"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" (Shanghai, reporter Zhang Yangyang) news, strangers who have been silent for a long time have not seen new stories, but recently Momo has attracted public attention because users have been "deceived" in the blind date live broadcast.
Not long ago, some netizens broke the news that when they went on a blind date on the Momo platform, they were cheated of nearly 3,000 yuan within an hour because of the red bride inducing the brushing of gifts. On the black cat platform, complaints about Momo's blind date inducing gift consumption were deceived into brushing gifts, and the highest amount reached 28,000 yuan.
Rooted in the underlying needs of people's emotions and friends, relying on the rapid development of mobile Internet and LBS (location-based services) technology in the past decade, today's stranger social track has basically formed a solid pattern. Overseas representative products such as Tinder, Bumble, domestic such as Momo, Tantan, Soul and other users are in the forefront.
The tandem of business indicators such as user demand, market environment, growth space, and operating profit seems to make stranger social products form a perfect logical self-consistency. But on the other hand, in the context of Chinese society, if you go back to the underlying logic of emotions and dating, there are not many people who are really willing to develop long-term stable relationships on the social platform of strangers.
But more deadly than the paradox of emotional dating, it is also the fraud and pig killing incident caused by the social interaction of strangers. While these scams are causing losses to the users involved, they are also eating back at the platform itself.
There are many "routines" for online blind dates
On March 6, a news story about being cheated on a Momo blind date sparked a heated discussion. The party said that he paid 2900 yuan in the live broadcast room of the elderly within one hour, and then he was blocked by the elderly and the female guests.
Afterwards, Momo responded that the live dating room is only a platform for providing social ice-breaking between users, and the anchor's personal commitment to successfully make friends and induce gifts is a violation, and the platform will resolutely crack down on and punish it. At present, the platform has permanently banned the relevant anchors.
The reporter of "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" logged on to the Momo App and found that similar blind dates and friends live broadcast rooms are not in the minority. The host in some live broadcast rooms said that "our live broadcast room is a sincere dating platform, just like the online version of "Do Not Disturb".
Through Momo news, the reporter entered a live broadcast room called "Old Shell Dating Recruitment Host", which has 1 host, 8 female guests, and a male guest seat, which is also the setting of most blind date live broadcast rooms. The host will continue to cue each new male user, asking over and over again "is there a single little brother looking for a partner, you can click the middle application, take you to know our little sister."
The blind date play between each live broadcast room is slightly different, but the same is that if the male user in each live broadcast room wants to apply for a male guest blind date, the first step is to pay 20 yuan of room fee and hosting fee. Judging from the situation of several live broadcast rooms entered by reporters, many male users stopped here.
If the male guest who accepts the paid dating, next, the host will use various words to persuade the male guest to brush gifts with the favorite female guest on the grounds of further expanding the relationship, in order to unlock different ways of playing, so that the female guest can open the wheat is a gift, the video is one, and the exchange of contact information is another. Gift prices range from 9 Momo coins to 3888 Momo coins, equivalent to RMB, 7 Momo coins = 1 yuan. In the live broadcast room, every blind date is basically marked with a price.
According to the reporter's experience in the live broadcast room of the "Old Shell Dating Recruitment Host", a male guest brushed several rounds of gifts after repeated persuasion by the host. When the male and female guests can enter the final romantic cottage (1v1 communication) link, the host said that the male guests should brush another 520 Momo coin color red confession gift to be successful.
But the male guest refused the last step of brushing gift persuasion, the host still did not give up, repeating over and over again "Little brother, you just need to brush another color red confession (520 Momo) gift, you can enter the romantic cottage with Miss 1 to get acquainted", "Little brother, you are almost the last step to succeed, our little sister has been communicating with you for so long." The male guest refused, the host was reluctant to give up, and the two sides went back and forth.
For this kind of live broadcast play, in the communication with the platform's Momo users, some users told reporters that the host actually plays the role of trust, stimulating consumption, and female guests are in the same group, "this is fraud, forced consumption."
The reporter noted that in the public screen area of these blind date live broadcasts, Momo officials will issue a risk tip: the room only provides users with ice-breaking dating and game platforms, which belongs to the public space of Momo users, and the commitment to make friends in the room is a personal behavior. Users are advised not to participate in any unofficial bonus activities offered in the room through games/events/virtual gifts, etc., and to be fooled.
Social platforms can't fully prove their "innocence"
The concept of stranger social networking, which dates back to the dating site Match.com in 1995, was an online personal database that could obtain information about the strange opposite sex at a very low cost. Since then, stranger social networking has gradually moved from offline to online, and in more than two decades, countless platforms have fallen and risen.
