1. Analyze the capacity and value of the love service market

2. Analyze the positioning and functions of 8 foreign love apps

The types of competitive products analyzed in this report are based on the United States Mainly mobile apps in the region, excluding other competing products such as mini programs, WeChat official accounts, online websites and offline dating services.

The global dating service market is currently divided into three categories of products:

Matchmaking

Online Dating Looking for chat/love partners

Casual Dating Looking for a partner for sex

According to Statistia statistics, the global love service market was worth US$3.172 billion in 2018, of which matching partner service products accounted for 66%, making it the most important type of love. Service products, ranking second is the service of finding chat partners, accounting for 18%. Statistia predicts that the value of the entire global dating service market will increase by 4.4% within five years, with services for finding chat partners having the highest growth rate, reaching 26% (matching services 23%).

According to Statistia statistics, China’s love service market was worth approximately US$691 million (equivalent to approximately 4.79 billion yuan) in 2018, accounting for 22% of the global market (China’s population accounts for approximately 18% of the world’s population), and it is predicted that The Chinese market will have a growth rate of 7.2% in five years, which is twice the growth rate of the US and European markets.

What is obviously different from the global US and European markets is that the Chinese market has a very high proportion of "matching services" (78 in China, 57 in the United States, and 70 in Europe), and the growth rate of this item in the next five years It is also far more than other regions (China 40, the United States 15, Europe 17).

What people in the love service industry are most concerned about is how much money users are willing to spend for this service every year? This includes free users who support the user base and high-end users who pay fees. Overall, users in the United States and Europe spend the most on matching services, with “services looking for sexual relationships” costing 70% more than “services looking for people to chat”. Chinese users also spend the most on matching services, but in “services looking for sexual relationships” There is no difference in the cost of "service" and "service of finding people to chat with".

According to statistics from statistia in the figure below, among the most profitable "matching services", American users spend an average of US$77 per year, European users spend US$43, and Chinese users spend US$9 (=62 yuan). Here we need to consider the factor of per capita income. The per capita income of the United States is 11 times that of China, and the annual expenditure of American users is 8.5 times that of China.

The first question that love social products need to answer is - who urgently needs to fall in love? Several types of users can be distinguished from different stages of life. People in different stages of life also pay different attention to love:

Those who have just entered college (18-22 years old): They have just entered college without the pressure of studying for the college entrance examination, and have started the best years of their lives. The time in college without too much pressure from work and study is also worth talking about. The golden time of love. At this time, love pays more attention to feelings and the process of love, and the burden on each other is lighter.

Those who have just started working (22-26 years old): Love on campus often faces the fate of consummation or breakup before and after graduation. These single men and women who have just started working also need to start a new life in a new stage of life. Love relationships at this time are more mature and cautious than campus love, and they will think about whether they can achieve success together.

Thirty years (27-30): Single men and women approaching their thirties will gradually feel the pressure from their families to get married, and their former friends and college classmates who have achieved positive results will also give them recognition. The pressure of love, these people also hope to meet a suitable relationship as soon as possible. Love during this period pays more attention to the compatibility of each other's families and careers, and the results of love.

The second question that needs to be answered by love social products is, why are these people who are eager to fall in love still single? Do they have any difficulties in finding their significant other? The following are several user pain points learned through user interviews. The difficulty may be the superposition of the following pain points:

- No time for love: busy with career, studies, self-improvement, no time to find a man / Female vote

- Average appearance: No one actively pursues her in real life

- Lack of methods to seduce people: I have never been in love, I don’t know how to seduce people, and I don’t know how to get along with them. Chatting with the opposite sex

- There are too few opportunities to meet the opposite sex: there are no opportunities to meet suitable boys/girls in real life, and there are no suitable people among relatives and friends, and they are affected by some negative information. Don’t worry about dating apps for strangers

- The people around you don’t meet expectations: you have good conditions, there are suitors but they don’t meet the requirements

In fact, not all single people are eager to fall in love Yes, there are also many people who don’t want to fall in love for the time being. The reasons may be as follows:

- They are not yet old enough to be urged to get married, and there is no family pressure to fall in love, so they feel that they can still be single and happy. A few years

- There are other ways to release the inner emotions for male idols and female idols. For example, chasing stars can allow boys and girls to pin their emotions for male idols on their idols, and temporarily No thoughts of falling in love.

