Momo and Tantan: The secret behind a 60% monthly user retention rate

It can be seen that since the beginning of this year, Tantan's next-month user retention has been consistently higher than Momo by about ten percentage points, while Soul's has been declining relatively steadily.

As all of the three products focus on stranger social networking, what operational actions have they taken in terms of the 30-day retention of new users? Why did it lead to very different results? As a new user of the three products, I studied them for a week and came to some conclusions.

Below, I will discuss the three dimensions of new user guidance, content retention, and social retention :

New User Guide

From the perspective of the product life cycle, Momo, Tantan and Soul are at very different stages:

Momo was founded in 2011 and has gone through nearly a hundred product iterations, large and small, and its products have become complex and large. The commercialization path has already been established, and several business lines are generating huge profits at the same time.

Tantan was founded in 2014 and was modeled after the foreign stranger social software Tinder. It still maintains a minimalist function setting and user experience . Currently, the only commercial business is paid membership.

Soul was founded in 2015 and started placing advertisements in February this year, which led to a rapid increase in the number of users. The complexity of its functions and content is between Tantan and Momo, and its commercialization is still in the exploratory stage.

Due to different stages of development, these three products have different strategies for acquiring new users, and the guidance mechanisms for new users entering the products are also different.

▌Momo

Momo, which continues to add content and functional modules, has become a very "heavy" product, which leads to two results. First, there are more content and links to attract new users. Users can freely choose whether to watch short videos or live broadcasts , initiate one-to-one communication, one-to-many or many-to-many communication, etc. At the same time, the increase in information also makes "how to get users to flow to the places they are most interested in" a problem at hand.

Momo’s new user guidance can be divided into several parts. The first is the display of functional divisions on the main page. The direct display of each functional module is itself a kind of guidance for users, and they can directly click to enter the part they are interested in.

The second is to direct traffic to the live broadcast module through push . After I registered on Momo, I browsed the information flow on the homepage for five minutes and then exited. Then Momo immediately sent me a push message, which I clicked on and was taken to a live broadcast page. This shows that live streaming content is a very important part of Momo's acquisition of new users, and the team intends to direct users here. In addition, since Momo's live broadcast system is very complex and there are many live broadcast rooms, there will be prompts on the live broadcast page to guide users' operations.

▌Tantan :

Tantan’s gameplay is simple and easy to introduce, so the team simply introduces the product’s functions and membership system before users officially use the product, putting the gameplay introduction completely ahead of the user experience . Specifically, after a new user clicks on the APP icon, the interface that pops up basically explains how to play this product: swipe right to like, swipe left to dislike, and if you like each other, you can pair up and chat.

After entering Tantan, users need to enter their phone number and upload their real profile picture. After uploading the profile picture, it will go through a quick manual review. Selecting a pet or celebrity profile picture will be rejected, and users will not be able to view other people's information.

After uploading the user profile picture and before officially entering the product, the product will push a page that introduces the privileges of Tantan members.

Therefore, before users officially enter the product and start interacting with others, they already understand the basic framework of this product: gameplay and membership system. Putting rules in the forefront of user experience makes it easier for users to quickly enter the product's usage logic.

Another aspect that Tantan does very well is that the improvement of personal information is achieved gradually . When entering the community for the first time, you only need to upload a real photo. After the new user becomes familiar with the product, Tantan will pop up a prompt on the second day of logging in to guide the user to complete the information.

This will reduce users' resistance and they will be happy to complete their information so that others can know them better.

▌ soul

Soul's product logic is different from the other two products. After entering the product, users need to select gender, age, height, weight and a signature.

After filling in the basic information, the user will enter a test system and answer a series of questions, such as: "Do you prefer to be considered as a, A: resolute and not easily soft-hearted; B: a soft-hearted person." After answering each set of questions, the user will receive an evaluation of himself and be assigned to a certain planet.

In soul, there are dozens of different planets, such as the "Energetic Talent Planet", "Elite Replacement Planet", "Guardian Angel Planet", etc.

Therefore, before the user actually experiences the product functions, the Soul product already has a personality perception of the user and classifies him into a certain category of people, and subsequent matches are based on this perception.

After users enter the product, Soul will provide "Must-Read for Newcomers", "Anti-Fraud Tips" and officially recorded instructional videos to teach users how to play in the community. In addition, guidance on the use of the rules is also interspersed throughout the content pages.

Content Retention

From the perspective of the business logic of the three products, Momo focuses more on content retention, while the other two products focus more on social retention. Despite this, the three products still have certain operational actions in terms of content.

▌Momo :

Momo is the product with the richest content among the three. The main reason is that Momo has a longer product history and has developed multiple content modules internally through product iteration. So naturally, this content can be used to attract new users.

Currently, Momo’s “content” can be roughly divided into two modules: “live broadcast” and “short video”, and both modules have been relatively fully polished. In 2017, Momo focused on short videos for a long time. By optimizing the engine algorithm, it improved the efficiency of UGC content mining and distribution. Live streaming has always been Momo's biggest growth driver and source of commercial monetization, and the content model has also become very mature.

