China’s location-based stranger networking app Momo earned itself mixed reception among mobile users, some adore it for its “hooking-up” utility while the others hate it for the same reason. The company’s latest product launch of version 3.0 took efforts to play down that part, trying to reimagine itself as a decent mobile social networking app.
And that’s the direction a Beijing-based startup has been working on for the past several months, after they graduated from Dalian-based incubating program ChinaAccelerator in the middle of this year with Qiuqiu, a mobile dating app.
Judging by the name, it’s perceivable that the app has something to do with love as Qiuqiu the name sounds a bit like Cupid the god of love.
Michael Lewis, co-founder of the team behind Qiuqiu, told me that the app differs from other similar services in its ideas of “Taste Test” and “Match Maker”.
With “Taste Test” feature, you’ll be presented with four pictures of girls (or guys, depends on your gender), choose the one that attracts you the most, then the pictures go away when four text boxes with profile description appears, again, choose the one that most suits you. Then you’ll get to see if you connect the face and the profile, if you does, congs and if – often times – you fails, then you need to choose between the face and the profile, make the decision and then Qiuqiu will do some calculation to examine the match index between you two. If the match index hit above 50%, then you can message the potential other half via the app, otherwise, you’ll have to try your luck by taking another taste test.
Qiuqiu’s Pentagram in deciding the match index for users
Who makes the final call in calculating the match index? Qiuqiu employs a pentagram consisted of five attributes including looks, background, zoadic, location and network to decide if you two are really a match.
As for “Match Maker”, you can introduce your friends to each other by setting them up via the app.
Michael believes that there’ll be more opportunities for services like Qiuqiu to break out as the numbers of Chinese singles are keep increasing. Those people who grow up with mobile devices internet are more like to use apps and Internet to find their love instead of walking into a traditional dating agency, or go towards so-called dating sites which are just an online version of those offline agencies.
Qiuqiu currently was still in beta testing. You can try it out here.