OPW - Dec 13 - I asked industry veteran Daniel Haigh, Director of Product at RSVP, about their decision to shutter the hallmark dating service Oasis, and their launch of Helium. (see Oasis news back thru 2009).
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Daniel Haigh: Although oasis.com and amorenlinea.com were still very popular dating sites they are simply no longer viable to operate and we have been planning their decommission for some time.
As you know their revenue model was almost entirely based on ad revenue, and CPM rates are now less than 30% of what we were receiving 10 years ago.
Also, although the technology platform behind Oasis was extremely advanced 13 years ago when we launched - it would now require a major investment to redevelop and the business decided it wasn't worth the investment.
So as a result we started developing a new dating app in 2019 called Helium Dating.
We have grown to 12,000+ daily active users since launching in September, so we are very pleased with this initial growth.
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KEY FEATURES OF HELIUM
- Users can direct message without having to like each other first
- Focused on the 25 to 40 age group
- A selfie and two gallery images are required
- Images are checked by Amazon's image checking platform 'Rekognition'
- Users can rate a potential with a tag, i.e. Cheeky
- Groups are available based on location
- There's video calling and peer-to-peer encrypted chat
- No usernames or passwords, and joining takes <30 seconds
- Membership is US$15/mo
