Have you counted the amount of time you spend using your mobile phone every day?

Beans, born in 1996, gave her the answer: the average screen is used for eight hours a day. Based on her 8-9 hours of sleep a day, she spends about 15 hours awake, nearly half of which is spent facing the phone screen.

As a freelance worker who paints at home all day, the mobile phone is her window to the world. In the statistics of mobile phone use time, she spends more than 42 hours a week on social software. As Wechat has been dominated by more and more work conversations, some social products outside of traditional social platforms have shown the value of their existence.

The social password of young people.

Social interaction is an eternal need, which is not only necessary for survival, but also emotional. For example, to extricate yourself from boredom is one of the social purposes of beans. As the Internet began to dominate this era, social networking has been moved to the Internet, and has increasingly become the mainstream, social networking is also developing into an important track for Internet products.

There is no shortage of social products in the market, but good products that can hit users' pain points.

Social phobia, "social death". If you look closely at the places where young people gather on the Internet, you will find that such social expressions are becoming more and more common. Although most of the time this content is wrapped in the cloak of jokes or tricks, behind the laughter is the hidden social anxiety of young people: they are eager to communicate, but also afraid of embarrassment and disapproval.

In the past, it was believed that the anonymity of the Internet gave users the opportunity to escape from the real social circle and express themselves freely and fully. However, with the penetration of traditional social platforms into life, real social relationships have been translated into the network. Slowly, even speaking in moments and Qzone should be carefully considered, either grouping or sending out trifles that don't matter.

A few years ago, "tree hole" was very popular, which is the kind of place where you listen to your thoughts and secrets, but keep your mouth shut. The tree hole may be the backstage of an abandoned official account, or it may be someone who has never met before in reality. Later, some companies found that there was no place to put this desire to talk, and successively went online with some tree-hole-like platforms.

But is there a social product that not only meets the function of tree holes, but also creates a pressure-free space for users to communicate?

Douzi has done a lot of browsing and exploration among social software, and now chooses to stop on a social software called Soul.

Why is Soul the right product for young people?

Soul prospectus data show that in the user base, Soul's DAU has reached the order of 10 million, an increase of 94.4% over the same period last year. 73.9% of DAU is Generation Z, which has one of the highest user penetration rates of Generation Z in the same category in the industry.

With tens of thousands of social products aimed at young people, why is Soul so attractive to Generation Z users?

The core is that the product hits the pain point of their social needs. As mentioned earlier, young people are eager to communicate, but there are many concerns that suppress their communication, so a stress-free communication environment is particularly important. The core highlight of Soul is to ensure "stress-free expression". Behind it are two basic product logic of Soul: to help users find the right person, and to provide platforms and tools for effective communication.

Soul has many unique features. For example, it does not support users to use real photos as avatars, and users are free to set up virtual social avatars. To take a step further, you need to fill out a soul test questionnaire, then be assigned to 30 different planets, and fill out your own settings with the help of user-defined gravity signatures and recording sound business cards.

At the same time, through interactive functions such as "soul", "voice" and "facekini video", users can have a very direct and efficient one-to-one communication with others.

As a supplement to one-on-one communication, group chat parties are also an important social form on the Soul platform. The rooms for group chat parties have a variety of themes, ranging from hobbies such as singing and games (Soul werewolves) to lifestyle-based rooms such as learning, and even niche unique rooms, such as "simulated quarrel room", which are created by Souler on the platform.

All of these designs are designed to help relieve the pressure on users in terms of "being discovered" and "selected".

On the one hand, Soul takes the user's personality, interests and other spiritual traits as the main user recommendation criteria, does not support real-life avatars, weakens the appearance, is completely independent of the user's existing social relationships, and avoids the anxiety of revealing his identity due to the publication of information. On the other hand, Soul relationship distribution also pays more attention to fit and information quality, adhering to the principle of decentralization to fairly display everyone's posts, so that everyone can find resonance on the platform, and then guide users to truly express themselves.

In addition, Soul is also using gamification to make socializing easier and more fun. Today, when the boundary between games and social interaction is becoming more and more blurred, it is easier to express oneself, connect interactions, and constantly deepen and precipitate social relationships in a gaming environment.

From the data feedback of user stickiness and interaction rate, it is obvious that young users have a high degree of recognition of this kind of social interest.

According to the Soul prospectus, 56.4 per cent of users were active for more than 15 days a month in March 2021. Among the users who were active for more than 15 days in December 2020, 78.4% of the users still maintained the same level of activity after three months. At the same time, according to the data of March 2021, 89.1% of MAU will participate in deep interaction with others, such as posting, comment or private chat, with a high interaction rate.

