Early 2014 a new dating app was launched in Paris. Happn is an app similar to Tinder, but it connects with the real world. It connects you to someone you crossed paths with. “Happn is an app for misconnection. You have seen someone who, for some reason, you couldn’t talk to. Thanks to Happn, if the other person has the app, you will be able to find them.” says founder Didier Rappaport, who previously co-founded Dailymotion.
Happn uses the swipe of Tinder. Users swipe to like someone. Besides like, there is also the possibility to send a ‘charm’, which means the other will receive a notification of the like. Today, they have 6.5 million users and they hope to have 10 million by the end of this year. (Telegraph, 2015) The growth is possible because Happn got investments and now is able to expand to Asia and grow in Europe, South America and the United States.
The ‘charms’, I mentioned earlier, are the only way Happn makes revenue. Charms can be bought in packs of 10-300. For 10 charms you pay $1.49, for 300 you pay $23.49. The charms are free for women, just men have to pay for use of it. As this is the way it happens in France, men pay. Tinder earlier came under fire for this way of pricing, when it asked different prices for people over-28 years old.
Besides this, Happn is planning to start advertisements in the app. These advertisements will be based on the user’s location, as Happn follows the location all the time. Another way of income was achieved with Fiat, which let users cross paths with “Mr Fiat and Mrs Fiat” and made them enter in a draw.
The fact Happn shows people based on the places you go, can be seen as intimidating as well. It just takes a few days before someone will say: “So, now i know you cross Kralingse Zoom every wednesday and friday.” Which will be a little creepy in the beginning. Besides this, how Happn differs from Tinder?
Do you think Happn will be a successful dating app for a longer period of time?
Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11906570/Happn-bringing-the-real-world-back-into-online-dating.html
http://www.yourtango.com/2014227941/heres-what-happened-when-i-tried-online-dating-app-happn
https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/happn/id489185828?mt=8
I think Happn will be more practical for the ones that actually want to meet up the person they see on the app. That is where Tinder lacks, because people can be 60 kilometres away and you will never actually see them. But ofcourse there are some privacy issues going on in Happn and for some kind of stalker it is a easy way to know where the victim is going, so I think this app will not be a big succes because of the privacy concerns.
This is an interesting app! I also came across a news article on Happn, which mentioned that users could now flirt using the songs from Spotify, which I find very unique! Like mentioned in the post, since a similar pricing strategy did not work for Tinder, I believe Happn should opt for a different /more fair pricing strategy. This app works over a 250m radius, so I think it will best work out in bigger and highly populated cities and less in small villages. Happn’s user experience is more serendipitous and imitates real life dating in some way, which makes it stand out when compared to Tinder. Hence I think Happn could go a long way as long as it alters a few of its features to enable a wider reach of users.