In 2018, the number of stranger social users in China reached 592 million. As an important segment of the mobile social market, stranger social networking continues to develop with the help of pan-entertainment.
Stranger social networking has gone through marriage and dating websites in the PC Internet era in China, and has also experienced LBS-based Momo and sliding matching Tantan in the mobile Internet era, and now Soul, Miyi from "Video Matching", to the latest social newcomer from the "Metaverse", Jelly.
Winds have come and gone, and product concepts and forms have changed several times, but it has never been able to develop a company or product of considerable size.
When it comes to social networking software for strangers, the first thing that many people think of is definitely Momo. Since its establishment in 2011, Momo App has taken ten years to stand out among major Internet companies and set a record for the fastest IPO of a startup company at the time.
But in 2018, after monthly active users exceeded 100 million, it fell into a growth bottleneck. It was also in this year that Momo began to launch live broadcasts of shows, and the live broadcast business became its main source of revenue, and even accounted for more than 80% of its revenue at its peak. The second largest source of revenue is value-added services including membership payments, but it also faces the dual dilemma of user growth bottleneck and user loss.
In the past ten years, Momo has gradually evolved from a single social software to a comprehensive social + entertainment platform.
In recent years, Soul, which is known as "Soul Social", suddenly emerged and gradually became a leading player in the field of stranger social networking. Although Soul's user base is far behind Momo's, and it is still burning money for growth and continuing to lose money, it is still favored by capital. It has received funding from Wuyuan Capital, Tencent, Yuansheng, DST, Four rounds of investment from GGV and other shareholders.
As a startup company that continues to make losses, Soul’s cash flow has always been very tight. In 2020, Soul spent 620 million yuan on marketing, with a net loss of 488 million yuan for the year. Last year, in Q1 alone, Soul's losses reached 383 million yuan.
From the perspective of the evolution of stranger social products in the mobile Internet era, LBS (location-based services) is an inflection point for stranger social products.
The speed battle between WeChat and MiLiao 10 years ago can also prove the importance of LBS. In July 2011, WeChat launched the "View nearby people" function. Since then, the number of WeChat users has increased by an astonishing 100,000 daily. Zhang Xiaolong, founder of WeChat, said: "This feature has completely turned the tide of the war."
In the social field, the emergence of LBS determined the evolutionary direction of similar products, such as Momo. Even Soul, the later “social dark horse”, began to intentionally improve this problem.
Under the product concept of "soul socialization", the starting point for richer user matching models and recommendation algorithms based on more dimensions is no longer just matching efficiency, but matching accuracy. For example, Love Bell Matching is also based on LBS and displays the distance between the two parties. There are also the use of additional props, city cards, location cards, etc.
On June 23, 2021, Soul, which was preparing to go public in the United States, suddenly announced that it would suspend the IPO process. Behind this twists and turns on the road to listing, it has triggered various speculations among industry insiders.
From Momo’s user growth bottleneck to Soul’s suspension of listing, the dilemmas they face are actually very similar: As the industry develops, products gradually fall into homogeneity, but there are fewer product innovations; content It is difficult to create a community atmosphere, and it is equally difficult to attract users and retain users; in terms of monetization model, it still relies on live broadcast business or value-added services, and the exploration of commercialization channels is slow.
At the end of 2019, Momo’s monthly active users were 114.5 million. At the end of 2020, Momo had 113.8 million monthly active users. In March 2021, Momo had 115.3 million monthly active users.
Through the data of the past three years, we can find that Momo’s monthly active users have been hovering at more than 100 million, facing the pressure of declining active users.
Even Momo CEO Wang Li mentioned in an interview that there are very few new users of Momo, and many of them are returning users, about half and half.
Looking back at Soul, Soul is still in the stage of burning money in exchange for growth, but in this social field with saturated traffic and limited growth space, Soul is actually under a lot of pressure. In the past few years, Soul has relied on large amounts of advertising to create astonishing user growth, but advertising has also led to high marketing costs.
According to the prospectus, Soul’s advertising expenses in 2019 were 197 million yuan. In 2020, Soul’s advertising expenses were 602 million yuan. By the first quarter of 2021, Soul's advertising expenses have reached 460 million yuan, and marketing investment is still expanding.
But the problem is that Soul’s money-burning effect is limited, and the growth rate of advertising expenses is much higher than its monthly active growth rate.
In 2020, Soul’s advertising expenses increased by 205.58% year-on-year. During the same period, Soul's average monthly active users were 20.8 million, an increase of 81% over the previous year.
In Q1 of 2021, Soul's advertising fees increased by 784.62% year-on-year. During the same period, Soul's average monthly active users were 3,320 million, a year-on-year increase of 109%.
Limited growth space and loss of active users are the pain points currently faced by Momo and Soul.
But it’s not just Momo and Soul that face this pain point, but also Miyi App, which specializes in “video matching”.
Miyi, like Momo, is a stranger social app based on LBS. Although it is not as popular as Momo, nor has it received capital financing like Soul, it has quickly opened up a market for strangers to socialize with its highlight function of video matching.
In February 2020, less than a month after its launch, Miyi welcomed one million users for the first time with its positioning of "video matching" real-person dating. In July 2021, the number of users exceeded 60 million. In August of the same year, it ranked among the top 10 downloads on the App Store China’s free list (marriage and dating).
After several months of development, Miyi users have exceeded the 70 million mark. Compared with the user growth rate in previous years, Miyi's user growth seems to have entered a slow period, and this set of data is also reflected in monthly active users.
In November 2021, Miyi’s monthly active users exceeded 15 million. Compared with the previous growth rate of monthly active users, it has also begun to enter a stage of slow growth.
