Existential threat for Plenty of Fish (POF)?
It took me a while to start writing on dating apps. Doing an product or service tear down is relatively easy. You look a product, try to engage with
it for a decent amount of time, form opinions and observe similar bunch (call it competitors or so), gather any publicly available data to make understandable inferences & statements (Now that I’m stating this, it isn’t so easy though but you get the point).
Before I say anything meaty, lemme put a firm foot on the ground and say — “Dating industry will only blossom further. It was, is & will be
thriving in whatever era we’d be in!”
You might ask why and the answer is probably simple, if we introspect — One of the by-products of why anyone wants to date is due to one of the
primal urges. I don’t need to say anymore here, you’ve already figured it out, champion!
So, industry stays and booms, all well & good for anyone interested to put their feet (start business) in this colloquial muddy waters but wait! Did I say it’s easy to enter and be a champion? Or better, sustain to be a champion in the long run? Well, that’s the tricky part! It’s getting tougher, more than ever before.
Evidence to the above becomes evident once we start doing the retrospective. Look a couple decades before and look at today!
How many so-called dating/social interaction apps/websites do we have? The world is more fluid than before, connectivity is almost free and
paths are getting slowly uncountable, literally easy-peasy way to interact & find others to connect, right? Unfortunately, no! Because we don’t have
anything solid on whom/which app to choose and proceed further in finding whatever we want to achieve here (flings/dating/friendship etc)
You might say “Why to choose further when Tinder is here?” Well, I’m about to break the barriers and say it boldly what (almost) everyone thinks
of Tinder — It’s (more likely serving the purpose as) for hookups than for others! And it doesn’t serve everyone for everything at all times!
There is a default need to address different aspirations (needs) of consumers in this industry in different ways and often expecting everything
from a single product/service could be a tad too much, sometimes.
I’m not going to comment on what Tinder could do to address its issues or the general industry concerns due to some obvious reasons:
1) It’s easy commenting on a product/service which is already the market leader in its industry/scope
2) There are many others who have been doing that already and my “2 cents” here might not make much of a difference (or probably is, but let’s save that for later!)
Instead, what I can do is to add a different perspective, and focus on struggling products/services and offer my “2 cents” for their uplifting.
It isn’t easy, especially when consumers’ preferences keep changing and catering to their needs or expectations is nothing short of a Herculean task.
For the sake of this article/post, I’m going to focus on one of the most popular products in dating space, once hailed as a market leader,
disruptor, differentiator in this industry and which is close to becoming non-existent in today’s world (if unchecked), none other than the
infamous POF, abbreviation for Plenty of Fish (Oh, name’s fishy, dude!)
If you don’t know about POF, I’d definitely recommend you installing this on App Store or Play Store. Once you have your way around with this app,
you could feel/think about (at least) some of the things below:
1) This feels outdated
2) Are these matches even real?
3) Feels more like a scam! (If you google about POF at this point, your doubts could easily strengthen once scrolling to 1st couple of pages)
4) Are these match locations making sense? This feels weird…
And so much more, probably…If you don’t get any of those, no worries, you’re more optimistic than me! Kudos to that! If you’re like me…then back to the track….
So, what happened to POF? Is it just fate? Probably not! It’s what one can say “Poor foresight to address the ever-changing preferences/needs…”
or can plainly say “Too lazy to work”, “Being stagnant”, “becoming too comfortable by enjoying the free money product’s making” and so on
and so forth. If I have to speak like Deadpool, I’d call it “lazy-maintenance”.
I’m not here to vent out or throw dirt on whoever’s responsible because “How would it help anyone?” Instead, I’d like to focus on how it can be revived by identifying the right issues and work on them to make its condition better.
You can ask me at this point — “What’s in it for you?” And the answer is simple — “Nothing!” I’ll be honest here — I like this product, I respect
the creators who really innovated and brought some revolution and possibly changed the face of the industry. I wouldn’t be overstating if this can be even deemed as a “Trend Setter” and inspired Tinder creation to a sig. extent. You work in product for quite a while, you start to appreciate the clever hacks, cool innovations one comes up with, whoever that might be. Back to here, let’s have a quick look at its strengths:
Fun Fact: POF claims to have 3 Mil DAU but Tinder stands a much higher rate (over 50 Mil MAU) and brought in around $800 Mil last year (2018).
POF has its own challenges which outweigh its advantages in certain aspects:
So, looking at the core, POF feels like any other freemium dating app, which essentially boils down to it being “Not Unique Anymore!”
Almost feels like it has lost its Value Proposition! That’s a pretty serious one to feel concerned about, I must say. At this rate, it wouldn’t be a surprise before it becomes Non-existent, sooner than later!
Is it irreversible? Can something be done to avert the crisis? Oh yeah, definitely! But one must probably remind this popular proverb:
“Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
Likewise, no major change happens overnight! Even if something happens rapidly, it won’t last long! The key is to make such changes which result in
improvements, at a consistent pace, leading to organic growth, in the long run.
I plan to cover this in the subsequent articles on what those are, that could lead to the end result but for now, I’ll probably divide my focus into 2 components: Short-Term (Quick Wins) & Long-Term. These, I believe could most likely work as they’ve been carefully crafted considering the current state of the product. Remember these are all my personal opinions I’ve derived from my understanding of the product and should be taken with a healthy grain of salt. There’s always scope for better ideas!
One of the things I’m focusing on is their existing “Meet Me” feature, which would be covered in a separate post shortly!
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