Tantan Case Study: Re-imagining dating apps for Gen Z

Sources and methodology

This exploration draws on public research and my own first session with the product. Sources include Forbes Health, TODAY, Alta, Eventbrite related reporting, Resonate, Bloomberg, Bumble IRL, TechCrunch, Sport Singapore and Yelp.

The product observations are based on one new user account in Singapore and a short session, so I treat them as hypotheses rather than representative user research.

Tantan has not endorsed this case study.

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A lot of people are tired of dating apps, but many of them still want to meet someone. That gap is where this case study starts.

I wanted to understand what Tantan feels like as a completely new user, and whether there was an opportunity to make the first interaction feel less like another round of swiping.

I spent time looking at the public app, mapped out what stood out to me in my first session, and eventually arrived at a concept called Event Rooms. The idea is simple: instead of starting with a one-to-one match, let people meet through something they already like.

This is an independent exploration. Tantan has not reviewed or endorsed the concept.

The broader question

People are tired of swiping, but they still want to meet someone

Dating app fatigue is hardly a new observation, but I was interested in what people might actually want instead.

The research I found pointed in a similar direction. A Forbes Health survey of US dating app users found that nearly four in five experience burnout at least sometimes. In Singapore, people interviewed by TODAY talked about being worn out by the number of options and the pressure that comes with dating. One person described even the thought of opening up to someone new as draining.

There are also signs that people are looking for more social ways to meet. Timeleft, for example, has attracted people who are tired of traditional dating apps. Eventbrite has reported strong growth in events built around meeting new people, while dating platforms themselves have started experimenting with offline experiences. Tinder launched an Events tab in Los Angeles and later expanded it to other cities, while Bumble has also been running IRL experiences.

Most of the data I found is from the US, and I couldn't find comparable Singapore numbers on event attendance. So I don't see this as proof that Singapore users definitely want this behaviour. I see it as a signal worth exploring.

The question I kept coming back to was:

What if people don't actually need another way to find a date? What if they need a better way to start meeting one?

That was what made me want to look at Tantan more closely.

My first ten minutes on Tantan

I wanted to experience the product before deciding what to build

I downloaded Tantan as a brand new user and gave myself about ten minutes on the app.

The first thing I noticed was what the app didn't ask me. I signed up with one photo, and a photo without a clear face was accepted. There wasn't much guidance on what would make my profile better or help me find people I might actually have something in common with.

Verification was another point of friction. It failed three times even after I switched to proper face photos, but I wasn't told why. I also couldn't really tell what I would lose by staying unverified, while plenty of unverified profiles were still visible.

The profiles themselves felt quite thin. Most gave me things like distance, relationship goal and zodiac sign, but not much else to work with. One person who messaged me had a photo, a name and an age, with almost nothing that gave me an obvious conversation starter.

Then there was the monetisation.

It was reflected that I had 99+ likes, but couldn't see who they were without paying. The top plan I saw was S$49.98 a week. From a business perspective, I understand why this exists. As a new user, though, I hadn't seen enough value yet to feel particularly motivated to pay.

The feature that interested me most was actually Tribe.

Tribe is where Tantan brings people together around shared interests. The concept made sense, but in my first session the groups felt fairly broad and small. I also kept seeing the same people across different groups.

As I did more research, I discovered that Tribe was also a key unique selling point for Tantan. As dating apps have existed for more than a decade and most of them have similar ways of consumption methods, it is more important to accentuate Tantan's unique value to give users a reason to download and use this app.

More importantly, I realised something:

Tantan was already telling me that shared interests mattered, but my first experience didn't really give me a way to use those interests to meet someone.

That felt like a much more interesting product problem than simply adding another dating feature. As a Gen Z myself with stories of friends preferring organic ways of meeting a suitable partner, I thought we could somehow develop this concept with existing dating apps to create a new form of experience.

I want to be careful about the limitations here. This was one account, in one city, during one short session. I would not treat these observations as representative user research. They were enough, however, to give me a hypothesis worth exploring.

