Wen | AI Finance and Economics Luo Huasheng
Editor| Dong Yuqing
This Tanabata, the live broadcast room of the Internet red ladies is a bit busy.
"No. 89, male, unmarried, has a house and a car, graduated with a bachelor's degree, and works in a state-owned enterprise." After giving two gifts to the Red Lady, a single man finally got the opportunity to be a female guest of Lian Mai.
Before the arrival of Tanabata, many online live broadcast rooms had online red brides who matched single men and women. In the lively venue, male and female guests quickly threw out their needs. On the other hand, on social software, users skillfully open dialog boxes, and the slightly exaggerated "earthy love words" go directly to the other end of the network cable. People's loneliness is relieved, and the desire for companionship is released.
Once upon a time, when mentioning the new type of blind date, the outside world will think of Century Jiayuan, Lily Network and "Do Not Disturb". However, since the beginning of 2018, fraud incidents such as Zhai Xinxin and "marriage trust" have occurred frequently, a huge crisis of trust has erupted in the industry, and the position of young users has almost completely shifted to the mobile Internet, and the industry has also undergone tremendous changes.
In 2020, while the epidemic promoted the rise of "cloud blind date", it also opened the curtain on the secondary transformation of the marriage and love industry. Compared with the traditional dating platform of the previous generation, in the era of mobile Internet, the new dating APP further reduces the user threshold and screening costs. At present, on this track, in addition to the veteran social giant Momo, there are also Love Chat, Yi these startups, as well as Douyin, Kuaishou's red bride live broadcast room.
Photo/Visual China
The mobile Internet and policy dividends have reconstructed the opportunities of this track. On social software and live broadcast platforms, the story of "Network Red Bride" has exploded in this wave of dividends.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > 28888 yuan for blind dates</h1>
Around the turn of the millennium, "blind marriage and dumb marriage"—marriage facilitated only by the words of a matchmaker—was the norm in Chinese marriage.
Gong Haiyan, a single woman from Hunan, spent 500 yuan in that era and wanted to find information on men of the right age in the marriage agency, but found that these information were fake. Therefore, Gong Haiyan established a website, attracted investment, and was determined to break the drawbacks of the marriage agency and let the "people who want to get married" be able to get married. This is the story of the birth of Century Jiayuan Network.
In 2016, after the completion of the merger and delisting of Century Jiayuan and Baihe.com, the business model of marriage and love as the industrial chain gradually took shape - using the online platform to accumulate customers, collect membership fees from the front end, and then carry out offline one-on-one red bride service after developing VIP users. You can also monetize traffic through advertising and earn some business cooperation income. According to the disclosure, in 2018, the revenue of the combined Lily Jiayuan reached 1.3 billion yuan.
However, to some extent, the century good friends did not take the life of the marriage agency. Lily, who is busy with work, told AI Finance and Economics that she previously bought a 50,000 yuan package at Century Jiayuan and could meet 8 men within half a year. According to her, the price of different packages is based on the age of the service recipient and the requirements for the other half, "will consider your requirements to give a price." ”
But after handing over the money, Lily soon realized that there was no difference between the red bride and the relatives who urged the marriage. Red Niang always used the excuse of "seeing and seeing" to tell her that "feelings can be cultivated" and rushed to complete sales tasks. What made her most dissatisfied was that some of the recommended objects "look particularly insincere, as if they are already very skilled." ”
In addition, the sales-oriented service model makes the platform not strict on the information screening of members. Another marriage platform, Zhen'ai Network, also reported that the membership review was not strict in February this year, and a female member was not only arranged to associate with a married male member, but also defrauded of more than 70,000 yuan.
In essence, the intermediary earns poor information, and the same is true for the marriage intermediary.
An entrepreneur in the marriage industry summed up to AI Finance and Economics, and the simple single is different, the biggest problem faced by love for the purpose of marriage is that the demand is difficult to symmetrical, "the monthly salary of 5,000 yuan wants to find a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan, but the heart of the monthly salary of 6,000 yuan is looking for a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan." People naturally have the need for "people going to high places" and "door to door", which has become the space for marriage matchmaking platforms to earn the difference, that is, they can spend a certain fee to help users break through class barriers or reduce screening costs.
"You sign this contract, as long as 28888 yuan, you can pay in installments, for you, there is no burden." The first time I consulted at Century Jiayuan, Zhouzhou was recommended for such a set of wedding insurance packages. According to the introduction, it is possible to obtain "high-end" blind date resources after paying fees. The contract shows that during the contract period, 18 blind dates will be recommended for him, and the service recipients will be guaranteed to "receive a marriage certificate".
