by Olha Romaniuk

Created on: July 13, 2009   Last Updated: August 09, 2010

Love cannot and should not be bought. Whether this statement is true or not, it was the driving inspiration behind and the reason why Plentyoffish.com was created. But is this web site really successful in attempting to be the proverbial Cupid of cyberspace?

The first thing that comes to mind is that, like with most things in life, you get what you pay for - a certain statement of truth when it comes to this particular dating web site. Plentyoffish.com is freely accessible to use by anyone and while this fact is what made the web site so popular in the first place, it also carries its inherent heap of baggage that can make you think twice before signing up to use its services.

The layout of the web site is somewhat confusing. When you first sign up and create your profile, the web site defaults your search preferences, assuming that you are a straight male, looking for a female companion. If you are a woman and you signed up not knowing that little detail, it might take you weeks to comprehend why the only messages you are receiving in your inbox are from other female members of the site.

There is not much of an organizational hierarchy to Plentyoffish.com; rather, tabs are grouped together in no apparent manner of logic or order. The search option appears several times in different rows of tabs. The pictures of members who are online appear to be microscopic in comparison to the ads for dating services juxtaposed against them. The last three people to view your profile are not even given space to show their pictures at all and can be easily missed in the haphazard arrangement of other options, advertisements, and brightly colored announcements of all shapes and sizes.

When you choose a "basic search" option, you are given a fairly straight-forward set of preferences to pick from, in search of a potential date. The search options, however, are limiting in their inflexibility. That is, you can pick and choose to search for someone who is looking for a friendship or a long-term relationship, but you cannot pick both of those options, limiting the pool of candidates to a smaller number.

You can also select the order of appearance of the eligible members in your search results, but you cannot, in fact, determine the hierarchy of the quality of the members. That is, there is not a way for you to give preference to members who have been consistent in their responses to other members on a site or who have been ranked highly by other members in the looks or personality

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