Soul, a social APP you may not have heard of, does not communicate in time, but "travels through a long and distant time and collides with another soul."

The above sentence is taken from Soul's product copy.

In short, people who socialize on Soul absolutely "don't look at their faces".

The theory of "soul" may not be credible, but most people fantasize about having a soul mate. The emotional connection between them is based on the same interests, three views and aesthetics.

From product tonality, UI design to product function, Soul is striving to build a community that values soul and interest and advocates "not looking at face".

This "face-blind" social platform even sets the English word "Soulmate" as a hidden element, and every user who has registered Soul will participate in a link with game attributes: with the increase of one-on-one chat time of matching users, eight letters will be lit one by one, and finally the Soulmate icon will be lit to open their same homepage.

When WeChat blocked the acquaintance relationship chain with a user base of nearly10.40 billion, when the bullet news challenged it with a gesture that proved to be short-lived, when Momo monopolized the industry position with a purchase price of nearly 700 million US dollars ... The giant is the only one, and the emerging new attempt is just a small experiment.

There has been no exciting story in the social field of strangers for a long time.

Soul, who advocates soul socialization, has become a dark horse, a minority who ran out of the social track of strangers, but has already had a large number of loyal fans. Even, on the night when the platform was down due to the surge of users, anxious users sent it to Weibo for hot search.

APP Soul takes the meaning of "soul" and focuses on the anonymous community of "not looking at the face" and accurate personality matching. Everyone here is a soul, you can only choose the avatar provided by the system; Whether posting or replying, the name is randomly generated by the system. Soul carefully bypassed the circle of acquaintances and LBS services, so that China users at home and abroad can have a spiritual territory here.

In Soul, users can connect with others through planets and squares. In the planet, everyone's nickname will scroll in a blue planet, and users can choose their own chat objects. In order to be innovative, users can also try the voice matching function of the system.

If you are just a "Buddhist" user, you can also look at the status of other people in the square and get in touch with interested people.

On the soul platform, the communication threshold is very low, so you can talk to each other directly. You don't need to add friends like WeChat QQ, and you don't need to slide right like exploring.

The picture on the left shows the planet and the "best matching" user; The picture on the right shows two matching methods (from the screenshot of Soul).

Social products in the primary market often face two tests: how to increase the retention and use time of users. It is understood that Soul is choosing to make efforts from two aspects: community operation and interaction.

In community operation, the square of the soul is like a huge circle of anonymous friends, with massive information flow; Every day, the official will top some topics and bring discussion; The official daily push of copywriting also touches users' psychology with hot topics nowadays, causing users to scream. In terms of interaction, Soul has been iterating over new ways of playing. From shooting filter effects, state interaction, creating audio interaction to launching voice matching function, the private chat card updated in the past month can help users find the same topic more easily.

If "anonymity" only allows users to find a safe tree hole in an era of worrying privacy, Soul's personality matching mechanism is the reason for its sudden emergence.

At present, WeChat firmly encircles the acquaintance relationship chain; Explore how to make up for the distance pain points of strangers' socialization through location positioning; Momo made a lot of money by socializing and broadcasting hot wheels live.

Compared with the previous experience of "planting trees", a new generation of social products such as Soul are keenly capturing the psychological needs of post-95 s and even post-00 s-they need to be recognized and eager to remain independent. I want to indulge in my spiritual world, and I am eager to get in touch with the outside world.

On this basis, the matching mechanism based on algorithm and big data came into being, which can improve the matching efficiency of strangers to a certain extent and make it easier for users to find chat objects with the same topic.

On the soul, "interesting soul" is the most frequently mentioned label. Users will be surprised to find that when logging in for the first time, they must complete a psychological test first. According to the results of psychological tests, users will be divided into different planets, and the results will also be used to measure the matching degree between users.

The left picture shows the distribution planet of psychological test; The picture on the right shows the matching degree between the two sides of the chat (from the screenshot of Soul).

