Soul product analysis report!

Socializing with acquaintances is the basis of our daily socializing, and socializing with strangers is an extension of socializing with acquaintances. In the field of stranger social networking, "Momo" and "Tantan" have long been the two giants, occupying the top two positions in stranger social app downloads for many years. However, as the scale of mobile social users has expanded year by year, many new players have joined in and made efforts in many sub-sectors. Soul focuses on emotional needs and stands out in the niche field of soul matching.

This article is a product analysis report of Soul, which mainly includes these 5 points: product overview, market background, user portrait, product function structure and platform operation strategy, and is shared with you.

When I was studying abroad, I happened to chat with a loving couple around me and found out that they met on Soul, fell in love after meeting offline, and then went abroad together. I downloaded Soul out of curiosity to try it out, and a month later I met someone I am now a good friend of. Therefore, I decided to explore in depth and comprehensively what the charm of this stranger social application is and how it stands out in the crowded stranger social track with its unique positioning.

This article will conduct a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Soul from the following aspects:

1. Product Overview

Experience Environment Soul Product Introduction

2. Market Analysis

Market background Competitive product analysis Commercialization analysis

3. User Analysis

User attributes, user portraits & usage scenarios, user needs analysis

4. Product Analysis

Product structureProduct function analysisProduct analysis summary

5. Operational Analysis

Platform incentives for community operations

VI. Conclusion

1. Product Overview

1.1 Experience Environment

Experience device: iPhone 6s

System version: iOS 13.5.1

Experience version: Version 3.40.0

1.2 Soul Product Introduction

Image: Product logo

Soul's product slogan is "Follow the soul to find you". The product is positioned as a smart social APP based on the heart, that is, a stranger social application based on soul matching, and its function is to find the soul mate that suits you best. Words that cannot be sent on WeChat or Weibo are silently recorded, and strangers happen to care about them.

Soul's founder Zhang Lu once had something she wanted to say but couldn't post it on WeChat, so she posted it on QQ Space and set it to be visible only to herself. At that time, she found that there was no product like Tree Hole that allowed her to express her feelings[1], so she founded Soul in 2016. She hopes to "not rely on face as a prerequisite, but use 'picture music' to match people's minds, give people more room for imagination and perception, and give people a platform to make friends and express and showcase themselves[2]."

So in terms of product positioning, Soul’s initial slogan was “No dating, no love”, focusing on spiritual communication, but now it has been changed to “A tool for chatting, falling in love and making friends”, and its development direction tends to promote “real-life love and making friends”.

From its establishment in 2016 to 2018, Soul completed three rounds of financing from Angel Round to Round B. At the end of 2017, after Soul received tens of millions of dollars in Series B financing, it began to advertise crazily on various channels. A large number of users flocked in, and it entered a period of rapid user growth.

2. Market Analysis

2.1 Market Background

First of all, the market size of mobile social networking is huge. According to QuestMobile data, the user scale of mobile social networking reached 1.104 billion in February 2019, with a penetration rate of 97% and user usage time accounting for 32.8%. Although the growth rate of user scale has been declining year by year, the market growth potential is narrowing and the dividends are gradually disappearing, it does not affect mobile social networking becoming a basic necessity for domestic mobile network users.

(Data source: QuestMobile)

In the segment of stranger social networking, according to data statistics from iMedia Consulting in Q1 2019, the user scale of the stranger social networking market will reach 622 million by the end of 2019.

(Data source: iiMedia Research)

2.2 Competitive Product Analysis

At present, mobile social networking can be roughly divided into the following five areas:

(Source: QuestMobile)

In the field of stranger social networking, it can be roughly divided into three categories based on the matching basis:

• Appearance-based social networking—represented by Momo, Tantan, and Jimu
• Soul social networking - represented by Soul
• Voice social networking - represented by PaPa

Judging from the number of monthly active users, Momo and Tantan still rank first and second in the field, and are unlikely to be shaken in the short term. As a rising star, Soul has also developed rapidly. The total installed base of the APP exceeded 10 million units by the end of 2018, and the number of monthly active users exceeded 5 million in the past year, but there is a slight downward trend.

