After studying Momo, Tantan and pretending to be a couple, I finally figured out how young people play social networking.

Tencent Venture Capital selected three stranger social software that developed relatively well between 2016 and 2017, and analyzed them from the following dimensions to explore the secrets of stranger social networking from different angles: Whether it is Momo, Tantan or Pretend to be a Couple , in the process of their development, they are still labeled as pornographic by many people.

For many years, QQ, WeChat , and Weibo have firmly occupied the dominant position in China's Internet social industry. How to overturn the current situation of numerous giants in China's Internet social industry has become a seemingly unsolvable problem.

But as time went by, a seemingly feasible methodology was born: "Each generation of young people has its own way of socializing. If you want to find a new way between the giants, you must abandon traditional social networking, find the social logic of young people, and use more magical methods to capture young people before the giants."

Social networking among strangers is beginning to decline, and erotic issues are causing headaches for companies in this field.

In 2016, which was known as the capital winter, new changes quietly took place in this industry: "Momo" announced huge profits, and "Tantan" received US$32 million in financing . This industry has once again attracted people's attention.

According to a survey conducted by Tencent Venture Capital ( WeChat public account : qqchuangye), the number of users of stranger social networking has been steadily increasing, reaching 490 million in 2016. According to data from Penguin Intelligence, after QQ Space was occupied by post-95s, the community users in QQ are also mainly those born after 1995. Therefore, we can infer that in the future stranger social networking industry, users born after 1995 will become the main force. In the first half of 2016, the number reached 450 million, among which users born after 1995 have become the main force in stranger social networking.

Today, when those born after 1995 have become the main force in the industry, compared with the hormone-driven social interaction before, is the logic of this industry still the same?

Tencent Ventures selected three stranger social apps that developed well from 2016 to 2017, and analyzed them from the following dimensions to explore the secrets of stranger social networking from different angles:

1. Positioning of social circles

2. Mechanism for adding friends

3. Different social gameplay

4. What they have in common

5. Industry reflection and future prospects

First, let’s briefly introduce the social software that will be mentioned in this article:

Momo: Monthly active users exceed 52.34 million

A location-based mobile social tool , founded in 2011, with a total registered users exceeding 148 million. It is now listed on the stock market. After its transformation into live streaming social networking, its current market value is US$5.9 billion.

Tantan: The largest social platform for post-90s

It has raised a total of US$50 million in financing and has more than 2.5 million daily active users. In total, nearly 500 million matches were completed. It has become the largest social platform for post-90s generation in China after WeChat, QQ and Weibo.

Pretend to be a couple : The total number of APP users exceeds 7 million, and it became popular some time ago

The product was launched in early 2016 and received RMB 43 million in three rounds of financing. It focuses on chatting, community, and multiplayer games , and has received investment from Qinghan Fund.

01

Before establishing a social circle: Do you block your former friends?

Momo's invitation mechanism and Tantan's blocking mechanism

Compared with traditional social networking such as QQ, WeChat, and Weibo, stranger social networking, as a new type of social networking, allows people to freely choose whether to let real friends participate in a brand new social environment. The establishment of stranger social circles is mainly divided into two types:

1. LBS social networking

LBS social products based on geographic location positioning are represented by WeChat Nearby People and Momo. They all use positioning accurate to meters to shorten the distance between strangers and encourage users to actively engage in social behaviors.

2. Casual socializing

The establishment of a social circle is completed through system matching, mainly through shaking and random matching.

The above are the two most mainstream methods of building a social circle. However, before building a social circle, different products have completely different positioning for building a new social circle.

Among products that are completely based on LBS, Momo is more about guiding users to add friends from their address book to form a social circle of known friends + strangers, while Tantan hopes to read the address book and allow users to block their address book friends by default. It hopes to build a real stranger dating platform for users, and at the same time hopes that users can establish a new social circle here.

In this new social circle, more people can take off the disguise of life, release their own nature, and have in-depth communication and interaction with new friends. They can be more relaxed and do not have to worry about how their words will affect their lives. Everyone can be their true self here.

02

Adding friends: Taking the initiative is not the key to flirting, the face is just as important as the hand speed

Different from Weibo's interest-based following, WeChat, QQ and other ways of adding friends, the three different softwares use different ways of getting to know strangers. Momo's method is relatively simple and traditional, directly adding nearby users and initiating chats, while pretending to be a couple and adding friends with Tantan are relatively novel and interesting.

Tantan imitates Tinder, a similar foreign product, and adopts the "sliding" method to screen chat partners. After users enter Tantan, they will first be faced with several users' photos. Swipe left to indicate dislike, and swipe right to indicate like. This step is "pairing", and both parties must like each other in order to be successfully paired and enter the next stage: chatting.

Matching system in Tantan

If you are pretending to be a couple, you can match friends in two ways. One is to directly match with people nearby, and the other is to match randomly through the system. In the online matching of pretending to be a couple, users must "grab" to match with their favorite friends more quickly. After matching, they can chat and make friends. If the speed is too slow, the favorite friend will be snatched away, and they will lose the opportunity to chat with the favorite friend.

Random matching is relatively simple. A match is formed through random distribution of the system, and after a match is formed, the first step of communication can be carried out.

Compared with Momo and Fake Couple, Tantan has an initial screening mechanism based on appearance. After the initial screening, friends will be more likely to communicate and interact with each other because of their recognition of appearance. Fake Couple and Momo lower the threshold for chatting, and more active users will get more chatting opportunities.

03

Different social gameplay: stranger socializing is not just about chatting

In stranger social interactions, there has always been the awkward situation between users where the conversation ends in “4 sentences” or “no conversation”. In order to solve this embarrassing problem, major platforms have chosen to add more social gameplay, allowing users to choose for themselves and engage in further social behavior.

