The Chinese technology giant has revealed three brand brand brand brand new dating apps in the last couple of months.
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Tencent (OTC:TCEHY) guidelines China’s mobile texting market with WeChat, which acts 1.15 billion month-to-month active users (MAUs). Its ecosystem of over a million “mini programs” allows users to search, purchase meals, play games, hail trips, make re re re re re payments, and much more — all without ever making the software.
Meanwhile, Momo (NASDAQ:MOMO) may be the top online dating sites platform in Asia. Its namesake software started off as a social network software|networking that is social}, but gradually developed in to a platform for online dating sites and live videos.
Momo’s smaller application, Tantan, is actually a Chinese clone of Match Group’s Tinder. Momo’s core application had 114.1 million MAUs last quarter, and 13.4 million of them purchased digital gift ideas or enrolled in premium online dating services on Momo and Tantan.
Image supply: Getty Graphics.
Those two businesses generally speaking are not considered rivals, but Tencent recently established three torpedoes at Momo: an anonymous movie dating app called Maohu (“Catcall”), a Tinder-like application called Qingliao (“Light Chat”), and a reboot of their Pengyou (“Friends”) app as a myspace and facebook having an dating feature that is opt-in.
What’s Tencent up to?
WeChat’s MAUs expanded 6% yearly final quarter, but it is just a matter of minutes before this ubiquitous “super application” runs away from space to develop in Asia. Meanwhile, Gen Z-oriented competitors like ByteDance’s TikTok and Bilibili are attracting more youthful users, while WeChat seems shackled to its reputation being an software for older users.
A study that is recent research firm Jiguang unearthed that simply 15% of Chinese users created posted day-to-day updates on WeChat, compared to 57% of users created. Which is much like the generation gap between Twitter and Instagram in Western markets, where parents saturated the former and sent teens scurrying toward the latter. WeChat is also commonly considered a “work application,” since supervisors make use of it to keep monitoring of their staff.
To put it simply, Tencent requires new techniques to achieve younger users, and Momo’s streak of double-digit income development shows that internet dating is nevertheless a fertile market.
Meet Maohu, Qingliao, and Pengyou
Maohu, which established on the summer time, lets users talk anonymously with strangers while donning electronic masks. Male users can wear the mask for at the most 5 minutes, while feminine users can indefinitely wear a mask. As soon as an individual eliminates his / her mask, beauty filters are used immediately into the video that is live.
Qingliao, that has been introduced in belated November, resembles Momo’s Tantan and Match’s Tinder, but does not follow the swiping mechanic of the two apps. Rather, it just provides two alternatives in the right part of every profile — someone to “like” it, and another to dismiss it.
Its primary page shows a carousel of prospective matches, and users can scroll down seriously to see information that is additional a individual’s career, academic history, hobbies, location, and social media postings. The matches are refreshed every 18 hours. The software is being tested for an basis that is invite-only.
Image supply: Getty Pictures.
Pengyou, that has been relaunched in mid-December, can be an updated form of an adult networking that is social that was discontinued. The latest application resembles Instagram having its principal feed of solitary pictures, nonetheless it splits its feed into three groups — buddies, peers, and individuals whom reside in the city that is same.
Users want to confirm their identities with individual qualifications, and so they can opt-in for dating matches. This approach that is subtle comparable to Twitter’s opt-in strategy with Twitter christian cupid dating website Dating. Like Qingliao, Pengyou remains being tested on an basis that is invite-only.
Should Momo be concerned?
Tencent obviously wants to leverage the potency of its WeChat and QQ ecosystems to get fresh footholds when you look at the online market that is dating. This might be bad news for Momo, which struggled with decelerating development in MAUs and revenue throughout the previous 12 months: