Wen | Cheng Liang
Editor| Yang Jie
"I've been together a dozen times, but I still haven't met the right person. As long as you don't look at the right eye, you will always look at each other until you meet the right person. Zhou Yi, 24, said that there were several blind dates waiting for him at home this Year's New Year.
Zhou Yi does not reject the family to help Zhang Luo feelings, although he has just graduated, but for engineering design, he has reached the age of considering starting a family, but confined to the social circle is too narrow, usually he can contact the opposite sex is too few. "Blind dates are the big trend now, and many people around me have met their other half through this way. Of course, whether the two sides can finally come together depends on fate. ”
At the beginning of 2022, the topic of "the first batch of post-00s entering the marriage age" has been on the hot search. When it comes to the festive season, every young person cannot escape the fate of being urged to marry and arrange a blind date.
According to the "2021 China Internet Dating Market Research Report" released by Bida Consulting, in 2021, the size of China's Internet dating market reached 7.2 billion yuan, an increase of 11.6% year-on-year; in terms of users, men are significantly more than women; users aged 30 and below account for more than 60%, of which users under 25 account for 27.6%.
However, traditional dating websites that have landed on the capital market by relying on blind dates are becoming more and more difficult to capture the hearts of Z-era people who pursue love.
"I have never used traditional dating websites, such as Century Jiayuan, Lily Network and Zhen'ai Network, etc., although I know them, but I never want to use them." For me, these are all products of the web 1.0 era, it feels like the way the previous generation is dating, and its audience is more rushing to talk about marriage conditions, which is not in line with the feeling I want to find a partner. After 95, Wang Jia told the "Finance and Economics World" weekly.
In December 2021, Century Jiayuan was also exposed by the media that there is a widespread sales violation of user privacy, and they can view the user's chat content and browsing information in the management background, and use this as a basis for precision marketing to users. Subsequently, many institutions such as Lily Jiayuan, Zhen'ai Network, and My Lord Liangyuan were interviewed by relevant institutions in many provinces and cities.
The first generation of marriage and dating platforms has become increasingly "old". Correspondingly, for the young Generation Z, they pay more attention to spiritual socialization, and they are more inclined to "can talk about it" than "door to door". Those dating apps and stranger social software with updated gameplay and more vertical audiences pour into the vision of young people, eating away at the "cake" of traditional dating sites.
Is it better to be social with a blind date?
According to the Bida Consulting report, in 2021, the main dating platform services will further shift to scenarios, and online interactivity, fun and content will drive the growth of user scale. In terms of the demand for Internet dating user services, the proportion of "blind date" and "love social" willingness began to match.
The Z generation who have entered the marriage age, in the face of the "cannon fire" of the family to start to urge marriage, did not rush to register on the traditional marriage website, but instead had fun in various strangers online and offline social scenes.
(Source: Visual China)
"It's not so much that I want to go on a blind date, but rather that I want to expand my circle of friends." The purpose of my marriage is not too strong. And in my opinion, talking about material blind dates is a bit 'bargain' from the beginning, not that the actual conditions are not important, but I think that this is not the most important. Wang Jia believes that on the traditional dating website, everything is very data-based, and a specific "person" is decomposed into a bunch of information on height, weight, appearance, fixed assets, etc., but each user's own personality and inner nature are often annihilated.
As a Generation Z, Wang Jia bluntly said that he and his friends around him pay more attention to the need for "spiritual socialization", and this is an important factor in determining whether they can enter into romantic relationships with others. Compared with going to marriage websites to seek love, harvesting soul fit through social means is more favored by them.
Since 2016, Wang Jia has been using the social software Soul to post some personal updates. Soul, who focuses on faceless socializing, has become a "tree hole" in her daily life. The post-95 hill, who is also a Soul user, said that he also made a current boyfriend on the platform and is currently in a stable relationship.
