In an era where everything can be broadcast live, the live streaming in the Jianghu by giants in China have become lively. As the “江湖”in Chinese language,its pinyin in Chinese is “Jianghu”,which literally translates as”rivers and lakes”,but it metaphorically refers to an alluvial underworld of hucksters and heroes beyond the reach of the imperial government.

Five years ago, no one thought that live streaminging in China would be as hot as it is today.

Games, e-commerce, entertainment… Almost all business forms in China are migrating to live streaminging. Even those big businessmen have put down their deep shelves and came to the camera to interact with the audience. Some bigwigs even made bold claims that the future will be the era of live streaming Internet. Behind the hustle and bustle, the Chinese giant is accelerating its layout. If we take a look at the top ten internet companies in China by market value, we will find that all the giants have been involved in the live streaming business except Didi.

As giant players entered the game, the rules of the game were rewritten, the balance of interests was broken, and different factions began to appear in the live streaming.

Probably we can be divided into four categories:

one is the e-commerce department,which is led by Taobao.

The second is the short video system,which is represented by Douyin and Kuaishou.

The third is the e-sports department, which is dominated by Tencent.

Fourthly, it is small play series, made of Baidu, Xiaomi, NetEase, Ctrip, meituan,etc.

According to the different genes and tones of the enterprise, they are self-contained in terms of play style and ruled by the river. At the same time, fighting and co-operation among different factions have become frequent. The latest news is that Kuaishou and JD.com have joined forces to reach a strategic cooperation. Kuaishou users will be able to directly purchase JD.com’s self-operated products in Kuaishou stores, and the two parties will jointly create a short video live e-commerce ecosystem. This is a big step for cross-border cooperation between the short video department and the e-commerce department. What is certain is that Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo of the e-commerce department and the fast hands and vibrato of the short video department will compete and cooperate on a larger scale in the future.

In an era where everything can be broadcast, the rivers and lakes broadcast by giants have become lively. Today, Domatters will take stock of the four major factions that the current giant is broadcasting.

01

Department of E-commerce: Taobao is the leading brother, Jingdong and Pinduoduo follow up

Taobao is the leader of e-commerce live streaming. As early as March 2016, Taobao Live began trial operation. At that time, Pinduoduo had only been online for less than half a year, and Kuaishou had just launched the live streaming function. Douyin had not yet appeared.

Taobao Live is cut into the live track from the content side, it is incubated in Taobao’s content ecology. Alibaba has been working on ”contentization” since 2016, trying to help Taobao extend user stay time and improve the conversion efficiency of traffic. After trying both graphic and short video products, Taobao Live hit Ali’s pain point. On June 20, 2016, Zhang Dayi sold 19 million of the goods at the Jiubao base for 4 hours. On Alibaba Investor Day three months later, Taobao Live was introduced to global investors by Jiang Fan.

In the following three years, Taobao’s live streamings progressed by leaps and bounds. In 2018, it exceeded 100 billion transactions for the first time, and ushered in the first year of e-commerce live streaming in 2019. These two have since established its status in the live streaming track. The importance of Taobao live streaming to Ali is evident from Jiang Fan’s promotion. Jiang Fan was appointed president of Taobao at the end of 2017 and became president of Tmall in March 2019. Jiang Fan’s biggest contribution to Ali, the first is to let Taobao complete the transfer of PC to mobile, and the second is to internally incubate Taobao live streaming.

For ordinary users, the biggest highlight of Taobao live streaming is the possession of two super anchors, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi. “The first sister with goods” and “the first brother with lipstick”, the two head anchors divided up the most traffic of the entire Taobao live streaming plate, and also attracted most of the attention in the industry. This laid the ecology of Taobao live streaming-resources and traffic were concentrated to the head anchor, and the living space of the waist and tail anchor was squeezed. Experts who sell less than 10% of their full-time sales and live streamings take away far more than 10% of the turnover, as well as eye-popping million-level commissions. As the leader of the e-commerce department live streaming, Taobao live streaming has a complete ecology and has formed clear game rules.

JD.com and Pinduoduo are latecomers, but they are fierce. JD’s live streaming function was launched in September 2016, only half a year later than Taobao live streaming, but its momentum is much smaller than Taobao. Until the first half of this year, JD.com’s live action suddenly increased. First, Dong Mingzhu brought live goods on JD.com, with a turnover of 700 million yuan, setting a record for the whole home appliance industry. Then, Xu Lei, CEO of JD Retail, personally staged a live streaming of the first show selling a house to promote JD’s self-operated real estate that went live in May.

On May 27 this year, Jingdong Retail and Kuaishou reached a strategic cooperation, Kuaishou users will be able to directly purchase Jingdong’s self-operated goods in Kuaishou stores, and Jingdong provides distribution and after-sales. JD.com attaches great importance to the live streaming business. Zhang Guowei, the head of JD’s live streaming business, said in April that this year JD will make live streaming a standard for merchants, and promote JD’s self-operated merchants to achieve a 100% broadcast rate.

