This is one of the more popular free online dating sites in the USA although it is still a pretty distant third behind POF and OkCupid. DateHookup’s user base is primarily composed of United States visitors, but it also has decent followings in other English-speaking countries such as Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. The site itself looks rather old in terms of its layout and the general feel of it, and it is. The layout has been virtually unchanged as far back as I can remember, and the site was launched clear back in 2002! Granted, I wasn’t really paying attention to dating sites way back then, but at least over the last few years I have seen no changes whatsoever.

The site basically contains the bare bones necessities that allow you to do what you need to do: find people nearby, and communicate with them. I’m guessing the owner has taken to the well known saying, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. And, looking at the Datehookup.com Alexa ranking tells the story of the site definitely not being broken, and actually continuing to grow over time despite an ancient look, maybe you could even classify it as Web 1.0. That’s right, a Web 1.0 style site continuing to find success in a Web 2.0 world. I’m not sure if I should be surprised or not really – I suppose that if the site does what it says it does, is easy to use, and gets the job done, the design and feature set quite possibly need not be changed. Only time will tell, but in the meantime make sure you check this site out at www.datehookup.com.

 Alright, this is a pretty awesome free online dating site. It rivals POF in the awesomeness category, but it isn’t quite as popular, at least according to it’s Alexa ranking and other such traffic data I’ve been able to get my hands on. However, it seems to be in a close second place among free USA dating visitors I believe. And, a testament to its success was that the founder sold it for only a mere $50 million, plus another $40 million in earnout potential. And they sold it to none other than match.com, so yea, let’s just say this site and its owners have done well. And, rightly so, because it is a very smooth running application with a lot of nice features.

One of the premises behind the rise of OkCupid seems to be their matching system. Basically, it will ask a user all sorts of questions that the OkCupid team seems to have determined to make a big difference as to whether or not people will work out. Then, if you have compatible answers with people, some sort of what I’m guessing is a points-based system is used to tabulate and compare potential matches, and then tell you what you’re percentage of match is with relation to some other user. So, you will see this other user, and it will say “80% match” which generally is a pretty good score to see, and that basically means that you both answered questions in such a way that you will both agree on a lot of big issues in life and thus be more compatible with one another and thus be more likely to work out. I think you get the idea here, so rather than keep blabbering why don’t you just go give them a try at www.okcupid.com.

 POF, short for “Plenty of Fish“, is an extremely popular free online dating site. It is quite possibly the MOST popular free dating website available, depending on whether or not you include sites like Badoo, which are framed as being in a niche called “social encounters” but perform a function very similar to a normal dating site under the guise of a “social network”. Anyway, I’ll leave that discussion for another future post, because it is an interesting and complex topic. Let’s get back to POF! It was founded clear back in 2003 by a very smart Canadian man by the name of Markus Frind. He started the site back when online dating was completely dominated by paid subscription sites, and thus a free alternative was a hit! He never sold out, kept control, and kept things simple. In fact, the site is so simple it is almost kind of refreshing.

Features include a solid search functionality, which is one of the most important things with any dating site, and easy messaging capabilities. And, of course, the most important thing of all, POF constantly has thousands upon thousands of users online, so there are “plenty of fish” available at any given time for you to meet! The great search ability, the constant presence of singles, and the simple ability to easily send a message to anyone combine to make this site essentially the best free online dating site on the market. Sound good to you? If so, give them a try at www.pof.com.