Gen Zs and Millennials are turning to social discovery apps to make friends
In the past, online dating had a stigma attached to it. Today, that stigma has worn off and online dating is one of the most popular ways couples meet.
Now, Gen Zs and Millenials are increasingly turning to social discovery apps to find friends:
Bumble BFF: Bumble’s venture beyond dating
15% of Bumble’s 45 million users in 2021 had used Bumble BFF – that is over 6 million users. Launched in 2016, Bumble BFF is a feature on top of the dating part of the app touted as a “simplified way to create meaningful friendships.” It works pretty much similar to a dating app, with swiping involved too, but in a platonic way.
Hyperconnect: Seoul-based social discovery app acquired by Match Group for $1.7bn
Tinder and Hinge parent, Match Group, acquired Hyperconnect in 2021. Hyperconnect has 2 apps – Azar and Hakuna. Azar is a video chat app that allows users to connect with users around the world.
Yubo: Connecting 60 million Gen Zs
Yubo is a French social discovery app targeting users under 25 years old. On the Yuboverse, users can live stream, play virtual games and share screen with other people on the app.
The uncomfortable truth is that young people are lonely
According to a 2019 Ipsos study of over 10,000 adults in US, young adults aged 18 to 25 years old are the loneliest age group. The pandemic has propagated this loneliness epidemic further.
During my second-year of university, the world went into lockdown. Ever since then, I have been attending lectures on zoom. And on a random Friday, I was officially a university graduate.
And I realized how hard it is for young adults like myself to make friends. In this phase of life, there are no more common experiences where you can meet like-minded people. Such social opportunities were common back in formal schooling years, with classes, school clubs and school-wide activities.
Social discovery apps don’t turn online connections into offline friendships
Social discovery apps are great tool for Gen Zs and Millennials to meet new people. But the problem is, many of these online connections forged on social discovery apps remain online. There is something about hanging out in person that virtual connections cannot replace.
Bridging the online to offline social connection through travel
At Sotravel, we thought that travel was the answer to the gap between online and offline connections. Travel creates a common experience that helps forge bonds quickly. We gather like-minded travelers in our online community, and we use our adventures abroad as a way for our community to forge in person friendships.
Creating social connections at Sotravel
We are deliberate in the way we design our trips. We are after all, a social travel startup.
We know Gen Zs and Millennials would find no value in typical packaged tours. Most of us are savvy enough to plan our own trips, and prefer the flexibility free-and-easy trips have.
Here’s what we do different on our trips to make it the perfect social travel experience:
#1 Activity-based trips, not sightseeing: Every Sotravel trip is based on activities you can’t do in Singapore – from skiing in the French alps, surfing in Seminyak to trekking the Himalayas. This means that community members that come on our trips would already have a common interest
#2 Curating community by age group: We set an age group for our trips, so our trip participants have more in common and can relate to each other better!
#3 Big groups to find your tribe: With a bigger group, it maximizes the odds of trip participants finding friends they really connect with and would hang out with after the trip
#4 Flexible flight dates: Instead of booking flights for our participants, we set a meeting point and date in the country itself. That’s because we leave the sightseeing portion of the trip up to trip participants. We don’t set a fixed date for flights, so they can choose to do a pre or post trip if they’d like. We also help trip participants who are keen to find travel buddies for their pre or post trip!
#5 Forging community beyond the trips: We use creative ways to build and engage our community. We build transparently – we ask our community for their opinions on new features and trips through our Telegram group. We even have a community group chat!
The way Gen Zs and Millennials are traveling is undoubtedly different from the past generations. At Sotravel, we believe that the future of travel is social. We’re using travel to forge common experiences for our community to make real friendships.
Sotravel 
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