On March 17, it was reported that Soul was planning a new round of financing. Earlier, it was also reported that Soul was preparing to go public, but the official denied it.
The socialization of strangers can be regarded as an important branch of the social track. However, due to various reasons, the internet giants did not directly participate, which also provided opportunities for other players with ideas. Soul, who walks carefully on the road to cash, also faces many problems.
The profit model is difficult to break through.
Since March, 20021,the financing events on the social track have been quite concentrated.
On March 16, "Hope" received millions of dollars in angel round financing; On March 17, 2007, Soul reported that the IPO was in the negotiation stage and planned to raise 200 million US dollars, but it was immediately denied by the authorities. On March 19, Mood also received millions of dollars in angel round financing.
The great success of WeChat has made the market see the great role of social platforms as Internet traffic portals. Under the premise that the existing barriers for acquaintances to socialize are difficult to break, there are many strangers and jade in front, and the great potential of strangers to socialize will naturally be valued by capital.
On the whole, the current profit model of social software is too monotonous, and most platforms are "crossing the river by feeling strangers", and Soul is no exception.
At present, Soul's income mainly comes from value-added services, paid skin, gift income and advertising income, and its basic structure is similar to Momo's. Momo's latest financial report shows that its live video service revenue accounts for 63% of the total revenue, and its strong ability to absorb money makes it the most important source of income for Momo.
Other social platforms are also involved in live broadcast business to improve their liquidity, but Soul has never launched live broadcast business. Perhaps because of the concern about the platform turning to "hormonal socialization", the "group chat party" gameplay launched last year only retains the voice connection function, and this gameplay has also been offline recently, which may be the closest day for Soul to live broadcast.
In this regard, Soul told Investor.com that Soul is still in the initial stage of relatively restrained liquidation, and is mainly committed to finding more innovative liquidation methods. From the third quarter of 2020, Soul began to build a brand customer ecosystem, and has now achieved a closed loop.
Exploring a road different from Mo Mo is especially important for players on the social track of Soul and other strangers. When socialization is no longer tied to hormones, some users will not be affected by the satisfaction of social needs, which will bring more content and a more benign community atmosphere.
At present, the number of registered users of Soul has exceeded 65.438+0 billion, and its monthly activity has exceeded 30 million, an increase of 654.38+0.97% compared with two years ago. At present, soul still needs to explore a reliable profit model that conforms to the tonality of the platform, so as not to make "Soul Socialization" a castle in the air.
The shadow of fraud that cannot be prevented.
On March 25th, some media reported that a girl from Changzhou, Jiangsu met a netizen on Soul. After many contacts, the netizen told the girl that she could help her "get rich" and was cheated by 6 1 10,000 yuan.
Investor.com contacted Soul about this matter, and the other party said that such scammers would contact the victims on various social platforms by casting nets, and then transfer them to common social software such as WeChat to commit fraud.
A person from Soul's public relations department told Investor News. Com said that in order to avoid this kind of situation, when users chat with Soul, the platform will block the related links in the chat and users can't click on them. At the same time, Soul also conducted investigations through internal risk control, customer service centers, reporting centers and other channels, and found no information mentioned in news and user complaints.
At present, Soul is still looking for the deceived in the above news, hoping to provide help within its power, but the "killing pig board" has not stopped.
On April 8, according to the economic voice "Everyday 3 15" of the Central Radio and Television General Station, Ms. Chen, a consumer, also encountered "killing pig dishes" on Soul, and they began to develop a love relationship after adding WeChat to each other on Soul. The swindler said that he had cracked a data of gambling sites and could make money with Ms. Chen. However, when Ms. Chen recharged the last large sum of money on gambling sites, she found that she could not withdraw it, and "Friends" also blacked it out on WeChat.
In order to reduce the living space of criminals, Soul adopts the dual auditing mechanism of manual and machine. If sensitive words such as "transfer" appear in users' chat, the system will mark them to remind users to take precautions. Methods such as establishing content risk control system, controlling anti-fraud model, and finding vulnerable groups through portraits of victims have also been adopted to prevent users from being deceived.
Investor.com compared several online cases of "killing pig dishes" related to Soul, and found that most scams only use Soul to collect potential victims and upgrade the relationship with the victims. Instead of implementing scams on Soul, they will be implemented on other platforms. In this way, criminals can bypass the verification mechanism of the platform. However, how to completely eliminate such incidents against users is still an urgent problem for social platforms such as soul.
It is difficult to locate market segments.
According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, it is estimated that the number of young people living alone in China will rise to 92 million by 20021year. The demand for expanding communication is also enormous.
The epidemic has also provided a new opportunity for the development of social platforms. According to iResearch UserTracker data, during the epidemic period, the growth rate of effective usage time of social networks and long video stand-alone machines ushered in a new peak, in which the effective usage time of social networks stand-alone machines increased by 6% year-on-year.
The domestic acquaintance social market has long been occupied by QQ and WeChat. Under the background that these two applications have become national-level applications with deep accumulation, the space left for the incoming players is only the market segment of stranger socialization. In 20 18, Mo Mo bought Shen Shen for $750 million, which became the biggest M&A case in the social field of strangers, and also made Mo Mo a social overlord who made many younger generations on the track more or less jealous.
Compared with the "top stream" of the industry, the new platform needs a more detailed division of consumer groups and a more differentiated development path to seek development space. The emergence of a new generation of consumers also forces latecomers to re-examine the characteristics and needs of target users.
To this end, the younger generation on the track further subdivided the remaining cakes. I hope to define myself as "psychological socialization", mood as "emotional socialization", orange melon as "entertainment fan socialization", fun dada as "music creative short video socialization" and soul as "soul socialization".
The concern of the latecomers stems from the vastness of Mo Mo. The latest financial report shows that the number of active users of Momo in June 5438+February 2020 has reached 1. 1 billion. Although this figure has decreased from the previous period, it is considered by the outside world to have touched the growth bottleneck, but Momo's strong liquidity is difficult to shake its industry position in the short term.
The exploration of Momo and its acquisition is extremely unpretentious in social style: distinguishing likes and feelings by sliding the screen, and showing social value by showing photos. The simplicity of its play and the position of hormones in it have also become the main reasons for being criticized in the future.
Perhaps the reason why different brands have been displayed is not to tell users that "I am different from others", but "I am different from Mo Mo". Compared with these colorful banners, socializing itself is simple. However, it is undeniable that it seems that all families are trying their best to clarify the relationship with Mo Mo, but it is still difficult to change the fact that they are on the same track as Mo Mo.
The track is bustling, and whether the positioning of "soul socialization" has enough development prospects requires not only a slogan, but also a solid profit model to support it. From this perspective, Soul is still in the exploratory stage.
This article is from Investor.com.