Here is an interesting piece of data for you: nearly 50% of Momo users are also Kuaishou users. This user composition can probably guarantee the content quality to a certain extent. I wonder if you have noticed that Momo’s style is very similar to Kuaishou?

Short Video

From the perspective of content production entities, short videos are mainly UGC content, and content production is explored and stimulated through the optimization of distribution methods; from the perspective of type, there are various vertical content categories such as funny, daily life, skills, etc.; from the perspective of distribution, the current distribution, especially the distribution to new users, geographic location is a very important factor. The feed stream content displayed on the new user’s homepage is almost all within 20km, and the closest is within 5K . Close-up content will give online social interaction a sense of "time travel", "closeness" and "reality", thereby effectively increasing the attractiveness of the content to users.

live streaming

Live streaming is another major part. Momo’s live streaming content is very rich, some are free, and some require a certain threshold to enter. Some live broadcast rooms are just for chatting, especially watching the chats of female anchors. Since more than 80% of the users on Momo are male, letting them know what women are doing is an important thing that can retain users. Other live broadcast rooms are the folk "If You Are the One", where users can choose their favorite female guests and provide popularity support to their favorite female guests.

Low threshold + entertainment + some soft pornographic content have become the killer weapon for live streaming to attract new users.

Dot

In addition, Momo has also developed the same function as Tantan: Diandian. Similarly, swipe right to like and swipe left to dislike. Users can look here to see if there is someone (face) they like, but this is very much a defensive feature that aims to retain users who are interested and passionate about this feature and prevent them from leaving for Tantan.

▌Tantan :

Strictly speaking, Tantan does not have a collection page for information flow. In other words, the content only exists on personal homepages, and there is no "content square" to integrate content by region or tag. Therefore, the path for users to view "content" is: the user becomes curious about another user, clicks on his/her homepage, and can see all the content that he/she has posted in the past.

From this perspective, Tantan's information flow is based on people . Only after users develop a certain interest in a person's appearance will they want to learn more about that person or the content he produces. The logic is user-user-content.

Therefore, in terms of content, the team does not have a distribution strategy based on big data , it is simply displayed on personal homepages. In terms of stimulating UGC content production, it mainly depends on individuals maintaining their own accounts. The assumption behind this is that as long as the user's personal photos can fully match the opposite sex and allow more people to see them, it will be enough to provide sufficient motivation to stimulate user content production.

So from this perspective, Tantan is taking advantage of the "image management" strategy that is likely to be caused by interactions between opposite sexes . The richness, diversity and interactivity of the content itself all depend on the subjective initiative of individual users.

▌ soul

The content logic of soul is very different from that of Momo and Tantan.

On the content feed page of soul, the main content includes five categories: follow, recommend, latest, audio, and search. Unlike Momo and Tantan, a user’s understanding of another user is based on the product’s classification of people, that is, which planet the user is from, or to use the product’s terminology, it is based on the so-called soul. In terms of content, try to highlight the characteristics of the content itself and weaken individual colors.

In terms of stimulating user content production, the operations team can do very little:

Since users know very little about each other, impression management is not a powerful driver for personal homepage optimization.

Content pages are generated not based on geographic location but on interest, making offline meetings a low-probability event and further reducing the enthusiasm for interaction.

The only thing left is people's curiosity about another stranger and their strong desire to talk . It is difficult for middle-aged people to maintain a strong curiosity about others or have little motivation to express themselves to strangers. Therefore, it is not surprising that nearly 50% of Soul's user base is under 24 years old, making it the youngest among the three software.

Therefore, the core driving force of soul is the social motivation stimulated by a person's strong curiosity about another individual or the desire to talk. No matter which one it is, compared with instant social interaction based on location, there is less desire to get involved, and it can be said to be a breath of fresh air in the stranger social world. But this also leads to the fact that soul’s content is too much like a tree hole, the social power of the content is weak, and the efficiency of content retention is low.

How to drive content production may be a problem that the team has to face.

Social Retention

▌Momo :

Momo has rich content, but social interaction is also an important aspect of achieving retention.

Real-time interaction in the live broadcast room

The live broadcast room is a place where users and anchors interact. Relying on the personal charm of the anchor, it can effectively retain a certain number of users. In addition, as mentioned above, many Momo live broadcast rooms have become the folk version of If You Are the One. The anchor acts as a professional host to hold the whole scene, introduce the female guests, guide male users to vote for women, and ultimately achieve pairing between users.

However, the interaction in Momo's live broadcast room is very different from the interaction between Tantan users. Tantan is based on faces, while Momo is more based on conditions. Both parties need to have a certain understanding of each other's daily lives, such as whether they are divorced, whether they have children, and some economic conditions, and decide on this basis whether to engage in long-term relationships.