Zhouzhou is a post-90s person who is engaged in a decent job in a first-tier city. Working in a big city for many years, she asked herself if she hated marriage. But the urging of her parents and the entry of her peers into the palace of marriage inevitably made her feel anxious. However, she also had a long heart because of this expensive package, did not pay money at the scene, and in retrospect, Zhouzhou realized that there were pits everywhere.
Zhouzhou told AI Finance and Economics that she believes that the cake of Jiayuan Painting is too big, for example, asking her to raise her mate selection standard by 2 to 3 times, and also creating anxiety for her, claiming, "The probability of not being able to marry before the age of 30 and getting marital happiness will be reduced." At the same time, her agent also claimed to be a psychology graduate, constantly attacking Zhouzhou's various psychological weaknesses and asking "height and weight three circumferences". The skeptical Zhouzhou asked the intermediary to see her academic certificate, but was refused, and when she found that Zhouzhou was "smart", she would no longer reply to any inquiries about the service.
A new generation of young people have become less and less buying the accounts of these platforms, a user who has experienced the service of Century Jiayuan told AI Finance and Economics that she even registered an account with a "hunting" mentality, because this type of platform seems to have a strong "copycat sense".
But for now, the so-called online dating platform is still based on this model as the mainstream. The traditional marriage websites represented by Lily Jiayuan and Zhen'ai Network still occupy the first chair of marriage matching.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="114" > a new style of marriage products that are soaring</h1>
But an emerging force is on the rise.
In early July, a seminar on marriage and social networking was held in Beijing. At the meeting, the organizer Ai chat APP came up with successful cases of "24-day marriage" and "2-month engagement". The Hand-in-Hand APP developed by Momo launched a networking activity for young people from Enterprises and Institutions in Beijing. The networking event involved 100 young men and women, and the official slogan was to help "young people find the perfect love".
Yang Jincheng, COO who loves to talk, believes that "intermediary products will be relatively awkward, these young people may not be very adaptable, and the work pressure is tense." ”
The landing of the three-child policy in 2021 has also promoted the heat of the marriage and love market, and many products that previously focused on social networking have adjusted their product strategies. The predecessor of Ai chat, "MoSheng", was originally a social application for urban blue-collar groups, and before the revision of Ai Chat, the coverage of Yi's APP and Hand in Hand APP has also been expanded to the entire young group.
After Tantan was acquired by Momo, its founders Pan Ying and Wang Yu withdrew from the company's specific management, and then set up a new project called Hand in Hand, according to its introduction, its main "network red bride". At present, the official said that 2.01 million people who have passed real-name authentication have become their users.
Ren Zhe, the founder of Yi pair, regards his own products as a mobile Internet version of "Do Not Disturb", "a red lady, a female guest, matching three male guests, and several guests take turns to introduce themselves." ”
Compared with the simple and rough matching of traditional marriage brokers, the new wedding APP claims to have worked the product structure.
For example, on AiChat, users need to gradually unlock various permissions. Yang Jincheng calls it four stages, one is the hand-holding stage, the system will provide some words for ice breaking; the second stage, the platform will provide some game gameplay to enhance feelings. In the third stage, users can unlock voice and video after reaching a certain level of intimacy, thereby providing a success rate.
However, some users have also given feedback to AI Finance and Economics that these ice-breaking techniques such as "the world is average, but you are worth it" and "where is my object" are slightly greasy and easy to cause the other party to resent, "If anyone says this to me, I will definitely block him a long time ago."
The advanced point of Yi pair is that it promotes users to become red brides. Users who have already matched on the platform can apply to become a red bride (female) or a month old (male) by meeting the conditions for registration time. According to its introduction, the red bride can open a live broadcast room to invite male and female guests to settle in, and receive platform remuneration according to the matching rate afterwards.
On the other hand, with the maturity of short video, live broadcast and other products, red brides have naturally moved their work sites to the online live broadcast room, and "cloud blind date" has become the trend.
AI Finance and Economics randomly stepped into the live broadcast room of a short video platform, and a red lady was shouting for the male guests of Lianmai, "If you like male guests, you can deduct 6, and those who want to know can send me private messages." At the bottom of the screen, the male guest himself, through the red lady, he spoke out his need for the other half: don't be too old and capable. However, his time for the show soon arrived, and a female guest, Lian Mai, entered the scene, and he quickly finished the rest of the words, "Those who want to live a life, those who are responsible, those who are responsible." ”
On the short video platform, the search for "red bride" related, the jump out of the account fans range from 100,000 to one million levels. Each dating app also has its own live broadcast room. In the live broadcast room, the tip gifts range from "piercing the cloud arrow" (equivalent to 288.8 yuan) to "carnival" (equivalent to 3,000 yuan), love is also clearly marked, and guests can only get the contact information of other guests by brushing gifts. Through the increasingly perfect e-commerce mechanism of the live broadcast platform, these games can also be achieved by buying tickets to enter the customized live broadcast room.
