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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

I've always been intrigued as to how plentyoffish has done so well. It's one person with a (in my opinion) suboptimal site that doesn't offer anything special. There are plenty of free dating sites, and yet this one seems to have disproportionate success.

Why? Anybody know?

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Because it's free as in beer, and it's not intimidating or filled with Flash like some of the others (the "good enough" design derided by web design snobs).

But it's still a dating site, and even the best, most functional dating sites aren't very good. A friend of mine signed up at plentyoffish, he lives in an urban area and is reasonably attractive.

What he found was a lot of women who like to chat and email, but don't want (or can't) go out on actual dates.

Dating is a lot like teaching. Those who can, do. Those who can't habituate dating sites.

There is a certain socioeconomic scale to the people that populate certain sites and plentyoffish is not at the top of that scale.

Tell your friend to try OKCupid, Craigslist, or one of those sites that cost actual money. He can probably afford the $20/month. It's cheaper than hip-hop dance class.

But the hip hop class is more fun, and eventually you've gained a new skill. Also, this never happens on the internet:

"Tough west African refugee with poor english and a great smile seeks geeky physics student. Lets go for a bike ride, listen to metallica and teach each other new recipes."

Ouch. Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach.

Teaching is a skill on its own, it's orthogonal. I've read, and believe through my own intuition/experience, that being a "true expert" in most things is often such an intuitive place to be that it cannot be translated mechanically in that person's mind into steps for teaching it.

It's arrived at after years and years of "doing" and growing past internal boundaries and goals.

One thing you can be a "true expert" at is teaching itself.

Teaching relies on two things, primarily, beyond domain knowledge: making connections, and empathy. A great teacher understands not just the topic, but how it relates to other topics. Furthermore, a great teacher also has the ability to probe the person being taught to discover which connections are missing. Finally, of course, the connections have to be communicated, but communication skills are the least important. (If you don't have domain knowledge, if you can't make connections, and you can't get inside the head of the "student," you can't teach. If you can do all of those things, but you struggle with communication, you can eventually get your point across if you are determined).

It's the ability to make connections that we mostly associate with "understanding."

I'm suspicious of "true experts" who can't explain themselves. I think what a lot of people witness are people with deep domain knowledge ("experts") who just don't bother to make the connections. In my view, making the connections is a large part of being an expert.

Here's something just out--I doubt it would interest the community at large, but I thought you might enjoy it.

http://www.quickanded.com/2008/12/gladwell-kane-theory-of-te...

Early SEO (when it meant a lot more than it does now) + the network effect. An incredible success, and as strong an outlier as ever exists.

http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-a...

He also spammed the hell out of craigslist, iirc. There was a period of about a year where you couldn't go into a craigslist dating room without seeing fake posts that linked to POF profiles.

Yeah. I think there's a pretty dark side to the rise of POF that Markus has been less than forthcoming about.

how the hell is that dark? he's at number 13 or even 130, it's still a huge success. he didn't rip anyone off here. most startups in the consumer space that have a big rise have some form of what purists would call a "dark side".

Then call me a purist. I don't think you're right that "most" startups have a dark side. I'd guess that most don't. I'd rather be one of those.

Don't underestimate the power of one person with a passion and determination.

I think plentyoffish got some good press early on and that got it the momentum. Plentyoffish is the only free dating site I've heard of, so there's a big reason to go there instead of other free dating sites.

The site design is actually pretty good IMHO, and sort of suggests that you're going to quickly get what you want to see and not a ton of flashy useless stuff.

IIRC the two things that the plentyoffish story lacks is passion and determination.

edit: Or was it HotOrNot? I might have got my stories mixed up.

I believe the incarnation came from something along the lines of "I wanted to learn ASP, so I made a dating site". Not sure where that plots on the graph of passion and determination.

you never heard of craigslist?

IMO Plentyoffish is very good design site, it's simple and direct. And the best thing is I always look better in the real world than my photo at the Plentyoffish:)

Because it provides a straight-forward way to let you find local people interested in dating. It's ugly (at least it was when I was using it two years back -- before I happily found my s.o. through the site) but it's fast, simple and works.

For those of you using dating sites who only find people interested in e-mailing, here's an unsolicited tip: Ask the person you're interested in out for drinks right after receiving a response to your initial 'Hi'.

Just cut through the crap and get to the point. You'll easily weed out the flirts and chatters and meet many more people in the process. That's why you're on the site in the first place, right?

PoF was essentially the firstest with the mostest. One of the first free dating sites started by an obsessive, incessantly self-promoting founder. It was started at a time that was just right to take advantage of the huge online dating boom that occurred ~late 03-04 and became a media darling because of its 'story'.

The PoF 'Story': A one man operation started in his apartment, with the aim of providing a free alternative to the complicated, expensive pay sites. And then out of nowhere, overnight people started showing up in droves! Millions of them.

... or at least thats the story. Everyone loves the Cinderella, wild success against all odds kind of stories.

PoF (and most all online dating sites) are a testament to what people are willing to endure in their quest to find 'love'. Dating sites have been taking advantage of lonely people for far too long.

I started FlowMingle ( http://flowmingle.com ) because I felt that it was time for a major shift in how things are done. Things are going to change.

Because most of the free dating sites are worse. They came in early, have a low barrier to entry (signup is trivial) and benefit from network effect.

Maybe it's the memorable name?

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