- Still not over the last relationship

According to the seriousness and the size of the people involved, the report mainly analyzes foreign apps

Chat services are not The purpose is to find a serious love relationship, but to relieve inner loneliness at a low cost, complain about what is on your mind, express your attitude to gain recognition, or make new friends nearby.

- Main functions: express your attitude through text and find people who think similar to you. The text content is the topic and triggers dialogue and discussion between you;

- Advantages: text interface design It’s super nice, and the half-filled text content can arouse topics; users will get some unexpected answers, which adds to the fun; sometimes they can also receive long-term comfort from strangers, which makes them feel warm.

- Disadvantages: It is okay as a chat software to make ordinary friends, but it is relatively inefficient when used to find a romantic partner

- Main function: Get to know people nearby by swiping left and right (Same-sex friend), the first screen is a photo plus basic information, but when you scroll down, you can see text related to personal interests and attitudes, mixed with photos, to create a long chart-style information flow. People of the same sex can freely start topics.

- Advantages: 24-hour reply mechanism pushes users to reply as soon as possible, increasing the level of communication; the information flow design of long pictures (text and photos) is beautiful

- Features: Recommend nearby places based on location Users; match love partners by swiping left and right, including same-sex love; users need to upgrade their Tinder Plus account to see people who like them; the paid function (superlike) can highly recommend the user to the users he likes

- Advantages: The interface design is simple and easy to use; a large number of users have been accumulated;

- Disadvantages: New free users have no way to see matching people, cannot determine whether it is valid, and cannot decide whether No payment is required

- Functional features:

Good-looking dating: Choose the person you like through a cover photo and some basic information (the mechanism of swiping left and right is similar to Tinder)

Search nearby: you can search for people nearby

Matching friends: you can receive messages about people you like, but you need to pay to see the information about the people you like

- Features: First see the vertical full-screen photo, which looks more designed. The heart number next to it is the paid function "superlike"; seeing more information through the pull-down is in line with user habits, and the user threshold is low; ? Pictures and text appear interactively, allowing you to see more photos and text related to three views and interests, and understand the person in many aspects; associate it with Spotify to increase the user's music taste information

- Advantages: Girls' privileges , that is, only girls can open conversations; the limited-time conversation function gives users a sense of urgency and increases the probability of users replying; associate Instagram to enrich users’ personal information and improve photo quality;

- Disadvantages: Girls’ privileged functions are easily exploited Imitation is not a way to establish long-term advantage barriers

- Promotion level: currently strongly promoted in the App store, keyword search optimization

- Functional features:

Girls’ privileges: When girls see the boy they like, they can click “Like” to establish a conversation, while boys can only click “Like” to express their admiration. At the same time, girls can see all the "people who like me" and select the boy they like, giving him the power to contact you. Through this asymmetric screening mechanism, the harassment faced by girls is reduced and the efficiency and experience of making friends are improved.

Not only look at the face: Incorporate more ice-breakers that can see the person's connotations beyond appearance, such as personalized covers, restore the real process of finding a partner, and allow users to show more of their uniqueness. The shining point of appearance.

Limited Likes: In the "Love Circle", boys can only send up to 50 likes per day. I hope boys will be more careful when choosing the girl they like.

Opportunity to look back: If you miss someone you like by swiping, you can look back at any time and send your feelings again. However, to make your choice more conscientious, once you click "Like", it cannot be withdrawn.

