Text/Mu Yu
In China, stranger social apps are a mystery. When it comes to talking about it publicly, everyone sneers, but privately, it quietly registers various platforms, and ai media consulting statistics show that in recent years, the scale of stranger social users on the mainland has continued to grow, approaching 650 million people in 2020.
The huge lonely market everyone wants to plug in, the Internet rises and falls, only social is eternal.
There are more and more social apps, it is easier and easier for everyone to know people, it is more and more difficult to understand people, and social platforms help people establish connections, but they deepen their loneliness.
Stranger social platforms have developed for so many years, but they have not been able to walk out of the "pan-social" 1.0 era, why is it? Is it "real business" or "false proposition"? Where does it go from here?
Former Space Social: New Bottle Old Sake
The tricks of social apps are changing, but the essence has not improved.
Not long ago, on February 11, the social APP "Gel", which was launched for only three weeks, successfully landed first in the free list of the App Store on the same day, and dominated the list for three days, becoming the first social app to surpass WeChat since 2019.
The breakthrough of the gel has sparked a series of discussions, yes, another "metacosm", where users use AI to pinch their faces to create their own avatars in the 3D world, and then gamify online social networking. After a short period of popularity, The Gel was quickly removed from the shelves because of problems such as doll wearing models, clothing infringement, and user privacy.
After the liveliness is a rapid cooling, on the Platforms such as Xiaohongshu, many users say that they are "bored", "uninstalled" and "useless", in fact, from the perspective of the product, the gel is not unique, in recent months, whether it is known as "China's meta-universe social first share" of the rainbow universe, or ByteDance's Queque Island, Baidu's Xilang, etc., the core gameplay is "pinch face dress + virtual social".
Gel APP
To put it bluntly, the so-called metaverse social is just the 3D of the original product, and it is still 18,000 miles away from the real metaverse experience of "Ready Player One".
In fact, not only the metaverse, the Chinese stranger social APP has not really achieved evolution since its birth, and has always been in the 1.0 era of "pan-social", and has not been able to enter the 2.0 era of "deep social", that is to say, whether the social APP is from "face control" to "voice control", or from LBS matching to interest matching, it only allows you to "know people more", rather than let you "understand people more deeply".
From Momo to Detective, to Soul, people just changed different versions of the "dating gun artifact", and did not make real friends on it, establish effective relationships, social APP in addition to helping people pass the time, did not really solve the problem of "loneliness".
There is no doubt that stranger socialization is a "real business", but Internet companies have made it a "pseudo-proposition".
The paradox of "real business" and "false propositions"
Stranger social apps can't strike a balance between business interests and social value for several reasons:
First, there is a natural contradiction in the logic of the product.
Stranger social APP is efficiency-oriented, mainstream products have instant messaging functions, are committed to how to help users connect more quickly, the rise of Momo is because people nearby can move from online to offline faster, soul is because voice has higher communication efficiency than text.
But socialization is naturally an inefficient thing, the establishment of relationships requires time precipitation, and the accumulation of trust requires multi-faceted interaction. In the acceleration of the connection between people, social products naturally dilute the emotional concentration of the relationship and reduce the spiritual depth of interaction.
Image source: Network
In the past, online dating was a three-year and five-year long-distance run, but today, online dating is just a game of three days and five days. From a psychological point of view, the cycle of freshness maintenance is four months, and the social APP can not go through this time at all, and even developed a large number of relationships such as "daily throwing lovers".
The fast pace of online and the slow life offline have formed a strong tear, and the social context built by social APP in the virtual world cannot make people in the real world have emotional and spiritual satisfaction, creating a strong sense of unreality.
Second, the deliberate edge-rubbing induction in operation.
Although Momo has never officially admitted that it is "about gun software", it is undeniable that it did induce this behavior of users, it gave China's suppressed sexual needs for many years an explosive outlet, and then the stranger social app, no matter how glamorous the words used on the surface, it is difficult to avoid playing such a side ball in the operation process.
Even Soul, which claims to be the soul social, has also launched the function of the square, and only good-looking people can play here, and the information stream recommended by the algorithm is mostly "sexy" beautiful female selfies and ambiguous copywriting.
Soul APP
From the perspective of business model, it is not difficult to understand that social APP is a typical network effect and scale effect of the product, it is neither like e-commerce has a substantial product, nor like the content community to provide quality content, or other tool APP to provide a specific service, it relies on frequent interaction between users. Stranger socialization is essentially a non-continuous and highly uncertain demand, if you want to gather enough users, the greatest common divisor you can find is Maslow's underlying needs, both rigid and tenacious.
Therefore, no matter how rich the interactive functions provided by social apps, it will go to a wider market, and eventually it will irreparably become a "cannon artifact", no matter what the original intention of Momo founder Tang Yan and Soul founder Zhang Lu is, for traffic, the product operation process will inevitably move towards deformation, turn a blind eye to some behaviors, and watch the platform step by step fall into a miasma.
