I checked out this plenty of fish website. It is amazing because most dating websites cannot get people to upload pictures of themselves. Plenty of Fish has broken the personal photo stigma.
The odd thing is that, according to their website, Plenty of Fish is actually hiring despite what is printed in the New York Times.
On face value, Plenty of Fish is a standard dating website (compare to OKCupid) which makes its success more impressive.
What would be some cool ways to for instance gamify dating sites to make it more appealing to fill them with lots of good content (ie photos and profile text)?
When the site started there weren't very many competitors. They were also unique in the fact that they are absolutely free.
Sites like match.com and the other dating sites at the time (most were bought out by match.com) allow you to search, but messaging costs money. It was the standard model of the dating site for many years.
I don't know how you can say there weren't many competitors. There were tons. You're right about the business models though. But they were all created before Google and similar ad networks. Perhaps that is the major distinction with PoF.
The odd thing is that, according to their website, Plenty of Fish is actually hiring despite what is printed in the New York Times.
On face value, Plenty of Fish is a standard dating website (compare to OKCupid) which makes its success more impressive.