Why Live-Streamer Do that
As always, we started as a virtual community to say. In a paper which is published not long ago, users participate in virtual communities by mobile network is considered to have four motivations. They are
(1) Users want to get information to achieve their purpose.
(2) Users hope that they can contribute to the society.
(3) Users want to get pleasure from interaction with others.
(4) Users want to communicate with others anytime and anywhere (Liao, 2015). When this concept is extended to live-streamer, it was amended to the sense of belonging, achievement and get a chance to show about themselves (Lai & Chang, 2016).
These motivations were verified when live-streaming be used in gaming video for the first time. Streamers just want to share their game process, experience or something fun rather than earn other benefits. However, there are some business opportunities were found by platform operators and enterprises. For the platform operators, the number of audiences is everything. For the enterprises, they can do advertising through the means of product placement. So, they began to release some material rewards to encourage live-streamers to try to find ways to attract more audience. After that, motivations for being a streamer are no longer as simple as belonging or esteem. So Lai & Chang (2016) mentioned that live-streamer can get two kinds of rewards. They are respectively a material reward and spiritual reward. The material reward is meant bonus or products (which is sponsored by a vendor). And the spiritual reward means a self-satisfaction and fans’ compliments and worship.
What Did Live-Streamer Do
Since Live-streaming has become remunerative work, a lot of Live-streamer began to focus on increasing the number of their fans. Especially they recognized that be a Live-streamer can earn more money than his vocation.
Therefore, Live-streamer changed their personal image to cater to the audience. They turn to humorous, optimistic, vulgar and sexual to capture more “follow”, “subscribe”, “donate” (Chen, 2012). As with TV shows, sensual program content is always able to get a high rating. When the beginning live-stream start in vogue, it can often be seen that inappropriate content playing in Live-stream show, no matter in which country or region. These situations cannot be improved until the government is involved in this new industry.
So that is one important thing we learned: Live-streamer can do anything for attracting more audience.
What Does Live-streamer Get
Live-steamer can get material rewards such as money or sponsored products when he or she performs in a show. In addition, they can also enjoy a sense of superiority in the process. When live-streaming is in progress, old messages will overflow due to newer, and the new messages will become old quickly. The chat-room is too busy to respond to all the message so that Live-streamer can only choose some of them to reply. They usually choose those messages which they could easy to win applause. This situation indirectly gives live-streamer a special power (Chen, 2012). And this power is why live-streamers feel the superiority.
However, this special power has a certain extent of the danger. If you cannot make all of the audience feel interesting through few answers, you may be lost some of them. Finally, these audiences turn to watch other live-streamer’s show or looking for another way to amuse because they have not be met (Chen, 2012).
The Social Contribution of the Live-streamer
Most of the contribution of the live-streamer to society is make joy for everyone absolutely. Apart from this, Solomon (2005) has shown that if Live-streamer placed a product or a concept in their show, it can induce users to share with other people, and it will result in a good marketing effectiveness.
So, live-streamer is able to be an opinion leader to influence audiences’ lifestyle and personal process, that will be conducive to enterprises for commercial exploitation.
Reference: - Wei-Luo Chen, 2012, The Research Of The Audience Of Justin TV, Master Thesis of The Department of Communication of National Chung Cheng University - Ming-Hong Lai & Jun-Wei Zhang, 2016, Exploring Usage Behaviors of Webcast Video Platform: From Awareness to Adoption, Journal of National Taichung University of Science and Technology Vol.3 No.1 Dec. 2016 31-48 - Tze-Hsien Liao, 2015, Mobile Virtual Community (MVC) Continuous Participation Decision: Antecedent Model and Consequent Model, Journal of e-Business Vol.17 No.2 Jun. 2015 183-234 - Solomon, M. R., 2005, Consumer behavior, New Jersey, NJ: Pearson Education
