Mate white paper

This article is made to introduce the problem modern society meets and tell how Mate product aims to solve it. Let's start from upper level, a mission, and descend to the value Mate brings to communities and challenges on that path.

Mission

Motivation

What do people want in general? Obviously, there is no common answer. It wouldn't be a mistake to say that people don't mind their life to be interesting, funny, wealthy, peaceful, exciting, lovely, safe and many other. And every person looks to fulfill these needs to various extent.

Fortunately it happens that to reach all these one have to rely on other people. Sometimes relevant personal interactions helps us to reach our goals and sometimes people themselves are the ones who make our life happier.

But where comes interaction between people to fulfill each other's needs, there questions of mutual trust occur:
"Should I work with her?"
"Is he worthy my time?"
"Do we have something in common?"

Hence reliance is not possible without a trust. Let's take a look at research data to find out if people trust each other by default.

Trust is the world problem

If all people want good things and can reach them together - does it mean that they trust each other? Well, not necessarily.

The World Values Survey [1] reports that trust level - share of respondents who agreed with a statement "most people can be trusted" - varies from 4% to 70% in some countries with the median value ~40%. These results show that people are far from trusting each other by default.

Way to increase trust

Despite on moderate trust levels, people still rely on some members of society around. This leads to a question: "How people manage to build at least enough trust to interact?"

Let's take a look at a review from Our World in Data [2]. Country with a general trust level of 30% (2009) was taken as a reference. Then other, more specific than general, trust measures were performed.
First, shares of "trust to tell the truth" by adults vary for the people of different professions. For example, in doctors trust 93% of respondents, scientists - 84%, policemen - 76%.
Second, Wellcome Global Monitor (2020) research shows results of "neighborhood trust" review. It says that 87% of people trust their neighbors "some" or "a lot".

Why does trust is so higher in these cases in compare to general?
First of all, information about another person gives one objective reasons to trust this person on a range of topics at least.
Second, neighbors are somewhat familiar (they live on the same territory) and "others" are not.

So, the answer to "How to increase a trust level between people?" can sound like "Help people within same environment to know more about each other".

Mission

Mate mission is to increase the trust in people of global society by increasing it between members in communities.
Mate is created to make groups of people closer and unleash the potential of interpersonal ties.
Mate strives toward making the first contact as smooth as possible and present the convenient interface for people connections.

User need

People gather offline and online

Community is defined by the place where members gather and interact at. Environment benefits discussion, contacts, establishing of comfort and familiarity feeling.

When people gather offline, there is a physical ability to interact with others - come and talk. Yet host of offline meetings still often facilitate interaction between guests. For example, party owner introduces friends to each other. Or conference organizer makes list of participants, provides badges, creates networking zones etc.

Web communities are often represented by social media groups. Due to scalability of groups such communities can consist of hundred to tens of thousands members. What options these people have to interact?

In search of a robust way to meet new people in online community

Today there are several options for members to meet new people within an online community. Each option has its own setbacks. They are listed below with a subsequent explanation.
Option 1: Write and read posts/messages to group.
Option 2: Take part in online/offline gatherings.
Option 3: Scan the profiles of other members and contact some.

Options setbacks Options 1 and 2 cover only small part of people (~10%) due to the bystander effect. It occurs when there is an activity available for the group and people are able to opt in/out. Effect is that person is more likely to take part in activity, respond, help if there are fewer people addressed with him.
Bystander effect can be observed in workplace professional behavior [3] or at question-answer forums [4, 5]. Taking this in regard, conversations and gatherings help in link forming among core audience only (active people who participate on regularly) - leaving periphery members behind.
Option 3 rests on an assumption that there are people so inclined to know more about other members of community that they would scan profiles manually. Depending on platform scanning of profiles requires a work to be put into that and number of actions may vary.
Setbacks of manual profile scanning are:
— Scanning is a one-sided activity. It provides no feedback from the person seen.
— Approaching a particular member after that isn't much different from a cold message since there is no prior interaction occurred.

So, the Mate's product goal here is to address setbacks of community interaction options: a) find a way to involve periphery members and establish connections between them an the core b) make seeing new people online more entertaining and rewarding.

Solution

Mate's core product — matchmaking reel builder for groups of people. It is built to address the need of community members in smooth connections and increase interpersonal trust.

Reel in Mate — interface type that shows profiles one by one to user with an ability to react. Such interface in combination with swiping action is widely used in matchmaking apps.

Mate allows a person to create a matching reel and invite particular people there. This feature sets Mate not as a competitor of communities where people talk and meet but a complement that empowers interactions between members.

In principle, Mate has following product flow: community leader (including group admins, event organizers, influencers) creates a matchmaking reel and invites audience. Members join the reel and interact with each other by "like-skip" reactions. Ones who have mutual interest can contact each other on the platform or come back in future.

As soon as a lot of communities exist on particular platform and depend on it's features, matchmaking reel builder functionality should be implemented as "close" to platform as possible in terms of user onboarding actions. That's why Mate leans towards bots and social media integration solutions.

User experience challenges

Based on the described product flow there are two strategic aspects that have to be always considered.

1. Invitation of participants to the reel.
There is a task to guide audience to the created matchmaking reel. Either way, it is something that community leaders or members should do.
Mate product can either encourage reel creator and members to invite people by creating incentives or provide the creator with tools to set up new users flow to the reel. Based on community's platform and scenario these options may be presented in different proportions.

2. End-of-reel activity.
Matchmaking reel can be attributed to community (long-term) or event (short-term). Community reel should be active for an indefinite time as long as new people come and go. But the rate of reel browsing is more than new members inflow. Hence, there will be a moment when a person has seen everyone and no members left to meet on the reel. In this case additional "end-of-reel" activities should be provided to help user strengthen present connections and stay involved.

Implementation of these principles is crucial for the matchmaking reel builder desirability among community leaders and organizers. Building the Mate down to up our team believes that sustainable product leads to satisfaction of users leads to mission fulfillment - increase the trust between different people worldwide.

Sources

[1] https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/trust
[3] https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2017.0245
[4] https://researchgate.net/publication/318125704
[5] https://researchgate.net/publication/261963133