Recently online

Momo provides a "recently online" entrance, where users can see who is online nearby on the "Message" page. For those who want to quickly find someone to chat or meet offline, they can quickly hook up.

"Chat Room" and "Party" realize various interactions

"Chat rooms" and "parties" can alleviate the problem of uneven resource distribution between men and women and enable interactions based on interests or in small circles.

▌Tantan :

Establish a strict anti-harassment mechanism

Since Tantan is mainly used by female users , in order to ensure the user experience of female users, Tantan once took the drastic measure to ban tens of millions of users, and has made a large number of anti-harassment mechanisms for women. For example, if a man directly sends words such as "do you want to make a date" that make women uncomfortable, he is likely to face a lifetime ban.

Establish the shortest social path

Among the three products, Tantan has the shortest social path and the highest social efficiency. In fact, Tantan’s own product function settings have greatly improved the efficiency of social interaction between users:

Real avatars bring users closer together

Social networking based on "nearby people" and "recently active" increases the timeliness of social interaction and further enhances the motivation for interaction.

The product's function "forces" users to take some social actions in the shortest possible time, such as likes or dislikes.

Automatic pairing for people who like each other, the system sends chat content to help break the ice

Real-time push notifications of super favorites increase the possibility of matching between the two parties

These functional settings improve the efficiency of user social interaction.

Pleasant social experience

It can be said that in terms of social interaction, compared to Momo and Soul, Tantan’s social process is pleasant. Swipe right to like, and swipe left to dislike. Only if you like something will you be notified, and users will not be notified if they dislike it. Therefore, there will be no negative feedback from the product to users. As Tantan founder Pan Ying said:

When a user swipes right to like someone, the other person doesn’t know; if the other person doesn’t like the other person, the other person will never know. In this way, both parties have no psychological pressure, no rejection, and no embarrassment.

In addition, the quality of users in the Tantan community has always been high, with many young people of good looks, which makes the use process a pleasant and positive one. This positive emotional experience will also enhance users' desire to use the app.

The system automatically guides the chat and helps break the ice

And after falling in love with each other. The system will automatically send a message to both parties in the following format: Thank you for liking me! Let's talk about XX topic together. This form can be used to break the ice and guide two people to start chatting.

▌ soul

Similarly, Soul’s social logic is very different from the other two products.

From the perspective of the logic of linking users, Tantan and Momo are based on geographical location and personal external conditions, such as appearance, financial status, etc., but Soul, as its product name suggests, is based on an intrinsic trait similar to personality. In order to realize such social logic, the product weakens conditions such as appearance, and at the same time better realizes user connection through the "hidden label" function. For example, if you choose "LGBT", if the person you choose has the same hidden label as you, you can see each other's characteristics.

Connecting with the Planet

Specifically, how to achieve the so-called soul-based social interaction is mainly based on planets. Based on their answers, users will be assigned to different planets, and people on the same planet will be more closely matched.

On the planet page, users can click on any person to enter his/her homepage and decide whether to chat. On the planet, it will also show which person is the best match and which one is the newest user.

In addition, Planet also provides machine automatic matching function and voice chat function. With this function, users can chat or confide in someone who matches them in personality and other aspects in the most efficient and effortless way. The longer the user is logged in, the more voice chat opportunities they will have.

From a social perspective, soul is actually very much like a tree hole. It hides some of a person's inner emotions. In the connection between people, it rejects those things that are considered more important in the social sense, and replaces them with the user's soul.

So if a person hopes to find someone to talk to in a social environment, Soul would be a good choice. Working backwards from this, the user's usage scenario is that a person has a strong desire to communicate with others. Then according to this logic, if the product wants to further stimulate the occurrence of user social behavior, it can consider connecting people with common experiences or people who have experienced the same difficulties to communicate, add such dimensions, and meet user needs.

At present, Soul’s products provide a way to connect users, but how to stimulate users’ willingness to connect and meet their needs in the scenario of “wanting to chat” is also a question that needs to be considered.

Summarize

From the perspective of stranger social interaction, Momo combines two ways of linking users: through live broadcast and video content, and based on geographic location. Users can interact in a timely manner based on their location, and can also consume entertaining content.

Tantan mainly connects users based on region and simple descriptions such as appearance, age, zodiac sign, occupation, and tags.

Soul achieves matching and connection based on personality traits such as similar world views or ways of dealing with people.

But no matter which product it is, to achieve user retention it needs to be able to continuously meet certain user needs.

After comparing the three products, my point of view is that Soul's content ecosystem is not mature enough. How to stimulate content production and how to increase users' interest in other people's content is a problem. It is a low-probability event for people who match each other to interact offline. So how to use the online to open up the situation so that both parties can communicate effectively and fully and satisfy emotional needs in the process is also a question that needs to be answered.

The above is an analysis of the 30-day retention of three products. Would you use stranger social products? If so, which one would you choose? Welcome to discuss with us in the comment section.