(Data source: iResearch)

In terms of average monthly usage time per person, Momo far exceeds other competitors. This may be related to Momo's transformation into social live streaming, which is more likely to attract users to spend more time on it. Compared with Tantan’s average monthly usage time of 61 minutes per person in the past year, Soul’s is only 15 minutes. Considering the number of monthly active users, Soul’s user stickiness is relatively low and there is still a lot of room for development.

(Data source: iResearch)

In terms of user overlap, according to Mobtech's statistics in June 2019, the installation overlap between Momo and Tantan is higher than 30%, while the overlap between Momo and Soul is lower than 20%, indicating that Soul has taken a differentiated route for different groups and needs of stranger social interaction.

2.3 Commercialization Analysis

There are four main profit models for social applications: advertising model, membership fee model, value-added service model and e-commerce shopping model. Like Tantan and Jimu, Soul currently monetizes through membership fees and value-added services.

Table: VIP privilege prices and contents of Tantan, Jimu and Soul

The membership fees and services of Tantan, Jimu and Soul are as shown in the table above. The fees are Soul>Jimu>Tantan, and the number of privileges provided is also Soul>Jimu>Tantan. Jimu and Tantan are both appearance-based social platforms, offering similar VIP privileges, but Jimu has more types of privileges, so it charges higher fees. Soul, on the other hand, has developed differentiated VIP privileges based on the logic of soul matching, and charges the highest fees.

A function similar to Soul's "Who has viewed me" in Tantan and Jimu is "Who likes me". Tantan and Jimu choose to charge for this function separately as a value-added service, and the price is even 2-4 times the membership fee. This shows that this function is the most valuable core function of Tantan and Jimu for users, and it is also the most important source of monetization for Tantan and Jimu.

Table: Prices of the “Who Likes Me” feature on Tantan and Jiemu

Soul's value-added services are realized through the sale of virtual currency. 1 virtual currency = RMB 1. Virtual currency can be used to purchase some virtual goods and functional privileges. Virtual goods include "gifts" that can be given to friends, and "super cute face pinching" similar to QQ Show; functional privileges include "soul matching", "voice matching" and "love bell" matching privileges, as shown below:

Figure: Functional privileges that can be purchased with Soul virtual currency

3. User Analysis

3.1 User attributes

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

Stranger social applications are generally dominated by male users, and female users are a scarce resource. The number and quality of female users will determine the attractiveness of the application to male users, so the user experience of women is often carefully cared for. However, the male-to-female ratio of Soul users is close to 1:1, which is a very good distribution for stranger social networking. This is mainly due to Soul's implicit social style and carefully polished product details.

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

In terms of age distribution, Soul's users are mainly under 35 years old, accounting for 63%, among which users aged 24 and below account for the highest proportion, indicating that Soul's main user group is Generation Z.

Generation Z is not only the natives of the Internet, but also the mobile Internet. Its growth period was accompanied by a high penetration rate of the Internet. According to QuestMobile statistics, as of October 2018, the number of Generation Z users exceeded 369, accounting for 30% of all Internet users and contributing nearly half of the growth rate of mobile Internet. Generation Z will gradually become the main force of domestic mobile Internet users.

In social networking, Generation Z has its own unique style[3][4]:

• They are extremely tolerant of new things, like to try all kinds of niche and trendy social networking, and have higher participation rates than users of other age groups. Generation Z, who likes to try new things and has unpredictable personalities, has created more possibilities for social interaction;
• In stranger social networking, focus on accurate matching and seek like-minded people. Because Generation Z, the only child generation, does not lack the company of family members, but they yearn for a sense of belonging and identity from their peers. The core appeal of their social interaction is not to dispel loneliness or vent sexual desires, but to find an atmosphere and environment that they like. Therefore, whether there are common values, topics or hobbies is crucial for Generation Z’s social interaction.

As a "niche" and "outlier" in the stranger social world, Soul's main features are "soul self-testing, personality matching, and precise push", making it more attractive to Generation Z than other appearance-based social applications.

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

In terms of city distribution, Soul users are distributed relatively evenly, mainly concentrated in economically developed first- and second-tier cities, accounting for 57%.

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

In terms of educational level distribution, Soul's users' educational level is similar to that of other major competitors, concentrated in high school and below, and the proportion of highly educated users is not high.

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

In terms of income level distribution, more than 70% of Soul users have an income level of moderate prosperity or above and have a high consumption capacity.

