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The Meet Group Announces 5 New Features

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The Meet Group has accompanied the release of its Q2 earnings with the announcement of five new video features.

The first is ‘Gifts in Chat’ – the ability for streamers and fans to earn virtual currency even when they are not participating in live streams. The Meet Group hopes the feature will drive further monetisation and video DAU growth.

1-to-1 video chats are also being implemented, a highly requested feature that has been in Beta testing recently. The 1-to-1 platform is named ‘Quick’, and will be rolled out on MeetMe straight away (followed by Skout and Tagged later this year).

The Meet Group says: “One on one video chat provides opportunity for monetization through two paths: The first is the use of paid gender filters. Users can match with a livestreamer for free or choose to be matched with users of a specific gender for a fee [which we expect will be 9 credits or 9 cents]. Given the male to female gender skew of our user base, we see a strong likelihood of users opting to pay.

“The second way to monetize Quick is with virtual gifts in live chat. Users may choose to send virtual gifts to show interest, break the ice or start the conversation.  We’ve seen this product be successful on other apps including Azar and we believe the feature is particularly well suited to our audience.”



A third addition is streamer ‘Battles’. Soon, livestreamers will have the ability to compete with one another singing, dancing or rapping, with users submitting free and paid votes.

Similar products in Asian markets call such battles ‘PK’, and The Meet Group notes that they have effectively driven engagement and virality.

They say: “A specific data point on Battles can be found in the Chinese Inke IPO filing where they stated that during the first three months after launching the Battles function in September 2017, the average daily streaming time per streamer increased by 29.7%, and the average daily viewing time per viewer increased by 47.8%.

“They added that their platform had facilitated over 12.8 million battles among their users and that the total value of the virtual items given during battles amounted to approximately RMB689.5 million, which equates to roughly $8 per battle.”

Incentivised video is also being developed after a successful trial – users have reportedly demonstrated that they are willing to watch videos to earn virtual currency.

The final feature is ‘Shout Out’. Shout Out bumps a user’s message to a more prominent position in a broadcaster’s chat box.

CEO Geoff Cook says: “Each of the features I’ve mentioned has the potential to address the product objectives of driving monetization, improving margins, and increasing engagement, although each to a different degree.

“For example, while Battles and Quick do all of these, Quick, incented video and Shout Out will monetize with higher margins than Live gifting and Battles, as they have no Apple/Google tax. In terms of driving engagement, we see Quick driving significant vDAU, while incented video may not.”

Find The Meet Group’s financial results here.

Scott Harvey

Scott is the Editor of Global Dating Insights. Raised in Dorset, he holds a BA from The University of Nottingham and an MSc from Lund University School of Economics and Management. Previously he has written about politics, economics and technology for various online publications.

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