However, they do not agree that stranger social apps like Soul will become a new "blind date platform". Hill said that he feels that there is still a fundamental difference between the two, "Blind date or more emphasis on each other's real identity, material conditions, Soul for us, is a 'walking feelings' platform, hard to pull on the blind date will be very awkward." Moreover, these are virtual social platforms, and it is up to other users to go with the flow or not to establish real-world connections. After all, there are also many pitfalls on such platforms. ”
Gu Que, who has been drifting north for two years, has also begun to try to open up more new interpersonal relationships through light social interaction. After she tried to download The Detective, in less than a week, she saw that more than a thousand people had received "likes" on the homepage, and she felt a sense of satisfaction. "I was just curious to try it out, but now I feel that while it may be that the software is deceiving me, it at least gives me a sense of social confidence."
"Usually work is too busy, there are not many opportunities to make friends, let alone fall in love." Shortly after I graduated, although my parents mentioned the blind date, they were not too anxious. However, I am still looking forward to finding a friend or lover who can talk. Gu Que said.
Following other friends, Gu Que also put the goal of expanding interpersonal relationships on participating in some offline script killings and same-city activities. "I think it's good for everyone to play script killing together, meet offline, I have more opportunities to meet different people." And compared with deliberate blind dates, playing games will not have too much burden, but also through the interpretation and interpretation of the script to understand each other's IQ and communication skills. ”
On platforms such as Xiaohongshu, grass notes such as "off-single script killing" and "script killing suitable for blind dates" are often tens of thousands of likes. Countless bloggers have personally told how script killing is made into a "blind date bureau". The owner of the script killing store also said that many young people have become lovers by playing the script of the "emotional book", and even some people have played the script killing specifically for the purpose of "getting rid of the list".
In addition, the "off-order convenience store" that sells off-order blind boxes and off-order drift bottles has also risen in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as first- and second-tier cities such as Nanjing, Chengdu and Changsha. In these convenience stores, young people can put their personal information, contact information, etc. into the drift bottle, wait for the "person who has a relationship", or open someone else's drift bottle to get information and establish contact with each other.
In contrast, traditional marriage websites may seem to have been a bit "past".
The dating site is nearly dusk
In December 2021, an investigative report brought the veteran dating website Century Jiayuan back into the public eye.
According to the surging news, a certain offline store of Century Jiayuan has problems such as red brides as "trusts", setting up false personalities, and members' private information being viewed at will. The report mentioned that even relevant people claimed that even if they secretly saw the routine fraud of "pig killing plate", they should pretend not to know, so as not to be reported by users for invasion of privacy.
Subsequently, Century Jiayuan issued an apology statement on the official Weibo, saying that some employees had serious violations of abuse of power to access user information in actual work, and the company has begun to remove this function in the background.
It is worth noting that this apology Weibo only received 4 retweets, 45 comments and 109 likes, compared with the 2.24 million fans displayed on the official account and the 200 million registered members on the website, it can be called "unnoticed". Although the problem has been exposed, many people seem to have stopped paying attention to the century of good fortune that once played a role in the marriage market.
Ten years ago, it was still the time of the century. With the popularity of the marriage program "Do Not Disturb", major marriage websites have quickly become popular, among which Century Jiayuan took the lead in entering the capital market and landed on the NASDAQ in the United States in 2011, becoming the "first share of Marriage and Love in China".
In 2015, Baihe was listed on the New Third Board. In the same year, Century Jiayuan reached a merger and acquisition agreement with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Baihe.com, and subsequently delisted from the US stock market. Two years later, Lily Network and Century Jiayuan officially completed the merger and were called Lily Jiayuan. However, the performance of the combined Lily Jiayuan was not satisfactory, and even when it applied for delisting in 2019, it failed to turn around the loss.
In addition to the decline in the market, the frequent outbreak of fraud in the marriage and love industry is also constantly consuming the enthusiasm of users. Since 2017, Century Jiayuan has frequently exposed the "pig killing disk" scam, among which the news that WePhone founder Su Xiangmao was tricked into marrying and committing suicide has also triggered heated discussions on the Internet.
According to the black cat complaint, as of now, there are 4381 complaints related to Century Jiayuan, Zhen'ai Network and Baihe Network, respectively, 2137 and 1652. A number of users complained that these companies have problems such as false publicity, difficulty in refunding fees, and users being deducted without their knowledge and being induced to consume by "red brides".