The live streaming of Pinduoduo was the latest, but it caused great shock in the industry. In January of this year, Pinduoduo live streaming was launched; in March, the first batch of MCN institutions were opened for application; in April, former NBA and CBA player Marbury made a live streaming e-commerce debut in Pinduoduo. Different from Taobao live streaming, currently Pinduoduo is mainly based on store live streaming, not live streaming. Therefore, in the live streaming room of Pinduoduo, you can’t see the halo-carrying stars, most of them are self-selling.

Pinduoduo did not replicate the path Taobao Live went through. In contrast, Pinduoduo Live started with commodities as the core, encouraging merchants to operate their own private domain traffic and serve the store, rather than gathering a few top celebrities. No difference in category.

At this point, the three giants of e-commerce all came to an end and launched a hot war in the field of live streamings. This year’s 618 will be the first showdown of the e-commerce live streaming.

02

Short Video Department: Kuaishou and Douyin Fight for Hegemony

Before the rise of Kuaishou and Douyin, the protagonist of the live broadcast was the live show. The live broadcast at that time either relied on face value or talent. It was popular that the anchor sang, yelled, and talked in the live broadcast room. The live broadcast of the show did not attract super giants, and it has always been a situation of multi-faceted melee. It was not until the short video became the universal application and the real-time live broadcast function began to be strengthened that the giants entered the game one after another.

From the perspective of the product, it is difficult to define whether the giant has achieved short video live streaming or short video live streaming has achieved the giant. The biggest difference with e-commerce live streaming is that the giant was already a giant at the beginning of its birth, but live streaming is just strengthening the wall of the giant. Short videos are not made by giants but by startups company, and startups company have become giants.

Kuaishou initially made GIF animations, but later transformed into a short video community. When the C round of financing was completed in 2016, the valuation was only US$2 billion. Then the short video industry broke out, and Kuaishou got Tencent’s investment in 2017. In 2017, registered users exceeded 500 million. Today, Kuaishou’s latest valuation has exceeded 26 billion US dollars.

Douyin is a new product that  ByteDance only hatched in 2016, when Zhang Yiming had made a phenomenal headline today. Today’s headlines let ByteDance into the giant’s candidate, and Douyin made it officially a giant. The short video live broadcast of this track has also become a pattern of fast-hand shaking and vigor.

Quick hands and vibrato are not short of traffic. From a commercial point of view, the platform should consider how to realize this huge traffic. Advertising, games, and e-commerce are all mature monetization paths. Among them, e-commerce brought the highest level of attention caused by goods. At present, Kuaishou and Douyin have developed their own representative internet celebrities, Kuaishou has Sanda brother and Simba, and Douyin has Luo Yonghao.

Short video and e-commerce, the two camps that did not directly intersect, now have more cross-integration because of the small thing of live streaming. Short video access to e-commerce, the two major factions join hands to bring goods, the situation becomes complicated.

Judging from the current situation,Kuaishou approached JD.com and Douyin approached Taobao. As early as November 2018, JD.com had hosted the event of “Selling King on Quick-Hand short video”. The head anchor “Sanshou Brother” sold 50 million yuan in three hours and 160 million yuan on the same day. This time, Jingdong and Kuaishou reached a strategic cooperation, which was interpreted by the industry as Kuaishou team Jingdong, which will face off with Douyin Taobao.

Douyin officially launched e-commerce in May 2018. At present, Douyin’s short-video e-commerce system has gradually been improved. Among them, the supplier is the user’s own Douyin store or Taobao, Jingdong, Koala, Vip.商平台。 Business platform. Among them, Taobao is the main traffic undertaker. One side has traffic, lacks commodities and supply chain, and one side has commodities and supply chain. New sources of traffic are needed. Short video and e-commerce fit together. Live broadcast with goods seems to be a win-win cooperation model, but who you choose to cooperate with may affect the pattern of the e-commerce industry. In fact, all parties are playing with their little abacus.

Short video to do e-commerce is essentially to grab business with e-commerce giants. But the short video platform has traffic, which is exactly the resource that the e-commerce giant currently needs most.

E-commerce giants in China are reluctant to let short-video e-commerce giants sit alone and end up sharing their own cakes. They are also unwilling to shake their hands free of charge to guide e-commerce giants for free, and they are washed away by fans. For example, Kuaishou, in terms of platform tonality, the industry generally believes that Kuaishou and Pinduoduo are the best match. Both are emerging from the sinking market, one is a loyal old iron, and the other is a small town youth. The reason is that it can seamlessly connect fast hand traffic.

In fact, during the 618 promotion in 2019, Kuaishou had a short-term cooperation with Pinduoduo. Kuaishou anchors combined with Pinduoduo merchant resources to do live product promotion in Pinduoduo APP. But in the end, Kuaishou chose to reach a strategic cooperation with JD.com. To stand on the top of the hill, do not want to be constrained by others, but have to cooperate. The admission giants compete, game, and cooperate while taking what they need, so that the Jianghu of live broadcasts are full of gunpowder.

