Goliath will fall
January 13, 2008 – 11:16 amWhat’s it take to make $10 million in 12 months in these wonderful times of mighty Web growth? Apparently not very much.
Not very much work, that is. Today’s New York Times delivers a nice, sprightly memo about a 29-year-old coder based in Vancouver, Canada, who managed to put together a dating website, dubbed Plenty of Fish, which, because it is purportedly a self-sustaining entity, requires of its owner, Markus Frind, only about 10 hours per week of attention and care.
I’ve never bought the 10hrs a week figure, I don’t care what anyone says… there is no way to admin a site that size in that amount of time.
What this article fails to realize is that the reason that POF has done so well is because no other free site has really stepped up to challenge POF. Markus was at the right place at the right time. Yes the outdated modem yielding public that still remain love plentyoffish… cause they don’t know any better. As the internet matures, along with the knowledge of it’s users, sites like plentyoffish will be seen for what they are. Outdated relics with little to no innovative or useful functionality.
There is only one other free dating site currently open to the public (until we launch the new site) that is worth taking a look at, and that’s OkCupid. Though Okcupid missed the train on capitalizing on this huge surge in free online dating by trying to base the site around stupid quizzes.
My guess is that 2008 will bring a huge uptick in singles turning to services that bring in data portability, and that utilize existing social graphs, something that no free dating site offers. What about IM? What the heck are these companies doing with their time and money?!!
If they won’t capitalize on what users REALLY want… we will. Thanks for the opportunity guys!
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