According to the blue hole business report, after Soul, products with planetary concept emerge one after another. In the past, social products were distributed through operations and relationship chains, and algorithms gave big data personality, which was regarded as a new distribution mechanism.

Because they all seek matching objects through the results of psychological tests, social apps have genes similar to Soul. According to the official introduction, the psychological test questions of the platform were created by a team of social psychologists, supplemented by 36 screening conditions, hoping to find the "best match" for users. However, the user base of Soul has been growing, but it has not made users "feel at home" as before, but has moved to a suspended state.

The reason is that Soul and Rujiu have taken two different operation paths. Soul values the operation of online community, creates a spiritual garden for users by improving the content quality of the community, and makes it easier for users to find like-minded friends in the community; However, as before, online relationships are encouraged to shift to offline, so offline activities such as lifestyle, falling in love together and chatting together are launched.

But those young people who escape from real life will choose to continue to seek spiritual sustenance on the Internet, or will they return to offline relationships? The status quo of these two products may have revealed the choice of young people.

Soul is a small and beautiful avant-garde both in timbre and collocation mechanism, but this collocation mechanism only stays in the most basic stage at present.

Just like some Souler's spit, "they all say it's a perfect match, but it's not at all." The one with the low matching value is very happy. " More users find people with the same aesthetic and taste through the content of the community. Algorithm matching is just a "flower shelf" at present. Whether soulmate can be found depends on the user's own vision of finding objects.

"It is not reliable to match only by the test results. People are hard to define. What really attracts people is this big circle of friends. "

The user "Hong Fei stepping on the snow mud" told the titanium media: "How can people be defined and classified by these questions? What determines a person is experience and level. " The user "went to the destination with roses" recalled the discussion with friends to the titanium media: "If you want to match more accurately, it may be better to follow the user's browsing habits and publish keywords. I don't believe in the matching of systems now, and I will only take the initiative to attack people who are interested in me in the square. " By establishing contact with interested users in the square, she has made several friends and plans to meet offline.

In order to improve the efficiency of strangers' social interaction, Soul also added a small tag function. Users can add small tags to themselves, and the system will give priority to people with similar tags, which also shows that Soul has gone further in accurate matching.

The strict control of the platform content by the social mechanism of strangers who don't look at their faces makes Soul a clear stream in social software. However, this kind of anonymous society, because it excludes external factors such as "face value" and "identity", will put forward higher requirements on whether the community content and the content itself are interesting.

The "Square" module of the soul platform is equivalent to an open anonymous circle of friends, which is open to all users. Because the current WeChat circle of friends is no longer a private territory, many users are more willing to record their feelings, attitudes, travel photos, trivial matters and so on. Spiritually, it became a private place for their spiritual world.

This is not only a problem of Soul, but also a common problem of all strangers' social software.

"I think that on the Soul, most people are actually doing meaningless communication, and the process from unfamiliar to familiar always needs to introduce themselves first. If you always meet good communication objects, it will be ok. If they are all short-term exchanges, repeating them many times will make people very tired. " User "Hong Fei stepped in the snow mud" shared his experience of making friends with titanium media.

By communicating with some users who intend to leave Soul, titanium media found that "unable to find Soulmate and repeated embarrassing chats" constituted the main reason for users to leave.

Once you are lucky enough to find your soul mate, two people have established a close relationship. After Soul's mission is achieved, is the platform still attractive to them?

After the user lights the soulmate icon and opens the same space, someone will continue to stay on the platform to "show love" or communicate in depth, and operate the same homepage of both parties. There are also some people who choose to leave the platform with frequent bugs and turn back to the embrace of WeChat. After all, a real relationship can only be considered as a real connection if you return to the circle of acquaintances.

Intergenerational changes have spawned new social needs. A new generation that pursues style and high quality has grown up, which makes the players on the social track full of vitality. The story of soul socialization will continue, but there is no doubt that more new social things will be introduced for the second time.