With the end of the bustling first year of live broadcasting in 2016 and the boom of a large number of closed platforms in 2017, live broadcasting, a product of the Internet, is no longer in its glory days. Hundreds of livestreaming platforms closed, and the growth of the remaining independent livestreaming platforms slowed down. The reported chaos in the industry and problems in the profit model not only make the industry lose the source power for sustainable development, but also aggravate the deterioration of the industry model in a vicious circle, and the growth rate of the live broadcast industry begins to slow down.

Lost the support of capital in the anxiety, the deteriorating industry atmosphere, coupled with the continuous closure of platforms, independent broadcasters began to look for a new way out under the increasingly clear bleak scene, intent to regroup and go out again. At this time, independent broadcasters are faced with two avenues, one is the mode of social broadcast and the other is the mode of vertical content.

A new outlet for live streaming market

When independent live streaming is languor and struggling, two new ways are presented: first, social live streaming. When the fresh relationship brought by live streaming deeps into a stable relationship, users still tend to settle into mature social software such as QQ and wechat, so social relationship chain is also crucial for live streaming. For example, in the latest version of Tencent NOW Live, fans can join the QQ group of anchors with one click, making the social relationship between users and anchors richer and closer. The second is vertical content broadcasting, such as Penguin E-Sports, which meets the needs of e-sports users for “playing”, “watching” and “content diversification”. The type of broadcasting covers popular games of FPS, RTS and MOBA, and the total number of users has exceeded 60 million.

Among them, social live broadcasting bears the brunt, led by Momo and Tencent NOW live broadcasting, and social live broadcasting shows new vitality. Momo, relying on the precipitation of its social relationship chain, turned its losses into profits through live broadcasting, and its market value soared. However, the advantages of social live broadcasting are better reflected in NOW Live Broadcasting. According to the 2017 Fall Report released by Quest Mobile, the growth of entertainment livestreaming decreased by 20.2% compared with last year, but the number of users of NOW livestreaming peaked at 8.392 million in September. The power of NOW livestreaming, backed by Tencent resources, cannot be ignored.


Compared with isolated live streaming platforms, NOW Live streaming is embedded in mobile QQ in addition to its own APP. Back to QQ, itself can get huge traffic, and the social gene allows users to interact with each other twice. With Tencent’s pan-entertainment ecosystem, NOW Live has an overwhelming advantage in terms of the number and quality of user groups. In addition, Tencent social network and live streaming are complementary to each other in terms of two-way traffic. NOW live streaming has accumulated capital that comes from behind under Tencent’s ecosystem.

For NOW live and Momo such social live platform, and live to subvert the social interaction platform general strangers, as in urgent need of innovation, don’t want to ordinary way of social platform, live can significantly enhance the interactivity between strangers, social gene collisions with live, quickly the fierce reaction.

Secondly, as a platform with a complete social ecology, momo and NOW Live have obvious advantages in terms of stable traffic, complete online communities and innovative forms of live broadcasting, compared with new social broadcasting platforms starting from scratch.

In this context, social live broadcasting platforms represented by Momo and NOW live have begun to usher in a new era of live broadcasting.

In addition to the way of social live broadcasting, various modes of “live broadcasting +” are also being fully explored. Shaping more diverse forms of live broadcast and realizing vertical subdivision of content is another major trend of the live broadcast industry.

Social livestreaming will truly open the long-lived “post-livestreaming era”

The decline of independent live streaming may not be able to take off the hat of “short life cycle”, but the emergence of social live streaming has endowed live streaming with the energy of “long life”. Livestreaming and social networking are inseparable due to the integration of their attributes. Livestreaming is even more intended to open a new “post-livestreaming era” with the help of social networking and achieve long-term survival.

First of all, in the case that the capital market is returning to rationality, the wind is gradually subsided and the dividend of mobile traffic is gradually disappearing, NOW Live provides a great reference for us with the help of DAU at the peak output of QQ, that is, traffic will become more and more precious. As the entire mobile traffic dividend is fading, it is conceivable that attracting and effectively managing users is a key step for long-term development. This is exactly what social broadcast platforms are good at, and only social broadcast can maximize the efficiency of increasing traffic.

Secondly, social networking and live streaming can complement each other, which fully confirms the development potential of social streaming. With the growing maturity of live broadcast + mode, social live broadcast platforms will get traffic support from social services on the one hand, and social services will get feedback from secondary traffic of live broadcast on the other hand. Social live broadcast will go further.

In the post-live broadcasting era where “traffic is king”, social live broadcasting platforms have become the main force in this post-live broadcasting era. In the face of declining mobile traffic dividend, social live broadcasting can still maintain the ability of self-growth of traffic, and social live broadcasting has infinite potential for long-term development.

In general, live broadcasting can also be used as an accessory of other industries, and its multiple attributes bring out the greatest value. Although the independent era of live broadcasting has come to an end, live streaming has changed dramatically and become an integral and important form of expression in many Internet industries. Driven by social live broadcasting, the post-live broadcasting era is opening and a new live broadcasting era is coming.

Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110