PlentyofFish seems to have some difficulties now with Free Membership.

Markus Frind:

“The problem with free is that every time you double the size of your database the cost of maintaining the site grows 6 fold…. 

I have one database table now that exceeds 3 billion records….

…going to start introducing some products and features to try and get some of the 10 to 20 million dollars a month my users are spending elsewhere.     There is really no money in being free and we have to start experimenting with other models now  or we won’t be able to compete in 3 or 4 years“

Wow that’s pretty big challenge for the future of this site. And with economic recession it won’t be better.

So Frind is trying to introduce Virtual Paid Gifts now but some customers seem already to be complaining about too high prices.