- Main functions:

You need to like each other to start a conversation;

coffee beans as virtual currency (can be recharged);

Every day A limited number of free bagel recommendations (6 people), including people who like you and people you may like but haven't seen you yet. You can talk directly to people who like you, and you can spend coffee beans to go to people who haven't seen you yet. Get to know them;

People you missed will be put on the discover page, and people who haven't seen enough of suggested can see more on the discover page

- Advantages:

Interesting and attractive name;

Photo lab, interesting gameplay, AB test based on big data, helps you improve photo quality (similar to Amazon);

Gamified dating process Add fun to some users;

The use of coffee beans not only provides a payment model, but can also be used to motivate users' active behavior;

- Disadvantages: the rules may be too complex; the text part The fonts are too small and hard to read; the layout has no sense of design

- Main functions: You can only talk to each other if you like each other, you can’t slide left and right, you can choose to like or dislike by clicking the button; the same long picture message as bumble Stream; only paid users can see all nearby people who like him, free users can only find "people who like him" among nearby people in the discover stream

- Advantage: Users can see nearby people People who like him or her within Freshness gives people a great impression, and the long photo information flow has a sense of design; users can "dislike" with one click, but the "like" buttons are distributed among different photos. When sending a like, a comment will be sent for a certain photo, thus Increases the topicality of the first conversation (the other person will know what you like about them).

- Disadvantages: The current user quality is low

- Main functions:

Centralized feed flow in the form of small avatar names in the same city;

Games: You can get to know each other by playing games

Quick: Online video matching, very exciting

Anyone can start a conversation

Advertising revenue, you can pay Delete ads;

Upgraded functions: delete ads, unlock all photos, private browsing, etc.

- Advantages: Anyone can start a conversation, which lowers the threshold for mutual dialogue, so the information is very sufficient , which is an advantage for people who want to find a hookup quickly.

- Disadvantages: The photo quality is low and gives a bad impression; too much information at once leads to a degraded user experience

- Main functions:

New faces: Give newcomers enough exposure opportunities

People nearby: The small green dot indicates online. Users can selectively communicate with "living people" and get more feedback

Upgraded functions: View more, advanced filtering, unlimited collections, no ads, etc.

- Advantages: The emoticons have special meanings for the Gay circle, which is very practical for people in the circle; the design style is dark and Highlight the B side of social networking

- Disadvantages: There is no review of the fake mechanism, leading to an increase in false information

Novel gameplay, good-looking interface design, and simple and easy-to-operate interaction design can make the App popular in the short term Forming advantages requires continuous exploration and iteration. However, due to the low technical threshold of social apps, any new gameplay and functions will be quickly copied by competing products, and there are not many advantages that can form long-term barriers. Here are a few An important barrier:

"Large user base"?: Promotion needs to be increased in the early stage. Once the user base is large, the rate of successful matching will be greatly increased, and the big data recommendation algorithm will be useful.

"High user quality": Products require a good user review mechanism and community operations to maintain purification for a long time. There is a certain contradiction with the barrier of a large user base. This is also where decisions need to be made in product positioning. . High user quality can form a virtuous cycle, because if users see other people releasing their personal information and the photos are beautiful, they will feel a sense of security in the environment and will be willing to release their own information. Go choose your own beautiful pictures (group effect).

"AI recommendation accuracy": Big data-based algorithms have the potential to become a technical barrier, but the recommendation algorithm only works when there is a large enough user base. If there are not enough users, all will be recommended. It’s not enough for users to browse, and there is no need for intelligent algorithms to help them make choices.

"AI Seamless Guidance": Using intelligent algorithms to provide effective ice-breaking methods for people who have already established connections, thereby seamlessly guiding them to have more conversations, may be the direction that current love social products need to go . There are many ways to break ice, and the effects vary from person to person. This requires continuous experimentation, data collection, and algorithm training to optimize the icebreaking process, thereby increasing the activity of the conversation between the two.

Reference materials:

[1] Source of market statistics: Statista Digital Market Outlook 2018