When it went public in 2014, Momo's registered users at that time had reached 180.3 million, a year-on-year growth rate of 160.8%. Nowadays, it is basically impossible for any Internet platform to achieve this kind of user growth rate.
In particular, the rise of LBS technology has made the rapid development of stranger social software. This is also where Momo has always been positioned, "to help users establish and expand a dating network based on location and interests", just as Momo founder Tang Yan once described Momo: "When you travel and live alone in a hotel room, you can find a young girl in the same situation next door through LBS." ”
But Tang Yan also said, "Sharing geographical location is not a demand at all, and there must be some kind of primitive impulse behind it." Tang Yan still said implicitly. From the most basic market supply and demand theory, stranger socialization essentially captures people's emotions and dating needs.
This can be seen from Momo's "dots", "dynamics", "nearby" and other functions - these functions can quickly achieve one-on-one chat contact with users, and stranger weak relationships are established.
In terms of business model, stranger social products have a variety of monetization methods in multiple links in the social process, and the mature models that have been verified include live broadcast scenario social, paid membership system, virtual gifts, etc.
The gifts mentioned above are attributed to Momo's value-added business, and these virtual gifts will eventually be converted into revenue, which will be shared by the live broadcasting platform, the anchor and the MCN/trade union (if there is an intermediary operation).
An industry insider familiar with the operation of Momo live broadcast told the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" reporter that Momo signed a contract with a trade union, generally divided according to the ratio of 6:4 (such as signing a contract with the head union is 4:6), and the 40% here is then divided by the union and the anchor according to the 7:3 ratio. If the big anchor signs directly with Momo alone, the proportion of funds at this time is: the anchor's annual salary + commission (Momo draws 60%)
In essence, there is a community of interests between the platform, the anchor, and the MCN/trade union.
The value-added business, which consists of virtual gifts and membership subscriptions, is the second largest source of revenue for Momo Group in addition to the live broadcast business. In Q3 2021, the revenue of value-added services reached 1.5333 billion yuan, accounting for 40.8% of the total revenue. In previous financial reports, Momo also pointed out many times that the growth of value-added service revenue was mainly driven by the growth of the virtual gift business in the App.
The dilemma of strangers socially struggling to "mature"
The tandem of business indicators such as user demand, market environment, growth space, and operating profits makes it seem that stranger social products can form a perfect logical self-consistency.
But as mentioned earlier, the underlying logic of stranger socialization is emotional needs, which also means that social psychology is its underlying construction. But will anyone go to platforms like Tinder and Momo looking for a long-term, stable relationship, or even an intimate relationship?
From the interview with the reporter of the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily", the answer obtained is no. Some interviewees even said bluntly, "At most, when you are bored, you can go up and see, and you can talk to strangers briefly, but you will not really want to find a partner on it, that is certainly not reliable", "If you go social with the idea of serious love, it must be a wrong choice, because the probability of 1% is too low." So much so that some users will write a sentence in their personal introduction: "I'm sorry to know you this way."
Another point to point out is that when users become familiar with the network from strangers, they will be more inclined to turn to WeChat acquaintance social networking, which means that there are very few people who want to form a stable social relationship and are willing to use Momo for a long time. At this time, Momo is somewhat like making wedding clothes for others. **
But more deadly than the paradox of emotional dating, it is also the fraud and pig killing incident caused by the social interaction of strangers.
Common scam tactics include, but are not limited to, scammers rely on Momo and other platforms to know users, carry out chats on the grounds of dating, further recommend investment and financial management, sell insurance, add WeChat to send red envelopes, wine trays, rice trays, etc. The official microblog of the Supreme People's Procuratorate also recently disclosed a case in which the suspect falsely claimed to be able to refund the money that Momo users swiped gifts in the live broadcast room through internal channels, thereby defrauding 9 Momo users of more than 25,000 yuan.
While these scams are causing the users involved to suffer losses, they are also eating back at the platform itself. Searching for Momo on the black cat complaint platform, you can see that there are as many as 11,160 complaints about Momo, many of which are on the grounds of blind dates, red brides luring consumer gifts and other issues.
In response to these blind date "frauds", Lawyer Meng Bo, executive director of the Digital Economy Legal Affairs Department of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, reminded that the Internet is not an extralegal place, "cloud blind date" should be done according to law, standardizing, restricting, governing and purifying the market environment of marriage matchmaking requires the joint efforts of multiple parties. Network platforms shall lawfully perform network information security oversight and management duties, and strictly implement subject responsibilities. Network users should improve their risk awareness, enhance their ability to identify, do not blindly believe all kinds of rhetoric, and beware of being deceived.