(Data source: iResearch data, April 2020)

The ratio of married and unmarried users of Soul is close to 1:1. Compared with Momo and Tantan, the proportion of married users of Soul is higher. It can be seen that compared with Momo and Tantan users, Soul users' overall demand for love and finding a partner is not as strong.

3.2 User Profile & Usage Scenario

Through in-depth interviews with users, information collection from the Soul community, and analysis of the core functions of Soul products, we can infer the portraits of Soul’s three typical user categories and their usage scenarios.

(1) Lonely Star

Name: Xiaoni

Age: 25

Occupation: International student

User characteristics: Single, likes to make friends but not active in socializing, likes to stay at home and surf the Internet

User story: Xiao Ni is an international student, but she has few friends in the same city. She is also busy with her studies and is too lazy to participate in social activities when she has free time. She likes to stay at home and surf the Internet, so her social circle is relatively narrow. But living alone is lonely, and I also want to meet interesting friends who I can talk to. If I know a suitable boy, I am willing to try to develop a romantic relationship with him.

Usage scenario: Seeing that some classmates around her met Soulmates through Soul, Xiao Ni began to try it. Soon, she was matched by Soul’s “Love Bell” with a Souler in the same city who was less than 1km away and had a high matching degree. The Souler took the initiative to greet Xiao Ni, and his opening remarks attracted Xiao Ni, so Xiao Ni also replied to him. After that, they contacted each other intermittently within a month, gradually became familiar with each other’s background and preferences, and had common topics. So the two of them made an appointment to meet offline, and they had a good impression of each other and showed signs of developing into a romantic relationship.

(2) Curious Alien

Name: Xiaoda

Age: 23

Occupation: Programmer

User characteristics: Single, busy with work, easily bored, but usually likes to make friends, chat, and learn about all kinds of new and interesting things.

User story: Xiaoda has few opportunities to meet new friends in work and life. He started using Soul after a friend recommended that he could meet many excellent and interesting users on the app. After a while, I met two or three friends from other places through Soul who I could talk to, and we have kept in touch. However, Xiaoda never expected to meet them offline and become friends in real life. Instead, he hoped to get to know souls from afar, learn about different lives and experiences through them, and listen to other people's stories.

(3) People who don’t share their feelings feel bad

Name: Xiao Tang

Age: 28

Occupation: Entrepreneur

User characteristics: already in a relationship, unstable job, high life pressure

User story: Sometimes work or relationships are not going well, and there is nowhere to talk about them in reality. I hope there is a place where I can share my stories, vent my emotions, and seek resonance.

Usage scenario: Xiao Tang has been dating someone for many years, but when Xiao Tang encounters relationship problems, work pressure or other trivial things in life that he wants to share, he is reluctant to tell his girlfriend or friends and family. There are many things that cannot be said in the circle of friends, but he wants to talk. Soul becomes a tree hole where he can express his feelings without pressure and worries.

3.3 User Demand Analysis

Based on the user analysis above and combined with the specific functions of Soul, we can summarize the following six needs of Soul users:

(1) Main requirements

• Dating and making friends : Dating and making friends is the most basic and widespread need for stranger social interaction. Compared with other social applications that basically only focus on appearance, Soul’s main feature of social networking without looking at the face can better meet users’ needs for personalization and high-quality friendships. However, since Soul only looks at the soul and not the face, if users want to develop real friends or even romantic relationships, they often need to invest more time and energy to cultivate feelings through chatting. Therefore, for Soul users, dating and making friends are not an absolute priority.
• Sharing and Confiding: The biggest difference between Soul’s user needs compared to other stranger social software is the additional needs for “sharing and confiding” and “self-expansion”. These two needs come from Soul’s heartfelt positioning of soul social networking and the creation of its community. Soul is like "WeChat" to a certain extent. You can chat and exchange ideas with friends and share moments, but everyone is an anonymous stranger. No one knows each other, and no one will judge each other, which will affect your real life. All the words that cannot be said or do not want to be said in real life can be said without scruples on Soul. It is like a tree hole. As long as you are willing to speak, there will be people willing to listen and respond to you.
• Self-expansion: Self-expansion is an easily overlooked but very basic user need in interpersonal communication. Self-expansion is the desire to overlap or merge with others, to expand and deepen one’s experience of life through learning about others’ knowledge, perspectives, and experiences[5]. Users have no pressure or concerns when sharing and confiding on Soul. They are willing to share stories and experiences that they are unwilling to share with others in real life on Soul. Therefore, users can learn about other people's more "private" lives on Soul that they cannot learn about on other social platforms. This not only expands their experience of life, but also satisfies their curiosity.

