Author｜Eric

What magic does Daze possess to attract tens of thousands of users?

It hasn't even launched yet, but it has already sparked immense interest among countless users solely through demo videos. A new communication and social app is stirring up the AI social scene.

On TikTok and Instagram, videos related to this app targeting Gen Z have been viewed tens of millions of times, leaving a deep impression on young viewers.

Daze is scheduled for release on November 4th, and the waiting list for registration is already full, with approximately 156,000 users.

Daze's founder is Simons, a serial entrepreneur from New York. He told the media, "Our goal is to create a fully-featured instant messaging app that can compete with products like iMessage and WhatsApp, while also retaining a series of truly interesting and creative features.""

What magic does Daze possess to attract tens of thousands of users? And what confidence does it have to challenge established social platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp?

01

Why is Daze trending?

Daze's core concept is to break away from traditional, single modes of expression, making chatting a more free and creative space.

What do we mean by traditional, single modes of expression?

Most of us use WeChat, and some have used iMessage and WhatsApp. Whether it's voice messages or text messages, the chat interface is basically neatly arranged with white-background, black-text message bubbles, or green-background, black-text bubbles.

While this format can achieve basic chatting functions, its uniform and rigid style can become monotonous over time.

Especially when online socializing permeates every aspect of our lives, becoming as routine as eating and drinking, if online chatting can be made more interesting, it can undoubtedly make our lives more enjoyable too.

Daze aims precisely at this pain point.

Judging from its demo videos, chatting is no longer limited to blue and green message bubbles. Instead, colorful messages can float on the interface, accompanied by diverse visual elements such as photos, graphics, stickers, GIFs, drawings, decorative backgrounds, etc., which is very similar to how users create Instagram Stories using various fonts, styles, and graphics.

This also reminds me of noplace, a social startup previously targeting Gen Z, which also did not adopt the monotonous black-on-white color scheme like Facebook and other social platforms. Instead, it used the "dopamine" color scheme popular among Gen Z for its primary colors. The interface colors are brighter and more vibrant, aligning better with the outgoing personalities of Gen Z. Users can freely choose colors, making noplace look like a "kaleidoscope.""

It seems that social startups targeting Gen Z prioritize free color selection.

Additionally, on Daze, users can use a freestyle interface to write text, quickly input messages and send them, or place text anywhere they want to create patterns, essentially combining the chat dialog box into a complete pattern, which is very free and unconstrained. Overall, Daze's so-called freestyle chatting is akin to the social platform providing users with a blank sheet of paper where they can freely unleash their creativity, placing messages, text, images, voice, videos, etc., anywhere on the interface and freely defining their own chat interface.

As Simons said, he hopes every conversation can become a unique creative process, rich and interesting.

Daze is using AI to drive some of its creative tools and further optimize its message filtering system, especially in the anonymous messaging feature, where AI can effectively detect potential negative emotions, hate speech, and bullying. The original intention of this feature is to reduce malicious interactions common on social platforms and create a healthier, more positive social environment.

Currently, Daze is popular among tech enthusiasts, who sing high praise for the app. According to TechCrunch, Daze is currently in beta testing, with most invited users being Gen Z aged 13 to 22. Simons pointed out that it's not surprising that the user base of this freestyle social app is getting younger. Preliminary data shows that the retention rate of users who have sent messages exceeds 50% after 60 days, indicating high user stickiness for Daze.

However, what concerns many people is that it's not Daze's actual user experience that has made it popular but rather its video marketing. Currently, not many users have actually experienced Daze; they are merely intrigued by demo videos on TikTok and Instagram.

In other words, Daze has only painted a picture for users so far. How the experience will actually be won't be known until the app is officially launched.

02

Competing with giants: a long and arduous journey

Currently, Daze's slogan is to compete with iMessage and WhatsApp.

However, achieving this slogan is extremely challenging.

While the global social media user base continues to grow, presenting opportunities for startups, the social media giants still dominate with the majority of monthly active users.

Data shows that WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users, second only to Facebook and YouTube and ahead of Instagram. These users would face significant switching costs to move to a new social platform. The essence of social platforms is still the relationship network, and the larger the user base, the greater the value of the relationship network. Leaving this network would bring significant inconvenience to users.

For example, QQ introduced message bubble styles and text styles a long time ago, which indeed made the QQ chat interface more interesting. However, QQ still declined, and WeChat users did not migrate to QQ in large numbers.

Before founding Daze, Simons co-founded Muze with two other partners. It's also an app featuring freestyle communication, allowing users to create during chats, including drawing, collaging, editing images, etc. Unlike Daze, Muze focuses more on the diversity of creation tools rather than socializing itself.

While Muze gained popularity in its early stages, it ultimately failed to break through early development bottlenecks due to technical difficulties and user scale limitations. Therefore, some investors are taking a wait-and-see approach to Simons' founding of Daze.

Of course, some investors have also extended an olive branch.

Daze has raised $5.7 million from companies such as a16z, Kindred Ventures, Alpaca Ventures, Uncommon Projects, Betaworks, Maveron, 35 Ventures, New Wave, and Antoine Martin. Currently, Daze has only 7 full-time employees and 1 part-time employee, most of whom are based in New York, with only a few working remotely. The $5.7 million in funding can provide substantial resource support for Daze.

However, these resources are still dwarfed by those of social media giants. As of 2024, there is no official data on the number of WhatsApp employees, but it's known that the number of employees was close to 1,000 in 2021. Additionally, WhatsApp is supported by Meta, a technology giant, giving it access to resources on a completely different level compared to Daze. For Daze to compete with social media giants like WhatsApp for users is undoubtedly like an ant trying to take on an elephant.

Currently, Daze's benchmark should not be WhatsApp but other competitors. After all, it's not the first social media platform targeting Gen Z, and social platforms like Bereal, Wizz, Yubo, Purp, etc., are also formidable.

However, the startup landscape is always unpredictable. In recent years, many startup stars have emerged in the social sector, but many have been short-lived or failed to maintain their early momentum. For example, BeReal is showing signs of waning innovation and slowing growth, and Simons has also had setbacks in the past.

For Daze, the current buzz is just the beginning. We won't know how far it can go until it's released and put to the test in the market.