PoF is quite famous because it is essentially a one-man business, making millions a year: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...

It is also a scalability success-story: http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture

So yes, the CEO (Markus Frind) is quite famous around here.

This comment reminds me of people who complain about the design of Hacker News, and miss the point entirely.

Plenty of fish has a large and growing user community. I know of more people (personally) who have met dates on POF than any other site (though I am in Canada, where his community is strongest).

From the Inc. article I read he really believes in the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

He doesn't know how a design change will effect the users or how changing the badly-cropped user images will effect click-throughs etc.

A/B testing?

The worst part of the design is that it squashes the photographs and makes people look awful. The photos are too small as well which makes them almost useless in some cases. The userbase is pretty bad, but that's my personal experience for my area.

The owner said that is one of the parameters leading to success: such tiny little things that have unsuspected effects.

For example, the deformed images encourage clicking them to see the profile. If the image was fine, that click and potential consequences may have never happened.

Did he have an explaination as to why the images are so small on the actual profile?

Yet it's incredibly successful...