(2) Secondary needs

• Leisure and entertainment : Many users have a lot of free time and don’t know where to spend it. Browsing the square on Soul, private matching chats, and joining the “group chat party” group chat can help users kill their boring time.
• Self-exploration: This is a niche user demand. A small number of users hope to understand themselves through Soul, including whether they are attractive to others when others don’t know their background, what their communication skills are, etc.
• Community recognition: Some users express themselves through this platform, hoping to gain attention and praise, seek community recognition, and gain psychological pleasure. However, this demand can be better met on other platforms such as WeChat and Weibo, so the importance of this demand is low.

4. Product Analysis

4.1 Product Structure

4.2 Product Function Analysis

Soul's functional design revolves around two aspects: matching friends + content community.

The basic logic of Soul matching friends is personality + interest. When you first use Soul, Soul will ask you to complete a personality test and encourage you to add a "gravity signature" that describes your career and interests. Soul will then combine the basic information you filled out when registering (birthday, gender, region), personality test results and "Gravity Signature" to generate your user portrait, and make algorithmic matching recommendations based on this. The most important factor is personality. Sometimes, even if two users do not have any common "attraction signature", the matching degree can still be as high as 90% or more.

Figure: Soul personality test results and user attraction signature

Matching friends based on personality and interests conforms to the similarity principle of interpersonal attraction, that is, the degree of matching between people in interests, attitudes, values, backgrounds or personality factors attracts people to each other. As the saying goes, "Birds of a feather flock together." It is similarity, not complementarity, that brings people together[5].

Of course, the scientific nature of Soul’s personality test remains to be examined, and it is difficult to say whether matching based on the test results is reliable. We can only say with certainty that on the one hand, it is the basis of the “soul matching” setting, which has established a clear product positioning in the minds of users. On the other hand, it provides users with a certain degree of entertainment and is quite popular with users.

Regardless of whether Soul's soul matching is scientific and reliable, Soul presents you with the degree of matching between you and other users, making you believe that you are similar and matched. According to some psychological research, it is very important for users to feel that others are a match for them, so important that they will develop a belief that the match does not actually exist[5], thus attracting each other.

In addition, the role of "Gravity Signature" is multifaceted. In addition to improving the accuracy of algorithm matching recommendations as mentioned above, it can also:

• Optimize content recommendations based on user preferences to better recommend personalized content
• Enrich users' personal information, enhance user attractiveness, and improve matching success rate

4.2.1 Home Page Analysis – Matching Function

The home page carries the matching functions, including: planet self-selected matching & algorithm recommended matching.

(1) Planet selection and matching

Figure: Planet & User homepage after selecting a planet

The dynamic 3D planet on the homepage shows other users who match you. Shake it to change a group of users. When you see an interesting username, click on the corresponding dot to go to the user's homepage. If you are interested, you can follow or initiate a private chat. The design of the planet gives people a romantic feeling of "finding you in the vast sea of ​​people".

In addition to the nicknames of users seen on the planet, you can also see their "characteristics" for some of them, such as "foodie", "love to travel", etc. But I don’t know what basis Soul uses to decide which users on the planet will display their characteristics and what characteristics they will display. As shown in the above picture, our common hobby is traveling, but the planet shows that I am a "foodie". At the same time, there is another user who is the most compatible with me, but his "characteristics" are not shown.

[Suggestion] Based on the similarity principle of interpersonal attraction, common interests attract users to each other. Here it is recommended that Soul display users’ common hobbies when displaying user characteristics on the planet. At the same time, when choosing which users to display characteristics, it is recommended to choose users with a higher matching degree.

Figure: Planet filtering function

There is a filtering function in the upper right corner of the homepage, which can filter the users displayed on the planet, but cannot filter the users recommended by the algorithm. Click in to select the filtering criteria. Currently, only gender is available. However, Soul used to have filtering criteria other than gender, including zodiac sign and age. It can be seen that Soul has reduced the filtering function. According to online comments and feedback, Soul's users are generally young, and many older users have few available matches after filtering their age groups, which affects the user experience. It is speculated that this may be one of the reasons why Soul has reduced its screening criteria.