The opportunity

Move the shared interest before the match

Most dating apps ask you to make a fairly big decision very early:

Do I like this person enough to swipe right?

However, if the profile is thin and you don't know anything about the person, that decision can feel quite arbitrary. I started wondering whether the sequence could be different.

Instead of:

Profile → Like → Match → Figure out what to say

what if it became:

Shared interest → Interaction → Connection → Match

The person is still ultimately deciding whether they want to connect romantically. The difference is that they have something to react to first. That became the idea behind Event Rooms.

Event Rooms

Meet people through something you already like

Event Rooms are short, online type of interest based rooms inside Tribe. Each room runs for five days and brings together around 20 to 30 people around a particular activity.

The idea isn't to replace Tantan's existing dating experience. It is meant to give people a more natural way into it.

Imagine Mei, a fictional 27 year old who has a couple of dating apps on her phone but rarely replies on either. She opens Tribe and sees a Sunday Run Club room with 24 spots available.

Before joining, she answers three quick questions:

• What's your usual running song?
• What's your post run order?
• What's your hot take on morning vs evening runs?

The questions are deliberately lightweight. They are less about collecting another set of profile fields and more about giving people something they can actually talk about.

Once the room opens, Mei can see the other members and their answers. She might like someone's answer about their favourite post run food, or comment on another person's opinion about morning runs. There is no immediate pressure to match.

By Day 3, if nobody has caught her attention, she gets one free Super Like and the option to write a longer introduction.

On Day 4, someone she liked returns the interest. A normal chat opens in Messages, but now they already have something to talk about.

On Day 5, the room closes. Mei gets a short recap of what happened and one suggestion for what she could try in her next room.

The experience has a clear beginning and end, but it still leads back into Tantan's existing matching and messaging experience.

The product decisions behind it

I wanted the feature to feel like Tantan, not a separate product

One thing I was quite conscious of was not overbuilding the concept. A new feature can easily introduce new currencies, new interaction types and new rules until users have to learn an entirely new product. So I tried to reuse what Tantan already has wherever possible. This is also a core product decision.

Existing likes stay as they are

The existing Meet feed and the paid "See Who Likes You" experience don't change. A mutual like inside a room simply becomes a normal match.

Use Super Like rather than inventing something new

My first draft introduced a new Rose mechanic. I dropped it. Tantan already has Super Like, and it already represents a stronger expression of interest. Making one Super Like free per room gives the user a clear way to make a move without introducing another concept.

Experiment with a hybrid model for room likes

This was less straightforward.

I considered making room likes completely free, sending them into the existing paywalled list, or using a hybrid approach. I would start with the hybrid.

For example, a user might see:

Someone liked your answer: "kopi + kaya toast"

They could discover who it was by liking back, or through Premium.

I don't know whether this would protect or hurt Premium revenue because I don't have Tantan's underlying revenue data. That makes it something I would test, rather than a decision I would assume is correct.

The first room has to work

This is probably the biggest product risk I see. If someone joins an Event Room and nothing happens, they aren't going to care that the overall concept is interesting. They will probably just leave. So I would put quite a lot of attention into the first room.

Early rooms would be seeded to keep them active and reasonably balanced. Each member would see around five suggested people rather than having to work through an entire room themselves.

If someone doesn't get a match, there are still a few opportunities to keep the experience from ending abruptly.

On Day 3, they get the free Super Like. On Day 5, they get a short "close calls" recap and a free credit towards another room.

The aim isn't to manufacture a match. It is to make sure that one unsuccessful room doesn't feel like the product has nothing to offer.

Testing it in Singapore

I would start with a small pilot rather than launch it broadly

My first experiment would be a one month Singapore pilot with 30 rooms across six waves.

A new wave of five rooms opens every five days, with each room running for five days. Users can choose from the available rooms and join two or three over the course of the month.

