Nearby retention climbs & P2P interaction spikes after integrating Kin

Tali Sachs
Kin Blog
Published in
3 min readAug 13, 2019

Integrating Kin increases weekly retention by 8%

Since the beginning, Kin’s primary goal has been to give app developers a way to monetize and grow their revenue without relying on third parties or ad-based business models. The power behind this new revenue model is the Kin Rewards Engine (KRE), which incentivizes developers to get their users to spend as much Kin as possible in return for weekly payouts in Kin. As the number of apps and users joining the Ecosystem grows, more Kin will be earned and spent. Ergo, Kin will be circulated as the currency of the Ecosystem, and its value will go up. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Nearby is a location-based social app that encourages making new friends on the go. Before meeting Kin, Nearby already boasted an impressive 5 million downloads and counting. Nevertheless, the company struggled to monetize, increase revenue, and promote user engagement.

Like most app companies, Nearby relied on an ad-based revenue model and was constantly on the lookout for new ways to grow its business and improve user experience. The Kin Ecosystem approached Nearby and introduced it to KRE’s alternative approach to monetizing and increasing revenue. Nearby joined the Kin Ecosystem in July 2018 and integrated the Kin SDK, aiming to

  1. Increase revenue independent of an ad-based business model, and
  2. Bolster user engagement and retention

One of Kin’s principal strategies for growing a healthy Ecosystem is focusing on peer-to-peer (P2P) engagement. Developers who integrate more P2P experiences into their app and raise the level of peer-to-peer Kin spending get paid more by the KRE. Nearby decided to do exactly that.

In March 2019, Nearby replaced its “Like” button with a “Kin” button. This means that every time a user clicks the “Kin” button to show another user appreciation, they send their peers one token of Kin. Users who receive Kin can then go and gift it to other peers. Everyone with Kin in their digital wallet can spend it on other experiences in the app.

This simple tweak helped Nearby increase P2P interaction by 40 times and user retention by 8% in just 2 months. Users were more engaged with each other and with the various experiences Nearby had to offer.

User-to-user interaction rose by 40 times with Kin integration.

User-to-user interaction increased 40 fold with Kin integration.

This change in user behavior as a result of integrating Kin earned Nearby a KRE reward equal to more than $20,000 between March and May 2019.

Nearby’s story is just one of the first real use cases showing how integrating the Kin SDK can help app developers monetize and reach numerous goals. When we work together and put users first, we can win together and concentrate on developing more amazing user experiences.

Read the case study to learn more about Nearby’s journey to success with Kin.

Download Nearby and experience it for yourself.

--

--