Nowadays, social metaverse has become a hot topic and social network products focusing on social metaverse emerge in the market. How to achieve commercial success in the increasingly fierce competition? Zhang Lu, the CEO and founder of social networking app, Soul App, shares her insight into social metaverse in the latest media interview.

Industry insiders have found that Generation Z’s are no longer fond of acquaintance social networking. The change in behavioral logic will inevitably bring a change in consumption patterns. A clearly perceivable trend is that, as Generation Z increasingly prefer to seek an immersive experience on social metaverse, they will be more eager to pursue social metaverse assets.

Let’s take avatar designer as an example. It is a newly-born profession on Soul App. Virtual avatars are an important element of the social metaverse, which contributes to the development of creator economy. Some artists chose to sell their unique avatar designs on Soul App and earned a satisfying salary, which could be seen as a representation of the blooming creator economy.

According to social media reports, a part-time avatar designer can earn about 45,000 RMB per month on Soul App. Soul Zhang Lu believes there will be more new occupations related to social metaverse, which will provide more diverse employment options for young generations.

Zhang Lu isn’t the only entrepreneur who has a positive attitude toward career opportunities on social metaverse. Recently, McKinsey, a leading global consultancy, released its latest research report on value creation in metaverse, which also indicates that metaverse will significantly impact our business and personal lives.

The report also shows that almost sixty percent of consumers prefer at least one virtual experience over its physical replacement. Among these consumers, certain types of activities are most preferred by users in immersive authentic but virtual worlds: shopping – buying physical or virtual products (79 percent); attending virtual social events or playing virtual social games (78 percent); and using virtual reality for fitness (76 percent).

Soul App will soon release its first digital collection, Soul-Mobius. Mobius literally is a one-sided surface formed from a rectangle by fixing one end, turning the opposite end 180 degrees, and attaching it to the first end. The Mobius Ring represents infinity and unity.

On the social metaverse provided by Soul App, users in the virtual world and real world, are like the two sides of the Mobius ring, linking each other while serving as a mystery to each other.

After users purchase the Soul-Mobius digital collection, they can get a corresponding digital avatar, whose display effect differs from the ordinary round avatar and is in an 8-side shape. This digital collection will help the platform to build a diversified user identity system and further improve user experience on the social metaverse brought by Soul App. It will also strengthen users’ understanding of digital identity and digital assets.

Actually, it was at the beginning of 2021 when Soul Zhang Lu proposed to build a social metaverse for young generations, half a year before Facebook rebranded to Meta.

Soul App founder Zhang Lu revealed that six years ago when developing Soul, she wanted to design a gamified product for young generations focusing on social networks. Avatar is an element she applied to make it fun for users to communicate and build social connections.

Now, the avatar is a core element of metaverse, which can give users a brand new identity and an immersive experience. The consistency of the underlying logic of metaverse with Soul App’s product philosophy makes Zhang Lu feel that metaverse is never a new track for her team.

In addition to Soul App, which is the first to enter the social metaverse track, Internet majors have also started and accelerated the relevant layout. It is easy to discover that social metaverse breeds numerous business opportunities, which is the main reason that many enterprises want to join this new track.

Facing prosperous commercial opportunities, Soul Zhang Lu places a premium on user experience instead of commercial growth. That’s why Soul App has invested lots of resources to design the recommendation system and NAWA engine.

Soul App has adopted an intelligent recommendation system, which takes advantage of data analytic and advanced algorithms to effectively recommend users of highly-matched content based on their full-scene social portraits.