This Chinese flirty app made a risky bet by becoming a social network. It’s paying off big time

China’s Momo today released the second earnings report since its US IPO at the end of last year. Momo’s Q1 2015 financials show that the app – which is morphing from a flirty chat app to a broader social network for young people – has now grown to 78.1 million monthly active users (MAUs), up 13 percent from the tally at the end of 2014, and up 83 percent year-on-year.

Momo started as one of several location-based dating apps in China back in 2011. After winning out against its rivals, the app started to diversify by adding in check-ins for venues and local interest groups. More recently it has changed to promoting itself as a social network for young Chinese people, creating marketing campaigns full of youths setting off rockets on beaches, draping snakes across their shoulders, and racing go-karts. There’s no suggestion at all of dating.

From hook-ups to meaningful connections

With Weibo considered by some to be too public, and WeChat too private, Momo is aiming at a third way, letting people connect in a casual and easy way without having to follow people or find their usernames, as is the case in Weibo and WeChat. Momo might also appeal to China’s 20-somethings as a zone that’s far from the prying eyes of family and workmates.

Momo no longer markets itself as an app for hook-ups (not including alpacas).

While Momo is confined to Chinese-speaking users, the company does have ambitions for the US market. After initially failing with a straight-up English version of Momo, the firm came out with an all-new app for overseas markets in December called Blupe. That new app is essentially the same idea as Nextdoor or Microsoft’s Inlope – it’s a social network for meeting strangers with similar interests.

Momo made no mention of Blupe in its latest earnings report, but the US-oriented app and the evolution of Momo itself show that the company, once dismissed and reviled for making a simple hook-up app, wants to rethink how young people connect on the web in an era of Facebook ennui and messaging app overload.

Slowly making money

The risk seems to be paying off as Momo’s growth continues. “[W]e are seeing our users engaging with the platform in an increasingly diversified way,” said Momo CEO and chairman Yan Tang in a statement. “With the launch of Momo 6.0 in April, we are taking a significant step forward toward our long term mission of enabling every Momo user to discover and connect to interesting people around them.”

Momo pulled in total net revenues of US$26.3 million in Q1, up 383 percent on the same period last year. US$6.1 million of that was from social gaming, US$13.0 million from paid memberships, and US$1.1 million from paid emoticons and the gifting feature.

The app managed to make a net income of US$6.7 million in Q1, compared to a net loss of nearly US$3 million at the end of 2014.

Momo’s full Q1 2015 report is here (PDF link).