More video and fewer meetings, the equation was complicated for specialized apps. They had to imagine new features to continue to seduce their users.
“If I had been told three years ago that video would become a must-have for dating apps, I wouldn’t have believed it.” This confidence of Heloise des Monstiers, director of Meetic France, says a lot about the turn taken, in a short time, by the professionals of the dating sites. These had to adapt quickly to the constraints experienced by their users, between confinements and curfews, deprived of bars, restaurants and other festive places, essential to bonding knowledge and finding a soul mate. Now, all of them offer a video tool that allows you to chat remotely without disclosing a personal phone number (unlike other platforms like WhatsApp).
Video to secure the first exchanges
“At the beginning, it looked more like a minimum subsistence level than a transcendent innovation”, concedes Clémentine Lalande, co-founder and general manager of Once. But after several months of experimentation, the results are more than positive: users have taken over this new service. “The time spent talking has increased significantly. On average, the video sessions last 37 minutes,” notes Héloïse des Monstiers. A real paradigm shift.
The video allows in particular to defuse the pitfalls of the first interview. “The 25-40 year olds no longer want to meet just anyone. And the video allows us to sort it out,” explains Clémentine Lalande. “Some people told us: ‘It’s great, thanks to this tool, we cooked, watched a series or listened to music together.” The video allowed them to immerse themselves in each other’s privacy. divorced parents, it’s also a simpler way to introduce their children to a new person “, adds Héloïse des Monstiers.
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Provoke real encounters
Convinced that these new uses will become established over time, the apps are refining this new service. “We are aiming for maximum security. To trigger the video, you must have exchanged at least four times. We have also set up an alert and moderation service,” explains Héloïse des Monstiers. The Once teams, for their part, are thinking about staging making it possible to reproduce a little more natural situations on video, such as an evening gathering several people around a sofa. “Our goal is to recreate context, an element that matters a lot when starting a relationship,” says Clémentine Lalande.
At the same time, professionals are betting on artificial intelligence, which is supposed to improve the contact between two user profiles, a necessary step before any meeting. “Our vocation is not to block our customers in the digital world. Our only mission is to provoke real encounters in real life”, recalls Héloïse des Monstiers. Even if for the moment, these take place between two epidemic waves …
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