The activities would cover different types of interests:

• Active — Run Club, Pickleball, Badminton, Hiking, Bouldering, Cycling
• Social — Trivia, Board Games, Café Crawl, Food Crawl, Karaoke
• Creative and culture — Pottery, Photography, Baking, Cooking, Museum and Gallery
• Lifestyle — Walk and Talk, Yoga, Gym, Live Music, Chess

The 30 rooms come from 25 activities, with some of the more promising activities repeated across waves. I would treat this list as a starting point rather than a final ranking. Before launching, I would want to compare it with Tantan's own interest data.

The goal of the pilot isn't to prove that every activity works. It is to learn whether meeting through a shared activity actually creates better connections than the existing experience.

How I would measure it

The goal isn't simply getting people into rooms

The north star I would use is:

Five message conversations started through a room, per active user

A mutual match by itself feels like too weak a signal. A conversation that gets to five messages tells me that the interaction has at least started to become meaningful.

I'd then look at the funnel around it.

• Join — room fill rate, profile completion
• Meet — share of members who like or comment, interactions per member
• Match — mutual match rate, share of members getting at least one match in their first room, five message conversations, Super Like usage
• Return — second room within 14 days, Day 30 retention compared with a holdout, reported dates
• Guardrails — reports per 1,000 members, changes in overall swipe activity

I wouldn't set arbitrary success thresholds at this stage. I'd first look at Tantan's existing baseline and use that to decide what "good enough" looks like.

Monetisation comes later

I would deliberately avoid making monetisation the first thing we optimise. If people don't enjoy the experience or come back, there isn't much point trying to squeeze revenue out of it. Once the core behaviour looks promising, there are two directions I'd explore.

Room perks within Premium

Premium could get priority sign up, an additional room each month and access to extra Super Likes through existing coins.

The current "See Who Likes You" experience would remain unchanged.

Premium curated rooms

Another option would be smaller rooms of around 10 to 15 people, limited to verified users with more complete profiles.

The proposition would be slightly different from the usual dating app model. Instead of paying to get more attention, people would be paying for a more curated pool.

Before building this, I would test demand with a simple "I'm interested" button and see whether people actually want it.

What could go wrong?

There are a few things I'd be particularly worried about.

Room quality. If the room is too small or badly balanced, the whole concept falls apart. This is why I would seed the early rooms rather than relying entirely on organic participation.

Safety. Group interactions create different risks from one to one messaging. I would start with structured prompts, limit posting to verified users, make reporting easy and block early attempts to move people off platform.

Cost. Physical events could become expensive very quickly. I would keep the first version entirely in app and only explore offline events after the core behaviour has been validated.

Market fit. What works in Singapore may not work elsewhere. The activities, room size and even the willingness to participate could vary significantly by market.

What I still don't know

There are a few questions asked by dating app product managers which I couldn't answer just by using the app.

Would women actually use the Day 3 Super Like?

We could look at existing Super Like send and reply rates by gender, then speak to users directly rather than guessing.

Would the hybrid like model hurt Premium revenue?

I don't have access to the underlying revenue data, so this needs an actual experiment.

Do the three onboarding questions help enough to justify the extra friction?

They might give people better conversation starters. They might also make people drop out before entering the room.

These are important because they could change the product design quite substantially. I would rather call them out than pretend the concept is already validated.

What I'd do next

Five user conversations before building the full feature

My next step would be to speak with five people who currently use, recently used or have stopped using dating apps.

I'd want to understand when they last used one, what specifically made the experience tiring, how they feel about meeting people through interest groups, what they would actually do when entering an Event Room, and what would make the experience feel safe.

From there, I'd prototype the first room and focus heavily on the first session, because ultimately, that's what this exercise came back to for me. A new feature doesn't have to invent an entirely new behaviour. Sometimes the better opportunity is already sitting inside the product.

Tantan already has Tribe. It already has shared interests. It already has matching and messaging. The opportunity is to connect those pieces in a way that makes the first interaction easier.

People might be tired of swiping, or perhaps this method of finding a partner doesn't suit new generation of adults, but they still want to meet someone. Maybe the answer is to give them something worth talking about first.