But filtering is a very good feature. Accurate matching is the most meaningful to users. More filtering criteria can enable users to have more personalized matches that meet their wishes and optimize the user experience.

[Suggestion] Therefore, in the long run, the development direction of Soul's screening function is to drive user growth, attract more diversified users, and enrich the screening function. It is recommended that Soul add "attraction signature", personality traits and other screening criteria in addition to age and zodiac sign in the screening function. The enriched filtering function can become a new monetization channel for Soul, such as allowing users to pay Soul virtual currency to unlock more filtering functions, or incorporating the filtering function into membership privileges and increasing membership prices.

(2) Algorithm recommendation matching

Figure: Four algorithms recommend matching

There are currently four types of algorithm recommendation matching: soul matching, voice matching, facekini matching, and love bell, each with different matching logic, interaction methods, and interaction rules, as shown in the following table:

Table: Summary of recommended matches of four algorithms

a) Soul Match

Figure: Soul matching related pages

Soul matching will give priority to users who click on "soul matching" at the same time. The advantage of this design is that both parties are online at the same time and have a high willingness to chat. After a successful match, they can immediately start a lively communication, which increases the success rate of relationship sedimentation. If the other party does not respond for a long time after a successful match, the user's willingness to chat will be greatly weakened.

b) Voice Match

Figure: Voice matching page

After voice matching, the chat time is limited to 4 minutes. Within 4 minutes, only if both parties choose to disclose their identities can they continue to chat without time limit and obtain each other's account information. When a user is interested in another party, he or she can invite the other party to reveal their identity by giving gifts. This design can effectively encourage users to purchase virtual currency for consumption.

If you purchase the value-added service of voice matching "positioning card", "fairy card" or "magic fairy card", the chat time can be extended to 6 minutes. But in fact, users who have not purchased value-added services also have the need to extend the chat time during the voice process. Many users do not anticipate the need to use the service before chatting, and by the time they want to use it, they have already missed the opportunity.

[Suggestion] For users who have not purchased value-added services, a service purchase button for "extending chat time" can be set on the voice chat interface. At the same time, when there is not much time left, for example, only 1 minute left, a service reminder "chat time can be extended" will pop up.

Soul has set up a dice-rolling and role-playing design at the bottom to make it easier for users to start a topic. But in actual experience, the author found that within the short 4-minute limit, when two strangers interact without any other information except sound, only meaningful dialogue can easily make the two parties have an emotional connection and then enter the next step of the chat. A meaningful conversation refers to information about both parties involved, such as personal background information, personality, interests and hobbies. Through the exchange of information, one party will form a mental picture of the other party, just like the user makes a user portrait for the other party, thereby forming different degrees of favorability towards the other party. Those with a high degree of favorability will enter into the next step of the chat.

[ Suggestion ] In order to help users open up topics better, the recommended optimization direction is to guide users to exchange information and improve social efficiency. On the voice chat page, on the one hand, you can set up a "chat topic suggestion list" to help users ask questions and explore the other party's information; on the other hand, you can display the other user's "attraction signature" to help users find topics that the other party is interested in and start a conversation.

c) Facekini matching

Figure: Facekini matching settings page

Before Facekini matching, you will first enter the settings page. Click the button on the bottom left to choose from multiple Facekini avatars. Click the button on the bottom right to select a filter, but there are no other beauty functions. Click on the top right to invite friends to make a facekini video. When the number of hearts is full during the video, you can choose to take off the hood. Taking off the hood means revealing your identity and switching to the chat box. Both users will never see each other's face.

Voice matching and facekini matching allow Soul to have more gameplay besides ordinary dialog chat. The medium of dialog chat is text, while the medium of voice matching is upgraded to sound, and facekini matching even adds visual images. It can be seen that Soul is madly testing the edge of "not looking at the face" in order to give users more different experiences. However, it should be noted that according to user feedback in interviews, even if the face cannot be seen in facekini matching, once visual elements are added to the chat, users' attention will be attracted by the visual images and they will easily ignore spiritual communication.

d) Love Bell

Picture: Love Bell

Love Bell is a recommended match based on LBS geographic location that was launched by Soul in the later period. The purpose of this feature is to help users find soul mates nearby. The love bell can only be turned on or off, and then wait for the system recommendation. You cannot choose an instant match yourself. After the love bell is turned on, when there is a suitable Souler love bell nearby, it will ring, and the user can choose whether to chat privately.