As a social meta-universe, Soul has a future full of imagination.

On May 11th, Soul filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for IPO to be listed on the Nasdaq under the trading symbol SSR. This is an important milestone for Soul, and it also makes more people know about this platform that focuses on social interests and its vision of continuing to build a social meta-universe for young people.

On June 18, Soul updated its prospectus and plans to issue 13.2 million American depositary shares (ADS) in this IPO, with every 2 American depositary receipts representing 3 Class A common shares with an issue range of $13 to $15 per ADS.

Interestingly, the updated prospectus shows that Mihayou, the parent company of the original god, invested a total of $89 million (about 570 million yuan) to participate in Soul's private placement of IPO. As companies with the same vision of building a meta-universe, Mikhayou and Soul have some similarities in their development direction, and their main areas of gaming and social communication also have some room for cooperation. With the common blessing of Tencent and Mihayou, the future of the social meta-universe created by Soul is full of imagination.

Going back to Soul itself, the product actually has more potential to explode: one is that its main user group, Generation Z, has more room to tap, and the other is that Soul's "social meta-universe" concept is exploring new possibilities for social races.

Generation Z is the user group targeted by countless social products, and their market potential has long been recognized. According to the report of iResearch Consulting, the size of the mobile social market of Generation Z in 2020 is estimated to reach 64.8 billion yuan, an increase of 31.7% over the same period last year. The realization model for the Z era mainly includes value-added services and advertising, of which the revenue from value-added services reaches 28.8 billion yuan. The scale of advertising revenue reached 34 billion yuan.

In addition, thanks to the stronger social demand, stronger personality and self-expression will of Generation Z, as well as stronger purchasing power and willingness to pay for virtual products, the social market space spawned by Generation Z is expected to further expand. The social market share represented by Generation Z is expected to increase from 55.8% in 2019 to 62.2% in 2024, with a CAGR growth rate of 22.2% in the next four years, and the market space is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2022.

As the industry consensus says, "whoever catches the young will seize the future." Soul, a social platform, is fulfilling its ambitions in a way that is closer to young people.

Another interesting phenomenon is that 73.9% of DAU is generation Z Soul is building a social meta-universe for young people brick by brick.

The concept of meta-universe was first put forward by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his book Avalanche in 1992. The so-called meta-universe refers to the virtual world which is born in the real world and parallel to the real world, and has a strong sense of immersion and is always online, in which people can not only entertain, but also socialize, consume and so on.

Recently, in the science and technology circle represented by Silicon Valley, the concept of meta-universe has become a new hot spot of investment. Some people say that "the end of the Internet is a meta-universe."

At present, it can be considered that Soul has certain meta-cosmic characteristics, including virtual identity, strong sociability, consumption, game scene, immersive experience, open social experience and other basic elements.

For example, Soul users can design a new virtual identity for themselves, cutting themselves from the complex interpersonal relationships of the real world. But at the same time, Soul also opens up the boundary between the virtual world and the real world, where users can discuss, listen to music and learn through group chat parties, play games such as Soul werewolves, and even buy real goods for themselves or others through Giftmoji.

Yes, just like in reality, the social meta-universe created by Soul also makes consumption possible. Soul coins also carry and realize the closed-loop consumption of the social meta-universe.

In addition, Soul has developed a more creative way to consume. In the first quarter of 2021, Soul launched "Giftmoji", where users can place orders on Soul and give away real-life products to other users. The current brands include Yuanqi Forest, Zhong Xuegao, Daily Black Qiao, the Forbidden City and other new consumer brands that are more in line with the preferences of Generation Z consumers. At the same time, other new consumer goods brand owners who have not yet settled in have also shown great interest in Soul.

Giftmoji is not only part of the social meta-universe, but also can be seen as a separate social e-commerce business, opening up new possibilities for the realization of social products.

At present, on the whole, the commercialization of Soul is still in a relatively restrained state, but the relevant data show a very positive trend. The company's revenue in 2020 was 498 million yuan, an increase of 604.3% over the same period last year. Revenue in the first quarter of 2021 reached 238 million, a year-on-year increase of 260%. In just one year, the average number of monthly paying users of Soul increased from 268900 in 2019 to 929300 in 2020, and reached 1.54 million paying users in the first quarter of 2021.

From the point of view of the current time node, Soul's social meta-universe is still in its infancy, but in the future, as Soul products come online with more entertainment, more companionship, and more ways to break the boundaries between the virtual and real world, a more perfect social meta-universe will be presented to the user group, and Generation Z will undoubtedly bring more vitality and possibilities to this virtual universe.