After the 90s, Zhou Zhou was dissuaded because he had seen too many negative news on blind date websites. "The feeling that dating sites such as Jiayuan Jiayuan gives me is that they are too 'old' and a bit unreliable. I don't trust some of the so-called Red Bride services very much, and I've heard that the price of membership on these sites is not cheap, and if you don't find the right one, you will be 'empty'. ”
Yao Ran, a former employee of Zhen'ai Network, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly: "In general, the complete service of the website will include the sale of red brides and service brides. The sales lady is responsible for contacting customers and inviting them to offline stores to negotiate a single, charging money to do membership cards, and customers can only enjoy services after the card, such as arranging blind dates and participating in networking activities. Different members, the amount of payment is not the same, which mainly depends on the investment cycle and the quality requirements for the blind date. ”
For example, Red Bride will arrange for customers to try a 3-month blind date first, and make requirements, such as asking for each other's age range, whether there is a stable job, whether there is a house and a car, etc. The intelligent system will comprehensively measure, generate a quotation, and then sign an agreement between the two parties. According to my understanding at the time, the cheapest order fee in the short term was also around 8,000 yuan. Yao Ran explained.
It can be seen that even if young people have strong needs for marriage and love and want to find a good person, they must first consider whether they have the conditions to buy "blind date tickets". In addition, Yao Ran also feels that the "love sale" on the dating website is actually more of a luck. "Although some customers have finally successfully dated each other, and even some people have proposed marriage in stores, I have seen a lot of strange things."
"However, after the epidemic, the main offline marriage websites have also begun to decline. Originally, a store under the Zhen'ai network line would have nearly 1,000 square meters, including more than 40 private rooms, and now it has been reduced to more than 300 square meters, and there were almost 6 stores in Beijing before, which was directly reduced to 3 after the epidemic. Yao Ran said.
The love business is not easy to do
For traditional dating websites, in the current dating track, in addition to facing light social players who cater to the needs of young people, they must also fight against new blind rivals born in line with the development of the platform.
According to Ai Media Consulting data, from January 2011 to September 2021, stranger social circuits raised a total of 239 cases, involving an investment and financing amount of up to 8.836 billion yuan. From November 2020, Baidu, Tencent, ByteDance and other Internet manufacturers have begun to lay out blind date business one after another.
As can be seen from the prospectus submitted by Soul in September last year, Soul's largest external shareholder is ImageFrameInvestment (HK), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent, holding 49.9% of the shares. Tencent itself has also launched many new social products in recent years, including light chat, happy encounter, light edge, light encounter dating, Hood and go to chat.
Driven by the tide of live broadcasting, Yiyi App, which has created a "live broadcast + blind date" model, completed a B round of financing in 2020, and its investors include Xiaomi, Yunjiu Capital, etc. The data shows that in the first half of 2021, in terms of the cumulative active users of the main dating platforms, the top three are Lily Jiayuan, Zhenai Network and Yi pair, and their active user market shares accounted for 28.7%, 19.6% and 10.9% respectively.
Although audience needs and product forms have changed, the development of platforms under the banner of "love" ultimately depends on mature business models. At present, it seems that they can not rely solely on traffic competition to distinguish between victory and defeat, as well as the competition for user big data and the matching and improvement of corresponding services.
However, in this process, the "old problems" of stranger social networking are still plaguing many platforms, such as playing soft pornography", involving false publicity, inducing or forcing consumption, etc.
In this regard, some legal professionals said that these platforms must also pay attention to the user real-name system, and the relatively perfect information authentication system can also give users higher protection and more benign development of the platform. "What the dating platform needs to do is real-name verification; in verifying the user's other information, including property information, work experience information, education information, criminal records, etc., it needs to exchange information with relevant government departments, and the two sides jointly build a more comprehensive user identity authentication system." Zhao Zhanzhang, deputy director of Beijing Yunjia Law Firm, has said.
(At the request of the interviewees, Zhou Yi, Wang Jia, Shanqiu, Gu Que, Zhou Zhou, and Yao Ran are pseudonyms)
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.