A friend told me about Plenty of Fish. Oddly enough, it was a guy named Rick who I met through my craigslist personal ad (see craigslist article). He called to say hi a few weeks ago and asked if I was seeing anyone.

"No," I answered, then with a little embarrassment, "I did join eHarmony though. I just don't meet a lot of people around here. But eHarmony is really expensive."

"Oh, don't do eHarmony! Go to Plentyoffish.com. It's totally free,  and there are more young people on there, not desperate old men like eHarmony."

Well, I hadn't met any desperate old men on eHarmony, but I sure didn't want to.  So as soon as we hung up the phone, I dove into Plentyoffish.com

Like many other dating sites, your first step is to create a profile. While eHarmony only lets users display a few choice statements about themselves, Plenty of Fish allows you to pretty much ramble on. Some people, I saw, had embedded songs or music videos in their profiles.

After establishing my profile, I took a brief personality test (much less intense than the mind-probing one from eHarmony), and then I got to see my matches.  Additionally, you could take a "needs" survey that gauges what you need in a relationship and can match you up with compatible partners. They measure how much physical affection, personal space, and interaction with others you need.

PoF displays your match as a little thumbnail of his picture, his screen name, and what he's looking for (e.g. "Dating," "long term," "just friends"). Unfortunately, many of the user pictures were tiny and blurry (do you really have to use both your cell phone AND your bathroom mirror to capture that wink?) You can filter matches by age, distance, race, education level (or "SMARTS"), and what they're looking for.  A feature I really appreciate was at the bottom of the page, where you could define exactly who would be allowed to contact you. For example, I selected "must not be married," "must not do drugs," "must not have messaged other users looking for intimate encounters," and "must have picture." I haven't gotten any gross mail this way! Hooray!

PoF peotects your e-mail, but allows matches to send you e-mail messages on the site, and you can set it up to alert you by way of your e-mail account when these arrive. Look out! Plenty of Fish has an in-site instant messenger that will pop up if someone's trying to contact you right away.  This freaked me out at first, but I soon caught the hang of it.  Make sure you check out his or her profile before you agree to chat. I learned the hard way that you can't just make an unwelcome instant message go away by closing the window. It closes the corresponding IM window on the sender's computer, so he'll open it and try again. There are only so many times you can chalk this up to computer failure. Best just to be honest and say you're not interested.

Another thing that really surprised me about Plenty of Fish was how eager the guys were to hang out. Before, with craigslist, there were days or weeks worth of e-mail, a couple of phone calls, then that nervous meeting in a public place. Here, on Plenty of Fish, a guy with whom I'd been chatting 5 minutes asked me if I wanted to go out that night. I was taken aback! How desperate did he think I was? Sure I had plans that night... Plans to sit on the couch and watch TV. But he was persistent, an and I decided to meet him for lunch later in the week.

Within my first few hours surfing Plenty of Fish, I had so many prospects, so many flirty little messages received, that I was losing track. Many of the guys seemed attractive, articulate, clever, and in good jobs. Those who freaked me out or approached me in a way that made me uncomfortable, I blocked. It was painless, on my end.  One guy even read something I had said about politics in my profile and tried to pick a fight with me. What? Blocked!

I was really nervous when it was time to meet Carlos for lunch. We were supposed to meet at a Starbucks downtown, and I tried to position myself at an outside table with my laptop so that it looked glamorous when the wind blew my hair, and not disheveled. No luck there.

Carlos finally came. He was a very nice guy, very enthusiastic. The sort of guy who's your best friend. Always a groomsman, never a groom, type thing. He talked with food in his mouth, a lot of food. Maybe I am being too picky.  But after we had spoken two words, I knew it would be lunch and nothing more. I should have known when I saw that his screen name was "achybrkyhrt (achy-breaky-heart).

Well, I shook hands with Carlos and went on my way, encouraged that there are nice people out there... And maybe there's one nice guy for me!  (Insert cheesy line about fish in the sea here)

Plenty of Fish was definitely the most pleasant of my online dating ventures so far.  I felt comfortable talking to most of the guys, and those I didn't, I could easily avoid.  Probably the best feature is contact screening.  The worst is the ubiquitous ads and popups-- often, I clicked on them by accident and found myself diverted somewhere I didn't want to be.  But I don't mind them, because they make the site free.

I would recommend Plenty of Fish for people who are looking to make new friends of the opposite sex, but honestly, I'm leaning toward the reality that meeting people online isn't as great as all the hype.