No one can say whether these measures are an improvement over the traditional marriage agency model. However, the price of "piercing the cloud arrow" and "carnival" is indeed lower than that offline marriage agency, and compared with the information difference caused by the traditional marriage matchmaking model in the past, the video coverage is also wider and more realistic. "After all, the cost of cross-social relationship flow is high, and video platforms are better suited to do this kind of thing." Judge, author of "Product Awakening" and product manager, said.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="115" > business of matchmaking is not easy to do</h1>
In Yang Jincheng's observation, the marriage and love social market is still an industry to be tapped. "The need to socialize is a bit hiccupy of the old and the new. As a new user, young people may want to try all kinds of social software at first. But when he really wanted to find a marriage partner, this product was missing. ”
In other words, no one believes that a partner who has entered the marriage hall can be found on social platforms like Momo.
In first- and second-tier cities, young people are generally trapped by the cost of living, and the willingness to marry and have children is low. In this context, the soaring progress of the marriage and love APP is somewhat counterintuitive. The above-mentioned marriage platform entrepreneurs also told AI Finance and Economics that he believes that the shallower level of off-orders has greater demand, but this social software such as Soul and Momo can do it, and the nature of marriage is low-frequency demand, the market is narrow, "the supply of people is unstable, and the marginal cost of operation is too high." ”
However, in the eyes of Yang Jincheng, "many people will have needs after the age of 30." The product manager judge told AI Finance and Economics that the sinking market still has a strong demand for marriage and love, and users tend to be younger, compared to their parents, they are more reluctant to accept the matchmaking of their parents, and the marriage app provides new choices.
Therefore, unlike simple social apps, users on dating products are often asked to describe themselves as much as possible when registering, including height and weight data, personality and preferences for the other half. In order to make users more intuitive about the other half, these apps have also launched a live broadcast function.
But the answer to whether these features can bring transparency and absolute security to data and solve the long-standing fraud risk problem in the marriage and social market is not so certain.
Open the post bar, Weibo comments, there is no lack of users to question whether the recommended objects of these marriage and love APP are real. Users often suspect that they are encountering a "marriage trust", that is, in the name of love, inducing them to recharge gifts.
Although Yang Jincheng said that he would control the number of matches of high-quality users, that is, to control the scale of rewards to reduce the possibility that some users may make profits from this, in fact, the platform can not play a large role in restricting. Even in the so-called decentralized Internet, traffic will still be tilted towards high-quality users, if the algorithm is forced to suppress, "the more elite people have no way to stand out, their needs can not be solved, these people are lost, the rest are all crooked dates, your matching efficiency is higher." The judge said.
In fact, compared with industries such as takeaway and taxi, whether it is the PC era or the mobile Internet era, the degree of marriage and love transformed by the Internet is not high. Part of this is because the majority of the profits in the marriage market are still in the heavier peripheral industries of wedding planning, wedding photography, and wedding banquets, and these industries are difficult to intensify through the Internet. In addition, the core barrier of marriage and love is "people", which is a matter that the Internet that attaches importance to efficiency cannot be stable supply.
Therefore, the current user traffic pool of these marriage apps is still relatively shallow. Many users also report that there are often situations where the opposite is not a real user, and there is a robot. The judge believes that in contrast, video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, which have greater traffic, as infrastructure, carry these life services, and the logic is more general. For example, many local bloggers can match some high-quality users.
In addition, commercialization is still an unsolved problem for these marriage and love apps.
At present, these dating apps earn matchmaking money, and users can choose to pay by qualification or effect, that is, how many objects to ask to see or achieve the final match. However, these revenues face a low ceiling and are a package of transactions. The solution proposed by Yang Jincheng is to try to increase the scale of users through subsidies, "reduce the threshold of use, so that more people can come in, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of users can come to use, each user to make a little money." ”
Every night, the loneliness of nowhere is awakened, and these "Internet red girls" seem to have value. In live broadcast rooms or on social platforms, data that was once vague is embodied as an ordinary individual. They may have just emerged from a failed marriage, or are eager to start a family after ending their wanderings, or they may just be ordinary users who "want more choices."
The case given by Ai Liao is that a woman in Heilongjiang, after meeting her true destiny, flew to Shanghai for 24 days to determine the relationship and get engaged. In the live broadcast room, a red lady quickly typed the input data on the keyboard, and skillfully shouted to a male guest, "Tomorrow there is time to hand me the information, the little sister must have it." ”
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.