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SHANGHAI, Dec. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/--

One of the top Chinese Internet media 36Kr recently held the Wise 2020 New

Economy Kings Conference with the theme, "The Reign of the New Economy Kings".

During the conference topics including urban evolution, long-term value,

industrial innovation, and supply chain collaboration were discussed, and Wise

2020 released their New Economy Kings list of top ten companies. As a

representative of new social media and a company loved by Gen Z users, Soul App

was selected to be the most influential company in the new entertainment and

media industry. In describing the changes occurring in social media over the

past decade, SOUL believes Gen Z is driving the rapid rise of new social media trends.

In China, some social platforms satisfy the consumer demand to bring offline

relationships between people who already know each other to an online platform.

Most of the social products that have emerged in recent years, however, have

been for users to develop online relationships and then take them offline.

Thus, most social networking products in China are essentially tied to offline

demand because they follow the social habits of early internet users whose

average ages are relatively older. These users' main demands for online social

products are still tied to their their offline lives.

But for the younger Gen Z crowd, the internet is no longer just a supplement to

real life, but rather another dimension parallel to real life and of equal

importance. According to a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in

2018 the average age of young Chinese users accessing the internet dropped to

6-10 years old. Additionally, the Gen Z internet environment offers diverse

information and cultural content. After this content is initially consumed,

there is still a demand for secondary dissemination and consumption

applications; social networking is one of the most important applications

meeting this demand. Compared with simply functional social networking, Gen Z

users prefer more meaningful online social contact that brings them a sense of

community and belonging. But these are not the strengths of traditional social products.

Zhang Lu, the founder of Soul App, explained that her goal was to develop a

product for users to publish content, pressure-free, anytime, anywhere that can

receive quick responses. On SOUL, there are two ways to do this: users can

publish content on the "Explore" function, a public forum for sharing thoughts

and moments; and users can be directly matched for a one-on-one chat. For

either option, the underlying logic is that all the content and matches are

based on the user's interests, personality, historical preferences, and other

meaningful characteristics.

In the matching process, SOUL's platform adopts methods to stop any

interference that may come from the user's appearance. For example, the system

does not support actual user photos. SOUL also uses a decentralized content

distribution mechanism that balances popularity and matching influences, so

that everyone's content can be fairly viewed and shared, with reduced traffic

preference interference for users and their posts.

As a gathering place for Gen Z users, SOUL's social atmosphere emphasizes

networking and communities. With free information flow and chat matching, users

with similar interests and cultural preferences gradually converge into

communities and networking groups that engage with each other in inspiring and

passionate discussions on various topics.

On SOUL, users can tag their posted content to define their topics of

interested and enable their content to reach other people with the same

interests and hobbies, including music, literature and history, and movies and

games, all hot topics on SOUL. SOUL places an importance on discovering users'

preferences in their browsing content, comments, chats, and searches to promote

people and content that may be interesting to users. With in-depth application of big

data and AI technology SOUL is continuously improving match speed and accuracy.

Looking to the future, SOUL hopes to expand social relationships into a network

based on meaningful socializing. Starting from the community and individual

networks, the app plans to further foster a user's sense of affiliation within

the entire platform and ultimately build a platform that offers users a sense

of identity. From an industry perspective, as SOUL continues to explore and

respond to young users' demand for meaningful connections, new opportunities

for growing value in the Gen Z social arena continue to emerge and there will

be boundless space for innovation in the future.

SOURCE: Soul App