The thing we always missed in online dating was the actual excitement. Meeting someone by pure chance, being embarrassed and having these awkward pauses, feeling a bit of growing interest and a great deal of confusion. We wanted to fix the situation. And here we are, with two apps — OH BOY for girls and OH GIRL for guys — that are the two halves of a single online service. What happens is you open the app and meet a random person of the opposite sex in a private chat. (Yes, the app is currently aimed strictly at the hetero crowd and only supports iOS… but everything needs to start somewhere.)
This is not the kind of dating app where you skim endlessly in search for "the right one". The app announces in advance the date and time of an online event, which has everyone going online at the same time — just like a party.
The app's interface is based around GIFs, and we've also crafted a beautiful GIF-based vocabulary for our chat, to make communication light-hearted and emotional.
At this point, we've already held several OH Parties with participants from Boston, New York, Washington DC, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Having received ample feedback, we double-checked our assumptions, fixed some snags, and overall just realized that people love the experience.
FEATURES:
– Vivid visual experience.
– One chat with one person at a time — just as if you met in real life; here and now.
– No need to spend hours tweaking your account and swiping away.
– Text messages, GIFs and special cards to express yourself more easily.
– No chat history is stored by our servers.
GLITCHE COLLABORATION
For our big ProductHunt reveal, we've collaborated with the Glitche app and made a special GIF pack for you — it both looks really cool and also fits perfectly with the visual language we've created for Oh Boy / Oh Girl.
Glitche is a next-generation visual editor, with unique real-time, photo and video filters. Glitche filters are utilized in fashion industry, advertising, and music video production. Some of the Glitche users are: Gorillaz, Travis Scott, Nick Knight (who worked with Kanye and Björk), Kylie Jenner, The Golden Filter, Trouble Andrew (Gucci), and Paramount Pictures.
Feel free to contact us at: hello@ohapp.me
@rrhoover We couldn't have put it better ourselves: If Tumblr and Tinder had a baby:
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This looks really quite nice. I hate the trend of boilerplate "viral" apps without any substance, mission, or purpose. I adore the visuals. Kudos!
edit; would love to be involved in this project somehow... are you looking for a dev or designer?
edit 2; what are your plans for expanding this to be inclusive to the LBGT+ community?
@andrewfturnerjr@andrewfturnerjr Thank you! It really warms our hearts to hear that.
As to your questions:
1. As you see, our apps are currently aimed at heterosexuals. Firstly, we had to start somewhere (the same reason we only support iOS for now). But the more important consideration is the regrettable situation in Russia, where we are based. Sadly, in recent years, same-sex relationships are discouraged and all but illegal, and public "propaganda" of homosexuality is straight up illegal. This means that creating an LGBT-oriented app is nigh impossible.
2. Thank you for your interest! Make sure to drop us an email at hello@ohapp.me
Looks really interesting, loving the "mood gif as a background" idea, overall looks like a really well done and thought out product. What's the split so far between OH BOY and OH GIRL download rates? (Interesting to be able to track down your gender's user just by looking at these number)
Do you plan on creating live events? Looks like a perfect product for some street marketing / even marketing, what's the plan for world domination?
Cheers
@widawskij
1. Great question! When promoting our app, we target "boys" and "girls" separately, and our overall goal while doing that is indeed to keep their numbers more or less even.
2. That is exactly what we're thinking about. Live events, not world domination. Although...
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The app looks nice and quirky. I like the lean towards messy aesthetics and animation. Do you plan on doing some equally offbeat promotions? Who do you think will be your early adopters?
@olia_levina To be honest, we envisaged the app as aimed primarily at people like us — guys and girls who grew up intimately close with the internet culture, in the middle of the environment created by the web. But of course, it's not only us who isn't content with present popular dating apps, with their aesthetics, interface, or policies.
So in answer to your other question, we have a strategy that involves promotion via themed parties (not only in-app, but also in real life) which are aimed at people with specific interests and hobbies — things that already form a genuine connection. Geeks, hobbyists, fans, enthusiasts. Our plan is to have these parties more and more often, gradually widening our audience reach.
This is super cool @masha_voronkova! Have to ask--any concerns that people might get bored if the app doesn't recommend too many interesting profiles from the get-go?
@ashish_aggarwal But you still had a chat with the bot, right?) Every dating app relies heavily on a critical mass of concurrent users, and parties allow us to solve that problem — instead of showing you a screen notifying that no dates were found, we cluster users together, encouraging them to gather for several hours on a predetermined day and hour — just as you would by inviting people to a real-life party. Parties are announced inside the app via posters — you can always find out about the particulars of an event or its date and time by opening the app.
On the flip side, it's an opportunity to get together people with similar interests; it makes sense for parties to be very different — from BDSM get-togethers to running enthusiast soirees )
Still, try visiting the next party in a week's time, and you will meet someone, we promise.
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@masha_voronkova -- The design is ultra cool--i get the concept much better now--"like a real-life party"-- that actually is a kick ass differentiator from Tinder etc .. Love the focus on users actually getting dates :)
I really like the visual style and the quirky tone. 👌
It has a bit of an 80's vibe which is pretty popular right now. I'm a Pixel user so can't play with it for now, but it's refreshing to see a new approach to dating apps. Also really like the fact that there is no sign-up or personal information required to use it.
Curious to see where this goes and how you guys will monetize it!
@anthilemoon Thank you! We so happy you liked the idea! To answer your question about monetization:
1. We'd like to monetize by organizing special themed parties in-app, with a small admission fee. We've already tested these at the MVP stage, and are now waiting to see how they fare with the growth of our audience.
2. Advanced profiles with expanded functionality, such as: personal chat history, notifications about friends at a party, exclusive GIF sets, and video chat.
3. Special projects. Themed parties mean that we can create sponsored events — we already have some experience working with big brands on similar sponsored events (in the Russian part of the Internet), and such projects have shown very good results. We will keep moving towards making it work, and we think that brands will be very interested, too.
@denis_faiber This sounds great. Very different approach to what I've recently seen in the dating space, and lots of opportunities to make the experience feel local and intimate. I'll give it a try when the Android version comes out. :)
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A great killer to boring Pure & Tinder like apps. Loved the emotional approach to dating which makes online dating so true with a possible continuation on real event/party ;)
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