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PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

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Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#31

Post by danilocampos »

ww520 wrote: post #26
boonez123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as impressive as the UI.

Another point in function over design, just like Craigslist.

Not really. Contrast the cluttered mess that is PoF to OkCupid, which has decent usability and reasonable information architecture. OkC's design is also better at extracting the right information from more users more consistently, meaning the resulting corpus of data is more complete. Which makes for a better product, since it's easier to find the sort of people you'd be into.

PoF is successful in spite of its questionable design, not because of it.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#34

Post by loceng »

danilocampos wrote: post #31
ww520 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point in function over design, just like Craigslist.

Not really. Contrast the cluttered mess that is PoF to OkCupid, which has decent usability and reasonable information architecture. OkC's design is also better at extracting the right information from more users more consistently, meaning the resulting corpus of data is more complete. Which makes for a better product, since it's easier to find the sort of people you'd be into. PoF is successful in spite of its questi…

Personality and feeling matter.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#35

Post by 27182818284 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #24
ck2 wrote: post #17

He used to post on webmasterworld as he was developing the site. Some interesting stuff. And it's on IIS which blew my mind. webmasterworld.com/profilev4.cgi?action=view&member=markus007

> And it's on IIS which blew my mind. I think that says a lot more about you than about IIS. It's mature software, why wouldn't it perform on par with other mature webservers?

It isn't to say a lot of people thought it was impossible, but it is just very unheard of. Anecdotally, most of the people I know hadn't heard of it either.

Slashdot, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc were the very large sites talking about what they used over the years and it was all about the open source stuff like Apache, PHP, etc.

Then I found out, on HN, that POF used IIS and it was mind blowing. You would think even Microsoft would promote its successful uses more like that. Until POF, I too had assumed IIS was only for 1,000 to 50,000 enterprisey setups. I didn't think it couldn't be used per se, but I just hadn't ever heard of it being used that way until POF either.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#36

Post by reinhardt »

danilocampos wrote: post #31
ww520 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point in function over design, just like Craigslist.

Not really. Contrast the cluttered mess that is PoF to OkCupid, which has decent usability and reasonable information architecture. OkC's design is also better at extracting the right information from more users more consistently, meaning the resulting corpus of data is more complete. Which makes for a better product, since it's easier to find the sort of people you'd be into. PoF is successful in spite of its questi…

Sounds like a worse is better case study.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#37

Post by elchief »

I interviewed with them in their Vancouver offices. They are near the top of the Harbour Centre downtown, and have a crazy beautiful view of North Vancouver and the mountains.

I would say there were about 15 people in the office at the time (1.5 years ago)

Markus is a slightly weird Rain Man kinda guy, but is obviously very smart. A bit smug, though likely deservedly.

He has a hot girlfriend, that is the head of marketing or something.

It was a three on one interview, which isn't very welcoming. No whiteboard, no code writing. Kinda glad I didn't get it, actually.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#39

Post by basseq »

reinhardt wrote: post #36
danilocampos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Contrast the cluttered mess that is PoF to OkCupid, which has decent usability and reasonable information architecture. OkC's design is also better at extracting the right information from more users more consistently, meaning the resulting corpus of data is more complete. Which makes for a better product, since it's easier to find the sort of people you'd be into. PoF is successful in spite of its questi…

Sounds like a worse is better case study.

Take all this with a grain of salt, as I'm about to get vague and handwave-y. According to some article I read [citation needed], the fact that their interface is crap actually drives more pageviews. E.g., that profile pictures are distorted is searches actually encourages people to click through to profiles to see better-looking photos.

So poor usability actually is a feature.

Which comes back to the old argument about advertising-driven revenue models resulting in poor user experiences, since the "user" from a revenue model is the advertiser and YOU'RE the product.

Re: PlentyOfFish - 6 Billion Pageviews And 32 Billion Images A Month

#40

Post by thematt »

basseq wrote: post #39
reinhardt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a worse is better case study.

Take all this with a grain of salt, as I'm about to get vague and handwave-y. According to some article I read [citation needed], the fact that their interface is crap actually drives more pageviews. E.g., that profile pictures are distorted is searches actually encourages people to click through to profiles to see better-looking photos. So poor usability actually is a feature. Which comes back to the old argument ab…

The article you refer to is this: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...
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