Finally, it is difficult to get rid of the fate of making wedding dresses for others.
Chinese Internet users have no stickiness to speak of, especially in the social field, all stranger social APP founders will face a "soul torture": what to do if the user knows and adds WeChat? This is almost an unsolvable problem. In China, stranger socialization and acquaintance social networking are two distinct existences, and WeChat is unshaked by the high barriers in the acquaintance relationship chain.
This leads to the fact that the stranger social APP can never form a product closed loop, as a social platform, but can not precipitate the user relationship chain.
The operation is facing an extremely embarrassing situation: the efficiency of user dating matching is low, and the loss of users due to unmet needs is accelerated; the efficiency of user dating matching is high, and the loss of users due to transfer is accelerated.
How to solve this problem? Change an answer card.
Back to the original product starting point, all Internet products are essentially in the same time battlefield, as long as the user can spend time on the APP, so the social platform does not need you to really make friends on it, as long as you are willing to spend time on the line. Taking social networking as a table and entertainment, Momo's resurrection is precisely by relying on live broadcast business, and Soul's game functions are also increasing.
Social apps don't really want to help you find friends, they just want you to spend time and recharge. Entertainment consumption-based social networking is a typical "ineffective social", which naturally does not allow users to have a "sense of gain".
In addition to "about guns" and "games",
What else can strangers do socially?
The evolution of the mainstream stranger social APP product form represented by Momo is also the result of the interaction with the needs of the people of the times, which is the outbreak of depression in the emotional and sexual needs of the Chinese people in the past many years, but this is also a stage, and the demand for social interaction will inevitably move from the bottom of Maslow to the upper level, and today everyone's "loneliness" is no longer the lack of playmates, but rises to spiritual resonance and recognition.
Zhang Xiaolong said that the essence of social networking is to find the same kind.
In today's atomized society, mobility is increasing, the original social interpersonal relationship structure is disintegrated, and people are forced to divide into islands, eager to be connected by the same kind, and it is this bridge that strangers need to play socially.
In addition to making hormones and dopamine, social apps need to provide more incremental value to connect with their peers. In finding the same kind for users, stranger social tracks have also made different attempts.
For example, event socializing.
Around 2015, the activity social network has set off a burst of hilarity, taking the former head someet as an example, with the concept of "everyone is the organizer", users can initiate offline activities online, similar to Douban in the same city. This model first became popular abroad, and Meetup, founded in 2002, was one of the first active social networking sites, acquired by WeWork in 2017 for $200 million, and Meetup had more than 44 million users worldwide in 2019.
Meetup APP
The starting point of event social networking is actually to return to the real social networking offline, with gatherings as the main product, but this model has encountered dissatisfaction in China.
Offline multi-person activities have considerable uncertainty, especially in China, which is generally not good at social, and relies heavily on the planning and organization skills of the savers. Moreover, Chinese users are not too accustomed to paying for non-functional services, and event social has not been exploring a mature business model. In March 2020, someet announced the closure, many users expressed nostalgia, word of mouth but not money, so that the form of event social networking has never been able to really develop.
Another typical example is interest in socializing.
The essence of interest social networking is based on hobbies to layer users, so that they can find their own vertical circle, the forum is based on such a foundation and exists, from Baidu Tieba to Douban group, are classic products. But from content communities to social apps, although based on the same product logic, there are essential differences.
The content community relies on high-quality content to attract users, while the interest social APP relies on labeling to gather users, and the two are not the same in viscosity. Social APP is based on efficiency and immediacy as the core, and its information flow naturally cannot produce and precipitate high-quality content like the content community, and it is difficult to form a real interest atmosphere. And Chinese the general ambiguity and public of interest cultural life, it is also doomed that interest social interaction can only produce stickiness in small circles.
Image source: Ai Media Consulting
Jimu, which once rose with interest social networking, was acquired by Yingke Live in July 2019, and its interest circle still exists, but the home page of the product still focuses on LBS-based face social, sliding left and right to see the edge of the eye, the difference is that it is necessary to see people nearby to recharge members; in February 2021, QQ closed the interest tribe, and in December 2021, WeChat stopped operating the WeChat circle... Interest in socializing this road, whether it is an emerging player or a giant, eventually breaks the sand.
At least now, stranger social networking in China still belongs to the world of hormones and dopamine, which can not all be blamed on the social APP does not work hard, although everyone shouts "good-looking skin bag is the same, interesting soul in case of picking one", but the hand is constantly in the careful P selfie map, the appearance is constantly rolled in, the spirit is not moving.
But the world of beauty is ultimately illusory, spiritual loneliness will only be stronger, and perhaps when the desire for deep socialization exceeds a critical value, the 2.0 era of stranger socialization will slowly come.