Dating apps have become an enormous business around the world. It connects all kinds of people together who would like to find their soulmate. An example of a dating application is Tantan. The app had around 360 million users in 2020, whereas most of them are in China (Chen, 2020). At first, I thought it was like a Chinese version of Tinder. However, it is not only meant for people in China. You can download it yourself for free in the Google Play store or Apple store and make friends with people all around the world. Tantan has a freemium business model, where users can choose between monthly subscriptions that provide benefits that non-subscribers do not have. The benefits are for example being able to see who liked your profile or having unlimited likes.
As mentioned earlier, Tantan has implemented a freemium business model. It is essential to find the right balance between what they offer for free and not for free. When relatively many people do not buy one of the subscriptions, it indicates either that Tantan offers too many features for free or that it is not clear what value buying one of the subscriptions brings. On the contrary, when relatively many people do buy the premium versions, it can suggest that the application is not appealing enough. After all, it is better to for example have 5% of 2 million users to buy one of the subscriptions than to have 50% of 100.000 users that buy a subscription (Kumar, 2014).
In my opinion, Tantan’s freemium business model has the right balance. It depicts very clear what great benefits the consumer can generate with one of the subscriptions. Have you tried the Tantan app and what do you think about it? If not, I recommend you download and experience Tantan.
Sources
Chen, W., 2020. Chinese dating app Tantan claims 360 million registered users but no profits. [Online]
Available at: https://kr-asia.com/chinese-dating-app-tantan-claims-360-million-registered-users-but-no-profits
[Accessed 28 9 2022].
Kumar, V., 2014. Making “Freemium” Work. Harvard Business Review .
Very interesting article Xinran! Tantan is a great example of how dating apps use information / transparency as a strategy to create value. Concealing information about who liked your profile, but displaying anonymously who and how many users liked your profile can influence user behavior and change the company’s performance! Dating apps can also gather data on user behavior to optimise the matching algorithm. In fact, dating app ‘Hinge’ positions itself as the disruptor of online dating with data.
Hi Xinran, super interesting article! The freemium business model described is very insightful and gives a good overview of how tantan makes revenue from the users. Do you think the freemium business model of Tinder is better than the one of tantan? or do you think they both have their own target groups? Also from what i have seen, tantan also grants the users the ability to do livechats, which enables the different users to interact with eachother in a completely new way!
Interesting article Xinran! It is cool that you chose an unconventional example (at least, in the Netherlands) of an app that uses a freemium business model. I actually do know the app and some of my friends have made use of the monthly subscriptions. However, a lot of profiles seem to be fake and therefore, in my opinion, you do not experience the benefits that the paid subscription promises. Is this also the case for using the app in China? Do you think that the company could do anything about these fake profiles? And do you think that the company could make the paid subscriptions more appealing in western countries?
I actually checked the review of Tantan on Quora and reddit and noticed something that was consistently complained about – the fact that Tantan is dominated mostly by Chinese people, even overseas. Although, sometimes it’s actually interesting for non-Chinese people if they wanted to target Chinese dates. Generally, most people think it’s just like Tinder, but with a “Chinese” element in it. In some sense, it means Tantan is not proposing an attractive enough value for overseas non-Chinese users. Is there any research about how they will do about this feedback?