In the early days, Momo tried to allow users to have continuous exchanges and communication on its platform by setting up chat rooms, message boards and other methods. Now it has transformed into live broadcasting and short videos to allow users to interact in real time.

Tantan first strengthened the system screening before matching. In its screening algorithm, it will calculate and push people who match the user based on more than a dozen information tags, such as the places the users have visited together, their interests and hobbies, and the movies they have watched together. After the match is formed, the user is prompted to start the topic from these points.

Fake Couple, which focuses on social communication, does so by defining different interest circles, creating topics for users, and setting up group games, allowing users to interact more instead of just chatting.

Screenshots of some games from Pretend to Be a Couple

04

What they have in common: Female users influence user retention

As the new generation of Tantan and Pretend Couple, compared with general stranger social software, their overall design and operation are more inclined to female users, and they pay special attention to the experience of female users. In his interview report, Tantan CEO Wang Yu mentioned: Tantan now looks more like a social product built for women, because in fact male users basically don’t need to use the service. As long as there are many girls here, it is the best service for them. As a representative of the big brother, Momo’s CEO Tang Yan also said: At the beginning of Momo, the temptation of " hooking up " brought them a lot of traffic . In disguise, it is acknowledged that male users hope to meet more women on Momo, and the number of female users determines the user retention rate of the product.

05

The inevitable erotic issue

Is it true that stranger socializing can only end up with hooking up?

Whether it is Momo, Tantan or Pretend to be a couple, in the process of their development, they are still labeled as pornographic by many people.

As a veteran in stranger social networking, Momo has never escaped the criticism of "hormone economy". Too many users even entered the platform with a bad mentality, which led to the harassment of core female users and a sharp decrease in female users. After experiencing the highs in 2014 and the lows in 2015, it transformed into stranger live broadcasting and then recovered strongly in 2016. However, when reviewing the success of Momo, experts still believe that some explicit live broadcasts are an important reason for its recovery, and the impulse of "hormones" is still behind its success.

As a new generation of Tantan, although it uses a better algorithm recommendation mechanism and primary screening to give users a different product experience on the road from strangers to primary friends, it still mostly stays on the road of guiding the opposite sex to "chat up" behavior. It is more like a social software that guides users to get out of being single. Some of the privacy topics in the "Private Truth" are teasing users' hormones.

In addition to the suggestive nature of its name, Pretend Couple was also exposed in February 2017 for having pornographic content. In the "Sexual Matters" and "Photo Zone" sections of the community, many users uploaded revealing selfies to the community, accompanied by sexually provocative language, prices, and contact information. Eventually, Pretend Couple had to urgently close the entrance to the community for adjustments.

Screenshot of Pretend Couple Community

In the face of the pornographic issue, the three companies have been actively looking for solutions. For example, Tantan, Pretend to be a Couple and Momo have controlled the situation by blocking keywords and deleting large-scale photos. Tantan has even set up a series of reporting measures and a series of account blocking rules. Although each company has made positive efforts, they are still labeled as pornographic by many people.

Seeing the above phenomenon, people can't help but think, is the end point of stranger social interaction only to arouse the hormonal impulse of the opposite sex? Are the efforts made by major platforms to get rid of the erotic label in vain?

06

Future Outlook of the Industry

"Hooking up" is not the essence of social interaction. Post-95s still need a new social platform

Compared with the post-80s generation who are already entering middle age, the special growth environment of the post-95s generation makes them more willing to get in touch with new things, and the influence of the social environment also makes them have more social needs. Tencent Venture Capital has obtained the following points through various investigations and interviews:

1. Post-95s are more likely to accept stranger social platforms

As the natives of the mobile phone era, those born after 1995 are usually exposed to mobile phones and mobile Internet at a younger age than the previous generation. Mobile phones have been their entertainment facilities for a longer time. They have basically been exposed to the rise of the mobile Internet era and have also experienced the transformation of APP from unfamiliar to familiar. Downloading a stranger social software is just like downloading WeChat back then.

2. A completely unfamiliar social environment is more likely to attract post-95s users

In the "Penguin Intelligence Survey on Social Networks of the Post-95 Generation", we found that those born after 1995 have a high acceptance of social platforms, and online social networking is their daily necessity, but they will consciously distinguish between different platforms. As time goes by, those born after 1995 begin to gradually face social pressure. Stranger social platforms can be a good way to establish a new social circle where users can fully express themselves.

3. The need for identity is no less than the need for hookups

The behaviors that post-95s often do online are: like, share, and comment. At present, Tencent Venture Capital has found that many users will post status similar to "mood" in their circle of friends when using stranger social software. This shows that post-95s are more willing to be noticed, and stranger social software should provide users with more channels to express themselves and create a feeling of "being noticed" and "being loved".

4. Gameplay determines user interest in you

Although those born after 1995 are more receptive to new things, their patience is relatively low. Without good features or interesting content, it is difficult to attract users to stay on their platform.

5. Encourage users to engage in more social behaviors and explore diverse business models

Judging from the current profitability, Momo is the only product that has started to make a profit. However, in stranger social networking, we can also take advantage of the bold and open nature of young people and explore diverse profit models from online to offline.

To sum up, it is not difficult to find that although hormones drive the occurrence of social behavior, "hooking up" is actually incompatible with the essence of social interaction, and "love" does not represent the whole of social interaction. It is more about discovering spiritual needs, amplifying the pleasure of gaining recognition, and allowing young people with common interests to understand and know each other, and providing more fun and interesting activities for this purpose, so that young people can interact online and offline more conveniently. This may be the real social need of post-95s.

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