One of the simplest principles of interpersonal attraction is proximity in time and space. According to a 1998 study by psychologists Berscheid & Reis, the people we see and interact with most frequently are often the most likely to become our friends and lovers. The proximity effect works because of familiarity or exposure, where the more we are exposed to a stimulus, the more we tend to like it[5].

The "find people nearby" function in stranger social software has greatly increased the possibility of offline meetings between users, giving them the opportunity to frequently contact each other in reality, further develop into friends or lovers, and promote the sedimentation of relationship chains. Making friends and finding a partner is the most basic need in stranger social software, so the role of the love bell in Soul is very important.

(3) Group Chat Party – Chat Room

Figure: The page after clicking on "Group Chat Party" from the homepage

Figure: The page after clicking to enter the chat room

On the homepage, in addition to the planet-selected pairings and algorithm-recommended pairings, there is also a "group chat party" function, which is a chat room function. The chat room is initiated by one of the people, who is called the room owner. The room owner is usually responsible for organizing the chat. Each room will have a "heat challenge". When the heat value of the room reaches 600, the challenge is successful and the room can get the opportunity to gain traffic exposure. The heat value of the room is affected by the "room opening time" and "the number of gifts sent by users in the room".

The upper limit of the number of people in each chat room is 60. Only users who are approved by the room owner to speak can do so. Users can apply to speak through the microphone icon in the lower right corner of the chat room.

A major drawback of traditional live broadcast interaction is that it relies on the host to lead the interaction in a one-way manner. The audience can only participate in the interaction by sending text messages and giving gifts. In addition, the number of viewers is large, sometimes up to millions, so the interaction between the host and the audience is less direct and less efficient. The number of people in a chat room is limited, and users with a high willingness to participate can go online and communicate directly by voice, which is highly interactive. Therefore, even TikTok is trying to launch group chat rooms, which provide voice broadcasts without looking at faces and only listening to voices. It slows down the pace in this hectic and busy world and gives users a sense of companionship, which is very healing.

Compared with the voice live broadcast in the Douyin chat room, the role of the Soul chat room host is not the anchor, but more of an organizer, with less dominance. Users can also have private chats outside the chat room, and the psychological distance between each other is closer. The interactive experience is better than voice live broadcast.

In addition, user interviews found that for users who are not good at socializing, multi-person chat rooms are a more relaxed and comfortable social space than private chats. In private chats, especially voice chats, users who are not good at socializing may feel social anxiety and panic. However, in chat rooms, users can choose to mute their microphones or change rooms, and decide when and where to participate in the interaction at will. For them, it is as if they have a "back door" to escape, so they can socialize without any panic.

4.2.2 Square Page Analysis – Community Function

The square page carries the community functions and has three modules: Follow, Recommend and Latest.

Figure: Square Page

Soul divides the pushed content into two modules: "Recommended" and "Latest". In the "Recommended" module, algorithms are used to recommend content that users may be interested in, regardless of whether it is popular or not, while the "Latest" module pushes the latest content based on the release time.

Setting up the “latest” module can quickly increase the exposure of new content, help users who have just published content quickly gain comments or likes, and motivate users to continue producing content. However, from the readers’ perspective, reading the latest content is not a necessary requirement for them. The “good-looking” content in the “recommended” module can basically satisfy them. Therefore, most users click on the “latest” module less frequently or even fail to notice the existence of this module.

[ Suggestion ] For reading users, in addition to "good-looking" recommended content and content from people they follow, what may also attract them is content posted by users in the "same city", especially for users with strong needs for dating and making friends. In user interviews, many users who like to use the love bell said that when they are browsing the square, they will pay special attention to the moments of other users in the same city. Therefore, it is recommended to replace the "Latest" module with the "Same City" module. As analyzed above about the Love Bell, "find people nearby" plays a very important role in stranger social interaction. The content posted by "same city" users helps other users find the souls they are interested in in the same city, which is equivalent to adding a new channel for users to "find people nearby" in addition to the Love Bell.

