isolation. Judging by some of the comments left in the reviews...it also appears that some users are callously blaming others for uncontrollable factors. There is no set formula for love; no definite plan to follow to incite someone's good opinion. Broad tendencies exist, of course, but those can only go so far. Sirs, I can empathize with you when you feel hurt that a woman does not find you attractive, but if she doesn't like you, she doesn't like you. No one should have to rationalize their feelings; such a thing is essentially unnatural and definitely paradoxical. Ladies, I understand that for some, this is a new environment and that apprehension can often lead to unintentional rudeness, but please bear in mind that the majority of men reaching out to you are also searching (...but, I implore you to keep your wits about you as well as the lessons from our mothers and fathers). Above all, I wish to plead to whoever reads this (will any one read this?) to remember that the internet is a place of eternity. What ever you publish in this domain, stays here and is easily accessed forever. Please keep this in mind before publicly shaming another.

I don't know if this helps or insults people. I'm not even sure if any one will read this at all. However, I wrote my review and advice with sincerity, so if you are a reader, please remember my good intentions.