Dek: The latest social media craze had seen an exodus in its user base just weeks after its inception. Why have most users deemed Bondee unhomely despite its endearing aesthetic?

BURNING OUT as quickly as it burst onto the scene, Bondee’s ephemeral positioning in the social media limelight has been characteristic of the steady shift toward the ubiquity of digitization in various aspects of life. In a sense, Bondee’s central premise of creating and customizing users’ digital personas follows the trend of education, communication, and even commerce in making the leap to the cybernetic space. 

Transience be damned, one cannot deny that Bondee presented netizens with an attractive and innovative avenue through which they could marry individuality with community. What caused Bondee’s meteoric rise through public perception? What led to its equally hasty downfall?

Here, two users reveal their insights about the latest social media platform as we trace the answers to such questions.

Build me up

Developed by Singapore-based tech startup Metadream, Bondee gained droves of online traction shortly after its January 2023 release, accumulating more than 5 million downloads in less than a month.

Just like many users, Elle* (1 AB LIT (ENG)) caught wind of Bondee through those in her circle who were swept up by the craze. “My friends were messaging everyone and they were all saying, ‘You should download the app! Bilisan mo! Just download it now!’ And I was like, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll download the app,’” she recalls.

With options to post updates, share pictures, and message friends, Bondee seems like just another uninspired take on the concepts of Facebook and Twitter. However, one may argue that it has more in common with the acclaimed Animal Crossing and The Sims game franchises in both form and function than it does with the bigger social media platforms.

“Bondee kind of reminds me of Zepeto. It’s like a tiny version of yourself in a tiny virtual space doing all sorts of tiny little things with other tiny little people,” Elle explains. The platform provides users with hundreds of seemingly basic yet appealingly designed facial features, hairstyles, accessories, and clothing options to choose from, ensuring that most users may accurately represent who they are or who they ought to be.

Still, Bondee enables users to articulate more than just their appearances. Users are able to express their current moods and activities through the app’s Status feature, where users can choose from a variety of animated actions for their avatar to perform, ranging from lying sick in bed to dancing under the glow of a disco ball.

For Elle, another feature that contributed to the app’s wildfire spread is the avatars’ living spaces. “One of the features that I also like about the app is designing your own isometric room. You can also visit the rooms of your friends and leave cute little sticky notes behind,” she shares. 

With all these charming attributes, it may be difficult to explain why exactly Bondee has experienced such a drastic drop-off in user traffic over the last few weeks. Some netizens may point to natural trends in usage decline, while others boil it down to a lack of depth in the app’s premise. Another irrefutable possibility is the buzz around the developers’ plans to monetize the app using non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

NFTs in focus

Bondee’s original privacy policy contained mentions of NFT integration plans, stirring debates among netizens all over social media. Before one can truly grasp the dilemma, how can one begin to understand what NFTs really are as they steadily saturate the digital world?

Anton Cruz (4 BS ITE) describes NFTs as a symbol or a certificate that can be accessed through some form of a digital wallet. “It signifies that once you have this NFT, you own something or are part of something like a membership, an asset, or a token for perks from a project or a company,” he says. NFTs operate based on hype or noise, so depending on the kind of market, the value of an NFT can vary erratically.

For Bondee, this may ideally appear as an attractive offer. The noise and word-of-mouth the app stimulated over the past weeks could have made for a fruitful NFT environment. “Bondee is an aesthetically, visually cool platform. If you own such an NFT, you can use it to monetize or build around a hype,” Cruz mentions. Not only that, but the individuality it promises its users—a little version of you—could possibly make owning an NFT feel special and unique.

However, if there is one thing that Bondee has proven, it is that trends die just as quickly as they spread. In an app like Bondee that operates on hype and clout, investing in NFTs may be a gamble most users may not be willing to take.

It is therefore crucial for users and developers alike to consider how promising or potentially harming certain NFT assets are, especially when stability is not guaranteed.

Trends come and go

To many, it is hard to grasp the abstract nature of an NFT, or even the digital space it exists in. The metaverse is an aspect of this technological era that seems promising for innovation yet full of uncertainty.

Unfortunately for many regular, everyday users, navigating the metaverse proves to be much harder than a simple Google search. “I know little to nothing about NFTs…I have yet to find valid information that can help me learn about NFTs,” Elle admits.

While NFT integration plans may equip users with a greater awareness of the virtual world, the risk of information and data privacy concerns must be considered in the decision to support these new features or not. Furthermore, NFTs and its foundations of blockchain technology have been known to emit excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, harmful to the environment.

Elle remains skeptical of the app’s continued success considering not only its negative impacts on its user base but also the longevity of a mere trend. “I feel like [Bondee] is another little trend that people have hopped on. Unless the app has other features to add to the table, its popularity might fade away,” she says.

At the end of the day, Bondee’s sudden popularity proves the affinity of users to jump on trends that offer novel experiences. However, its short-lived shelf life is evidence that buzz does not always equate to sustained attention. 

*Editor’s note: The name of the interviewee has been changed at their request in order to protect his identity and privacy.