Although this set of data cannot compete with social giants such as Momo and Soul, among these four social products, Miyi, as the youngest, still occupies a place in the social list .
Social software has user matching based on one dimension: For example, Momo and Tantan are socializing based on appearance based on LBS (i.e. geographical location); Soul is anonymous socializing based on soul matching.
Miyi is a real-person social network based on video matching. Based on user portraits, hobbies, dating tags, dating materials and other information, it helps similar users who match the tone to quickly match, and one-on-one video Form creates emotional interaction.
This fate matching function can help users quickly break the social ice and build a bridge of communication with the opposite sex.
Although the matching functions of Miyi, Momo, and Soul are different, they are all socializing with strangers. Therefore, in some functions, the three have similarities, such as content construction.
Momo has a dynamic square, Miyi has a mood square, and Soul has a moment square. Different from socializing with acquaintances such as WeChat, if we share every moment of our lives in a circle of friends, our emotions are likely to be amplified. If you have a thousand friends, there may be 500 misunderstandings.
But when socializing with strangers, whether it’s Momo, Soul or Miyi, these squares give us an “unbridled” space to relax. Posting your daily life and feelings, and receiving quality tweets in a timely manner, perfectly fits the real needs of contemporary young people's social model and changes in the times.
These squares allow like-minded people to gather and communicate, giving enthusiasts a beautiful place to live.
In addition to connecting people, stranger social products should also focus on how to build strong relationships between people and the platform? The former affects the number of users, while the latter determines user retention, and user retention is the key to the sustainability of the business model.
On social platforms with strangers, it is equally easy to start and end a conversation. Most of the conversations between users are one-time social interactions, and it is difficult for users to form stable social relationships.
But when these unfamiliar users enter the acquaintance stage, they will also flow to platforms such as WeChat and QQ. This flow is irreversible. In addition to this pain point, the community atmosphere of stranger social platforms in recent years is also worrying.
Low quality Users’ bad behavior such as dirty words harms the enthusiasm of other users to use the software. If the number of low-quality users increases, the platform may fall into a vicious cycle: the proportion of low-quality users increases and high-quality users exit, ultimately leading to serious loss of platform users.
Therefore, it is very important to build a community atmosphere on the stranger social platform, which determines the atmosphere among users. If the platform cannot always provide users with a high-quality experience, then users’ willingness to continue using it will gradually disappear.
As a result, Momo, Soul, and Miyi all started the management of community atmosphere construction.
For example, at Soul, changing avatars requires review, and there is a special reporting channel for harassment.
And Miyi adopts the measure of reviewing first and issuing later. For content creation, for example, users posting mood updates in the square must first go through the system's preliminary review, and then be specifically reviewed by humans, and finally appear in the mood square. User uploads of avatars, photos, personalized signatures, custom chat lines, etc. must also be strictly reviewed by reviewers.
For harassment, abuse and other violations of platform rules, you can report it with one click or give online feedback to manual customer service, which can be quickly dealt with.
The same goes for Momo. When you violate the platform rules involving pornography, vulgarity, insults, etc., you can click to report and get a quick reply.
In addition to building a community atmosphere, Momo’s approach is indeed worth learning from Soul and Miyi in terms of user retention. Momo provides platform users with diversified entertainment venues through film industry, games and other layouts, which can effectively maintain existing users.
Of course, in addition to user retention, platforms must also focus on improving commercial monetization and increasing product revenue.
Commercialization is a major difficulty for stranger social platforms!
Momo has previously launched a "Black Diamond Membership" worth 50,000 per year. Users who sign up as a member can use functions such as "Super Like", "Modify Positioning Anytime", and "Check whether the message has been read". This pricing and setting are ridiculed by users as a must-have for rich people to "select a concubine online."
After years of exploring membership payment and advertising, Momo finally developed a monetization model of “live streaming + value-added services”.
Soul wanders through membership payment, value-added services, advertising and e-commerce and other monetization paths, and has suffered a lot on the road to commercialization.
Whether it is live broadcasting or value-added services, Soul and Momo’s main revenue sources are difficult to support their future. As mentioned earlier, five years after its establishment, Soul is still burning money to change the market and has been in a state of loss. If this continues, Soul will be difficult to maintain in the long term.
Since its launch, Miyi has launched business models such as noble privileges and value-added services. The relevant person in charge of Miyi said that advertising is an option, but too many ads will definitely further harm the user experience.
Miyi’s value-added services mainly include virtual gifts and aristocratic privilege income. Users can purchase diamonds to enjoy various VIP services on the platform, including avatar dressing up, chat bubbles, entrance effects, business card display, chat emoticons, and sending virtual gifts during private messages, etc.
Judging from the monetization models of Momo, Miyi, and Soul, they all appear to be relatively thin, and exploring more monetization models is still the key word for the future development of Momo, Miyi, and Soul.
Compared with Momo, Miyi and Soul’s many attempts are still focused on the social aspect. This means that its revenue can only be driven by value-added services such as membership fees and virtual gifts.
This is the biggest crux faced by the business of socializing with strangers. With so many products coming in and out, they are trying their best to explore a different path. Later, I discovered that many roads had no exit, and it was difficult for them to tell a "social" + ecological story that could convince investors and users.
The fundamental reason is that user retention problems and the natural shortcomings of the business model have created a deadlock for social interaction with strangers.
Socializing with strangers is essentially a business of building relationships between strong and weak people. Whether this business can develop sustainably will involve multiple links such as meeting demand, user retention, and value creation.
At least for now, socializing with strangers still has a long way to go!