It is also worth mentioning that Soul also pays great attention to "sound content". There is a record symbol in the upper right corner of the square page. Clicking it will pop up a play box, randomly playing popular audios posted by users. The audio content is singing, nice monologues or funny jokes, etc. Soul launched the "Co-create Audio with Friends" feature on the instant publishing page, giving users more ways to publish audio content, as shown below.

Figure: Music creation function of the instant release page

4.2.3 Chat Page – Chat Functionality

Picture: Private chat page

In the chat list, the source of each user will be marked, such as Plaza, Love Bell, Match, etc. During the first chat, the chat box will display the other party's information, including matching degree and attraction signature information. The attraction signature information will help users open up topics during the first chat. Users matched by Love Bell will display the distance and location of each other when chatting, which intuitively gives people the feeling that they are close and can easily meet offline.

As the chat duration and frequency increase, the heart in the upper right corner of the private chat page will be filled. The filled hearts can gradually light up the letters of Soulmate. When the Soulmate letters light up to a certain degree, the relationship between the two parties becomes "close friends". When all the letters are lit up, you can have a homepage exclusively for the two of you. The purpose of this design is, on the one hand, to encourage users to interact more and more deeply with other users, and on the other hand, to improve user retention and reduce user migration to WeChat.

4.3 Product Analysis Summary

(1) User retention

The biggest problem with stranger social apps is user retention. What stranger social networking solves for users is to help strangers build connections and build relationships. Once a relationship is established between strangers, it will turn into social interaction among acquaintances, and accordingly users will lose interest in communication tools such as WeChat. Adding each other on WeChat is a ritual and symbol that two people have officially become friends. The transformation from a stranger social network to an acquaintance social network is an irreversible law of interpersonal communication. Therefore, user loss is inevitable, and the only thing we can do is to increase user usage time as much as possible.

In order to increase user usage time, Soul has made two efforts:

• On the one hand, it delays the time for users to migrate to WeChat. By adding hearts and lighting up the letters of Soulmate, users are encouraged to continue to stay in Soul and interact to complete the task of lighting up the letters.

• On the other hand, it provides diversified value to users to meet their other needs besides making friends. In addition to the basic function of matching private chats, Soul also has the functions of "Plaza" and "Group Chat Party", which can not only meet the users' needs for love and making friends, but also meet the users' needs for sharing, self-expansion, leisure and entertainment. Especially in meeting the needs of sharing, self-expansion and self-expansion, Soul has advantages that cannot be replaced by other social platforms for acquaintances. Therefore, even if some users develop acquaintance relationships with other Soulers and move to WeChat to continue communicating, they are willing to continue to stay in Soul to kill time.

(2) Social efficiency

Since user loss is inevitable, the primary task of stranger social applications is to focus on how to efficiently solve the sedimentation problem of stranger relationship chains. Stranger social efficiency includes: communication efficiency & matching efficiency.

Communication efficiency refers, on the one hand, to whether users can easily break the ice and open up topics during the first chat; on the other hand, it refers to whether users can find topics of mutual interest and have the motivation to continue chatting. In terms of helping users improve communication efficiency, Soul's official optimization direction is to set up various mini-games to help users break the ice. Currently, Soul provides the "Draw and Guess" mini-game and "PIA" role-playing on the private chat page, and also provides intelligent services to guide users to start topics, as shown in the figure below.

Figure: Soul’s design to improve communication efficiency

In addition, encouraging users to enrich the content of their personal homepages can also help improve communication efficiency. On the one hand, the rich content of personal homepages can help users find ice-breaking points to chat with each other and open up topics; on the other hand, it can help both users understand each other and form an overall image perception of each other. When both parties have formed a certain degree of favorability towards each other through image perception, opening up topics is the most natural thing.

Matching efficiency refers to the matching accuracy. In addition to using personality tests and gravity signatures to improve the accuracy of algorithm recommendation matches, Soul should also use filtering functions to enrich the filterable criteria, allowing users to actively choose personalized matching criteria that they value very much in passive algorithm recommendations, such as age groups. When matching, Soul can give priority to users whose standards meet those of both parties.

5. Operational Analysis

The product analysis summary above mentioned that incentivizing user content production will be a key task in Soul’s product operations, not only to help users improve communication efficiency, but also to enrich the UGC content of the plaza and increase user usage time. To motivate users to produce content, Soul can approach from two directions: platform incentives and community operations.

5.1 Platform Incentives

In terms of platform incentives, this can be achieved through "establishing a points system + content push exposure".

