China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You’re Still Alive | EUROtoday

An indie app with just one perform is at the moment all the fashion in China. It’s known as sure however (死了吗), which interprets actually to “Are You Dead Yet.” The app asks customers to faucet a button as soon as day-after-day, and in the event that they fail to take action for 2 consecutive days, it routinely sends an electronic mail to a chosen emergency contact, urging them to test on the person in individual.

Guo, one of many three Gen-Z builders behind Are You Dead Yet, says he has been constructing social and leisure apps for a couple of years. But he needed to pivot to one thing extra basic. “When I looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I saw that safety needs are deeper and apply to a much broader group of people. That felt like a good direction,” Guo informed WIRED in an unique interview. (He requested to be recognized solely by his final identify, for privateness causes.)

The app’s sensible performance and the darkish humor its identify evokes have struck a chord with younger individuals in China, who swarmed to obtain it over the previous week. At the time of publication, Are You Dead Yet was the primary paid app within the Chinese model of Apple’s App Store. It can also be climbing the rankings in abroad app retailer charts, regardless that Guo says he hasn’t spent a dime on paid promoting. “We don’t have that kind of money,” he says.

Guo tells WIRED that the staff has been contacted by greater than 60 traders since Are You Dead Yet blew up on social media, and they’re in lively conversations about fundraising. He claims that some traders have provided thousands and thousands of Chinese yuan—tons of of 1000’s of US {dollars}—for a stake in its dad or mum firm, Moonscape Technologies, which has launched only a handful of apps. The staff expects to announce the outcomes of the fundraising talks in a couple of weeks. “We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this completely exceeded our expectations,” Guo says.

Guo and his colleagues initially charged customers a one-time cost of 1 RMB (14 cents) to make use of the app; amid the heightened consideration this week, they raised the value to eight RMB ($1.15), nonetheless a minimal quantity contemplating there’s no subscription required. While Guo declined to reveal how a lot cash the app has made or what number of lively customers it has, he says the cash they’ve earned to date will go towards growing the platform for the long run.

Are You Dead Yet has caught on significantly amongst individuals who reside alone. The common dimension of a Chinese household has shrunk dramatically over the previous few a long time. According to a 2020 nationwide census, 25.4 % of households consisted of only one individual, up from 14.5 % a decade earlier. While aged individuals stay the most definitely to reside alone, there’s a rising cohort of youthful individuals dwelling a solo life-style, and Chinese companies are more and more catering to this demographic by providing digital or bodily companionship providers.

On Tuesday, the builders introduced on Chinese social media that Are You Dead Yet would formally change its identify to Demumu in an effort to higher serve the worldwide market. That identify, which was additionally used for the app’s abroad model beforehand, was impressed by one other Chinese enterprise success. Guo says Demumu is a mixture of the phrase “death” and the naming sample of Labubu, the Chinese plushie monster that went viral globally final 12 months.

Fans of the app usually are not thrilled. Even earlier than the announcement that they had been asking the builders to not change the blunt identify, which was half the attraction. On Weibo, a Chinese social platform, essentially the most preferred remark beneath the name-change announcement reads, “Baby, your previous name was the reason you went viral.”