Great article in The Verge, “What happened to ‘people discovery’ apps?“ Call it people discovery, social discovery, finding existing or making new friends nearby, knowing who’s around you and what they are into and up to is a huge business opportunity still in its infancy.
Mobile access to dating sites was greatly anticipated, finally took off, and here we are. The upside is that many dating sites are looking at a considerable percentage of signups from mobile and monthly traffic continues to grow. We’re not going to see these numbers even out for quite some time.
Problems ahead though. For many sites, mobile sucks for monetization and customer acquisition costs are higher. Its great that your web users downloaded your app on their smartphone, but then what? Are they just digesting content via the third screen, or are you offering location-based services and up-sells? Until we have more industry-specific metrics about what people are doing on mobile, everyone is trying anything they can to drive mobile adoption rates and throwing out press releases.
Foursquare is focusing on connecting with people you already know, but how long until they add a dating component directly to the app that people actually know about and use?
Many dating sites are experimenting with location-based services and people discovery apps, and they need to keep up with the testing until they get it right. Grindr took off, but the straight version of it hasn’t really hit mainstream dater’s radar. Huge opportunity here. Check out sites like Sonar, more social than dating, 250,000 daily users, nice clean app. Its still a small number, in a few years social discovery will be commonplace. You’ll walk into a location, and immediately know who’s there, their stats, and what they’re up to. Is that necessarily a good thing? What are the implications of location-based matching? Everyone talks about how great it is, but does it really work? Show me the numbers.
Another new mobile app just hit my inbox. Gleeden is a cheater site created by women for women. Take that Ashley Madison. Boasting 1.5 million members, the site predicts the new mobile app will account for over 50% of the site’s activity by 2014. I still don’t like the idea of cheater sites, but its such a large and lucrative niche market, we need to be talking about it. Head out to your local divorcee hotspot and fire up the app, because you know the bored married women are out with their divorced friends. Don’t really need an app for that though. Nothing works better than “Can I buy you a drink?”
I have about 20 mobile dating apps on my iphone. Trying to use them more often, but usually they get installed, I use them for a week or two and then I’m back to accessing Match and OKCupid and even POF on my phone. Then again, I’m way out in the woods, location-based features don’t mean much out here.
If you know about new location-based people discovery mobile apps, leave a comment.
Literally as soon as I hit the Publish button, I received an email about http://www.mirror.co. Mirror enables users to produce a complete story of who they are as told by the people who know them best. Mirror users can invite their friends, family and co-workers to highlight their best traits and unique qualities. I like the idea of Proactive Online Reputation Management, as they call it. With a giant ad budget…
David,
You make a number of great points in your article. I will add a few thoughts:
To connect people in a meaningful way online, you need two things: Validation (I am _______.) and Relevance (I am looking for _______ now and you are too.) Or as I like to call them, the LinkedIn and the Craigslist. Traditional online dating sites lack one or the other in varying degrees, mostly the former. They possess relevance (I am on this site to find a date.), but lack validation (I am represented by an anonymous, self-constructed and oft times fake profile). Mirror solves both of these problems. Our profiles (we call them frames) are constructed using SMS verification, real names and, best of all, you have your friends highlighting and promoting your unique qualities. You have your entourage behind you online. Second, you list explicitly what you are looking for. Both are searchable. We’ve combined the LinkedIn with the Craigslist.
Like you, I am an avid consumer of mobile dating apps. I don’t think anyone has it right yet, but some combination of location-based services (ala Grindr and MeetMoi) and broadcasted wants (ala How About We) is appealing. Still, the industry suffers from such a glut of fake and low-quality profiles that until user quality is solved, functionality will be undermined in overall user experience. Do I care if there are 50 women in 500 yards if they are purchased profiles with no one behind them (or worse, a computer)? Things will progress and improve. Mirror is launching its mobile app in 6-8 weeks and we have a very cool feature which combines location-based matching with broadcast wants.
Lastly, mobile monetization is what keeps me up at night (well one of the fifty). I hate to think that Mirror’s mobile app could not stand alone as a viable business. Though we haven’t yet decided on a monetization strategy, my gut says to keep it free, eliminate the pay walls/freemium, and to make the entities who have capital pay for our users through local mobile advertising.
thanks,
Dan
I use about 20 ambient social discovery apps as well. My favorites in the dating space are OkCupid, Badoo, and Skout. Never tried PoF’s app, mainly because I refused to make an account when I saw that their account creation process displayed my password in plaintext o.O Match.com’s mobile app is also pretty nifty, and it’s rather incredible how much more fresh and modern the app’s interface is, compared with Match’s outdated desktop interface.
Outside the dating realm, Banjo is by far the best ambient social app I’ve used. It’s also the most creepy, as it aggregates all public checkins (including foursquare, instagram, fb, twitter, etc.) from any location you input, so you can see who is currently anywhere, anytime. Sonar is a close second. The Sonar+Foursquare combo is pretty awesome, as both work together rather seamlessly. Both Sonar and Banjo can alert you when your friends and the people you follow on Twitter are nearby.
After reading Daniel’s comment above, I’m excited to try out mirror.co.
Keep up the posts! These are among my favorite reading each week :)