Establish a points system to encourage users to post moments by rewarding points, and users can use the points to obtain various benefits on Soul, such as more voice matches, gift purchases, or membership purchase discounts.

Content push exposure increases the traffic exposure of users' high-quality moments, allowing users to gain more likes and comments, resonate with others through frequent interactions, feel loved, understood, and recognized, thereby gaining psychological pleasure and continuing to produce content.

5.2 Community Operation

Community operation is to create a good community environment and atmosphere for users to publish content through community building. Soul has spent a lot of time on community operations:

• Increase traffic exposure of high-quality content: manually pin high-quality moments that are highly popular in a short period of time through background monitoring and screening; if it is content that is disseminated on a wider scale, an invitation for "high-quality content recommendation" will be sent to the corresponding users after manual screening, and users can get more traffic exposure after accepting the invitation.

• Decentralized content distribution: Soul adopts AI big data matching algorithm to distribute content. It does not focus on recommending content from top KOLs, but recommends personalized content to each user through a reasonable data distribution model, making content distribution more equal and effective.

• Explore and support high-quality creators: Soul launches the "SSR" Super Soul Real, which aims to encourage users to create more high-quality content and transforms a community as a tree hole function into a high-quality UGC content community. Soul will evaluate creators in terms of originality, content quality, vertical relevance, creation difficulty, and publishing frequency. The officially certified SSR will receive a number of incentive rights, including expert logos, official recommendations, and in-depth cooperation opportunities.

• Keep the community active: Release official topic activities periodically, and the official will lead the community activity

In terms of future optimization, it is recommended that Soul start from the following aspects:

• Promote the accuracy of content recommendation algorithms and add "not interested" function

• Strengthen review and reduce content that destroys the community atmosphere, such as recommended online pictures, meaningless pictures and "body show" pictures

• Improve the gift gift mechanism: High-quality creators will receive electronic virtual gifts from other users, but creators cannot get actual rewards from the gifts they receive. This not only cannot arouse the author's desire to create, but also weakens the motivation for other users to give gifts. In user interviews, many users said that if the party receiving the gift cannot benefit from it, they are reluctant to spend money to give gifts. Therefore, the gift gift mechanism can be improved. On the one hand, you can try to divide the gift income with the creator. The author accounts for the majority, and the official only collects a small part from it. On the other hand, you can try to link the number of gifts obtained with the points system. The more gifts you receive, the more points you will get, and users can exchange points for other benefits in the application.

VI. Conclusion

Soul is a carefully polished product. Its careful product details and restrained social style are deeply rooted in the hearts of female users. The balanced ratio of male and female users has laid a good user base for this product. However, as the product development, the number of users continues to increase and the user quality is uneven, which puts forward higher requirements for the accuracy of Soul matching recommendations and the maintenance of community atmosphere. Otherwise, for loyal users, the original Soul will "change" and lead to user loss.

Compared with other stranger social applications, community construction is more important to Soul. A good community environment is in line with and can consolidate Soul's product tone as a tree hole and a spiritual garden. Soul's community is not only a major advantage that distinguishes it from other competitors, but also a powerful tool to improve user retention and use. Therefore, in addition to optimizing the chat experience, Soul's future product development direction should also pay attention to community development.

Final Thoughts

It's long, thanks for reading. As a new product newcomer looking for an internship, there are some inadequate analysis of the article. Please criticize and correct me. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please leave a message or contact us.

[1] Meng Yue. 36Kr exclusive interview | Soul founder Zhang Lu: Money is good, but making money is not good [EB/OL]. https://36kr.com/p/1724912320513,2020-02-28.

[2] Su Yu. Strange social APP is popular: "Who will solve my emotional needs" [EB/OL].http://www.uschinapress.com/2019/0221/1156813.shtml,2019-02-21.

[3] QuestMobile Research Institute. Generation Z Insight Report [EB/OL].https://www.questmobile.com.cn/research/report-new/31,2018-12-19.

[4] Alter.Z The social circle of generation Z needs to be slowly “fostered” [EB/OL].http://www.woshipm.com/it/3493015.html,2020-03-10.

[5] Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Eckert. Social Psychology [M]. Machinery Industry Press:, 2014-8-9:

Attachment: Product iteration list

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Author: Whitney

Source: Whitney