What you need to know about TenChat - the new Russian social network

TenChat was launched at the end of 2021 and managed to attract hundreds of thousands of users in a few months. Its active growth was clearly facilitated by the blocking of Western social networks. Although the service would certainly take off without it.

Who is this social network for?

On the Google Play Store and the App Store, TenChat calls itself "one of the most popular social networks for creating and posting original, quality content." And this is a very strange wording that is misleading.

On the vc.ru website, the founder of the project gave the service a much more accurate and capacious characteristicTenChat - business social network / vc.ru - a mix of LinkedIn, WeChat and the same social network of Mark Zuckerberg. If even shorter and simpler, then this is a service for finding useful contacts - workers and not only.

TenChat hints at its positioning already during registration - the application offers to choose a profile format. There are three of them: a freelancer, a company employee and a business owner.

Your feed and recommendations will depend on this. So, in theory, freelancers will be able to find orders, company employees - a new job or useful connections, business owners - partners or clients.

After you decide on the type of profile, you need to indicate your interests (IT, music, tourism and leisure, SEO and etc.), priorities (search for work, partners, investments, etc.) and a way to earn money, although this item can be skip.

You can also immediately fill out a personal page with information about education, skills and work experience. TenChat explicitly states that you do not need to paint a long sheet - a short and capacious biography will be much more useful.

All this information can become your resume and characteristics rolled into one.

What about content and communication

Of course, in TenChat, as in any social network, you can publish posts. The ribbon with them is displayed on the "Overview" tab. Even if you don't have added contacts, recommendations will appear there. True, they are updated slowly so far - the same materials can be observed for several days in a row.

Users are free to publish any content, but for now TenChat is more about work, achievements, joint projects and training. The tape is full of just such posts. Although this, of course, strongly depends on your contacts.

Recordings can be liked, commented on and sent to users, including through other applications.

For publications, there is everything you need, from text editing tools to choosing the subject of the post and attachments - photos, documents and other files.

To make the feed more useful, you need to subscribe to people close to you by interests. To do this, there is a "Connections" tab with several types of recommendations:

• People from the company where you work. TenChat will show all colleagues who are registered in the social network (if you have indicated the place of work in the profile).
• Those who hold the same or similar position in another company.
• People with a similar set of interests.

All recommendations are viewed in the "business tinder" mode, which is one of the main features of TenChat.

User cards need to be swiped right or left to subscribe or skip. There are also matches - with mutual subscription. Although nothing prevents you from writing a contact just like that.

After the first message through the profile page, the correspondence will be available on the "Chats" tab.

What are the tools to work

The fact that TenChat was primarily created for work and business is also evidenced by the set of built-in tools available on the Services tab. There is:

• search and verification of companies according to official registers: from the Federal Tax Service to the RKN;
• aggregator of state tenders;
• bankruptcy auctions (apartments and cars);
• auctions of municipal property (land plots, apartments).

Also, the application has a separate tab "VBC Market" with the services of the financial marketplace of the All-Russian Business Center. This is about bank guarantees, financing, loans, legal assistance and so on.

The developers plan to include a purchasing service for commercial organizations, company profiles, and, more interestingly, a function for selling goods and services. That is, TenChat will try to interest users whose business was advertised or worked through social networks blocked in Russia. These can be, for example, handmade sellers, hairdressers or tutors.

Adding such functionality will be able to attract a large new audience, but whether all this will look organic and convenient in TenChat is still an open question. An excess of built-in services of completely different directions blurs the positioning of the social network, which is available only through the application so far.

Perhaps, over time, developers will begin to give up something to make TenChat more understandable for beginners looking for a replacement for familiar social networks. The launch of the web version, which is also in the plans, will greatly contribute to this.

Who to recommend TenChat

Now TenChat is trying to be a communication tool for people who need useful contacts, customers or employees. It definitely doesn’t look like a platform for “original high-quality content”, at least for now, but the service definitely has development potential.

TenChat should be praised for its pleasant and user-friendly interface, lack of ads and just stable operation. It is already pleasant to use it, and I want to believe that it will find its niche.

Installing TenChat is definitely worth it for those who work in a large company or some kind of network structure. The service can become an alternative messenger for communicating with colleagues and like-minded people, as well as for searching for personnel.

TenChat will also be convenient for people who do not want to mix business and personal life. Work contacts can be transferred to this social network, and for everything else, use other services.

Even if TenChat may not be very useful to you now, it is definitely worth following its development.