Live streaming is rapidly emerging around the world, and well-known social networking sites such as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, and Twitter are all rushing into this trend. In China alone, there are already 300 live broadcast platforms that are already competing to be part of this huge pie on the internet. There are 235 million users alone in the Chinese market. During spring a report was published by Huawei (2017) mentions the market size of live streaming in 2016 has reached up to 7.7 billion US dollars, while the Chinese market accounts are accountable for more than 90% of that!
The industry of live streaming is not considered as a new establishment, some companies have been developing during early 2005. Until recent years, the demand of people to establish social connections anytime and anywhere has grown tremendously, especially after technology improvements of smartphones. Performance of smartphones with front-facing cameras has been increasing and broad rollout of LTE networking. Driven by these factors, so it begins a new era of mobile live streaming.
The main concept of live streaming is to express and share a recording of one’s real-time video on the internet for audiences to watch (Liu,2016). Majority of live streaming videos are improvised, contents of unplanned entertainment, thus making live streaming more acceptable to watch (Chen, 2012). Programs of live streaming can be very extensive, ranges from broadcast, TV shows, sports, e-sports, games, life sharing, e-business, education and more (Lai & Zhang, 2016).
Some scholars have studied why consumers love to watch live streaming platforms. Researches point to the feature of chatroom as an important tool that supports audiences to interact with the streamer and others, forming a virtual community (Weng, 2016). Building a place that grants strangers to communicate with each other anonymously, allowing strangers to cluster quickly due to the same hobby (Chen, 2012). Live streaming is considered as another social networking environment, same characteristics as Facebook. The difference is users on asynchronous social media has the possibility of creating a fake account. But if a performer is on synchronous social media, he or she may use a nickname, but you can still identify by their attire and appearances. (Scheibe et al, 2016).
An article mentioned that when users use the functionality of social networking sites, 70% of the time will be spent on browsing photos of other users. This analysis attributes to the voyeurism of humankind (EMBA magazine, 2010). Obviously, compared to browsing photo, watching real-time video of streamers can further expand their desire for a more fulfilled satisfaction on that aspect.
Meanwhile, performers on live streaming platforms are legitimate and their audiences are anonymous. Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory applies to this type of social networking environment (Chen, 2012). People put on a mask to participate, they will temporarily abandon their morality, attitude, etiquette, and have revelry wanton behaviors. Accordance to this theory, people have no constraints to their behaviors and attitudes, it is not difficult to explain why users on networks can have such extreme behavior. They often ridicule each other with irony, and mockery, or even demanding streamers to do indecent acts.
Cheung et al. (2009) also presented views on the virtual community. They believed purposive value, self-discovery, entertainment value, social enhancement, and maintaining interpersonal connectivity are the key values (or needs) that are widely adopted to determine the use of virtual communities. Nadkarni & Hofmann (2011) have integrated related researches. They pointed out the motivation of user to use social networking is primarily determined by two basic social needs, the sense of belonging and the desire to perform.
For live streaming, the desire to perform may way heavier than the sense of belonging. Donating gifts is a common business model, the audience can buy a virtual gift and donate to their favorite streamer, during this process, the platform system will make an announcement in the chatroom. This creates a class gap, which satisfies the user’s vanity and the sense of superiority. Hence why a lot of audiences give out gifts constantly to achieve their desire to perform.
In another study of different orientation, shows that social network sites emphasize on user’s interaction and involvement, users are the key to a successful website. This idea is associated with the network externalities which is mentioned by earlier studies. Katz & Shapiro (1985) defined network externalities as ‘‘the value or effect that users obtain from a product or service can bring more values to consumers with the increase of users, complementary product, or service.’’. As such, the number of users and availability of complementary goods or services are factors that drive network externalities (Lin & Lu, 2011).
Android is the best example. Android’s open policy let to a quick access to penetrate the market, attract more software developers to provide services. That causes the values of Android to improve and attract more users. In the same way, live streaming began to gain lot more attention, by sharing other individuals computer game process, creating a group of viewers, which led to more platforms to enter this market, along with different varieties of different business models, offering more diversified program content to increase more users.
Live streaming is still in the second stage of PLC, this industry continuously grows by more features and users. In the near future, it will become an industry that cannot be ignored.
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