03

E-sports department: Tencent unifies the Jianghu, small and medium-sized player companies will be eliminated

In addition to live streaming, another track of the giant’s in-depth layout is game live  streaming. In China, the live game here belongs to Tencent. In the eyes of most ordinary users, the competitive landscape of live game streaming is due to competitions between tigers and fishes. From the listing of Huya Fish, the live broadcast of games has entered the era of double heroes. Currently, Huya and Douyu account for nearly 80% of the market.

But in fact, the real big guy in the field of game live streaming is actually Tencent. Unlike the situation of multi-player games on other live tracks, in the past few years, Tencent has been step by step and has unified the Jianghu of live game. The largest shareholder behind Huya and Douyu is Tencent. Tencent holds 36.9% and 38% of the equity of the two respectively. In addition to Huya and Douyu, Tencent’s Penguin eSports is also a heavyweight player in the field of live game streaming. Calculated by the size of active users, the market share of Huya and Douyu is 45.9% and 36.5%, respectively. Penguin E-sports ranked fourth with 3.3%.

In addition, Tencent also invested in Dragon Ball Live and Station B, which are also important game live broadcast platforms. Among them, Dragon Ball Live has the fifth largest market share after corporate e-sports. In summary, there are four domestic top ten game live streaming platforms related to Tencent, which together account for 86% of the market share. Among the top ten e-sports games in the first half of 2019, there are seven games developed or operated by Tencent.

On the one hand, Tencent is self-employed, and on the other hand, it is investing so that it continues to increase its voice in the game live broadcast industry. From January to June 2019, the game live broadcast platform with Tencent’s capital relationship accounted for 88.7% of the live broadcast, compared with 59.3% a year ago.

In addition to Tencent, other giants are also eyeing this piece of live game broadcasting. Netease, as a company with games as its main business, has CC Live. In fact, Kuaishou has already started to lay out live games and completed the initial platform accumulation. In the first half of 2019, the proportion of live broadcasts of fast-handed games reached 18.5%, which is already one of the important live broadcast platforms for large-scale domestic games.

The watermelon video of ByteDance started the game live broadcast layout in early 2018. Under the strategy of ByteDance vigorously promoting the game business, it will also become a new variable in the game live broadcast industry in the future.

However, neither the traditional giants nor the emerging giants can shake Tencent’s strong position in live game streaming in the short term. Behind Tencent’s unification, small and medium-sized players have been eliminated. In the past few years, there have been at least eight former heavyweight live game players who were forced to withdraw from the market due to product, operation, and capital issues. On the list of live game deaths, there are Bump TV, American Broadcast, 233 mobile game live broadcast, Wukong TV, water drop live broadcast, national live broadcast, Panda live broadcast, Nice TV. The principle of “transition of giants, no survival” is fully reflected in the field of live game streaming. Judging from Tencent’s series of actions, the future control of live game streaming will only become stronger.

04

Small fights: the less powerful giants cross the river by feeling the stones

Tencent, Ali, JD.com, Pinduoduo, ByteDance, and Kuaishou have all been vigorously deployed on the live broadcast. What are the remaining giants doing?

E-commerce, short videos, and games are all forms of business that are closely integrated with live streaming. In contrast, the giants whose businesses are less related to live streaming are more struggling to cross the river, while watching and exploring.

For example, Baidu’s approach is to do a live knowledge broadcast. On April 15th, Baidu released the “Baidu Live Concentration Plan”, which will add high-quality pan-knowledge anchors to its support plan. At the Vientiane Conference in May, Baidu proposed to provide 500 million subsidies to create 1,000 star anchors. Although Baidu had already launched the live broadcast function more than a year ago, the mode at that time was mainly based on the show, and the entrance was embedded in the Baidu App, good-looking videos, small national videos and Baidu Post Bar. Unlike other live broadcast platforms, this time Baidu will focus its efforts on information and knowledge. Two days after the Baidu Vientiane Conference, Li Yanhong started his live broadcast debut, personally broadcasting the platform for Baidu. The theme of Li Yanhong’s live broadcast is “Home·Book”, which is a dialogue with Fan Deng, the founder of Fan Deng Reading. The live broadcast started for 10 minutes, and the number of participants exceeded 1 million. Baidu, who has caught a late episode, has just taken an important step in the live broadcast, but compared with e-commerce, short video, and e-sports live broadcast, Baidu’s knowledge live broadcast still has a long way to go.

Ctrip pushed out the founder Liang Jianzhang and launched the “BOSS live broadcast”, which turned an entrepreneur into an online celebrity. According to Liang Jianzhang, from the outbreak to mid-March, Ctrip has processed tens of millions of cancelled orders, involving transactions worth more than 31 billion yuan. So Liang Jianzhang, as the boss, personally battled for his own products. Unlike other giants’ long-term strategic layout and seizing the tuyere track, Ctrip’s live broadcast is completely sales-oriented. The big anchor, Liang Jianzhang, promotes Ctrip’s products by performing live shows on city tours. From Sanya, Hainan, to Miao Village in Guizhou, to Huzhou, Zhejiang, and then to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, Liang Jianzhang plays different roles according to different live broadcast cities and themes. From the “Miao King” in Guizhou, to the ancient white clothes in the bamboo sea of Anji, to Tang Bohu in Suzhou, Liang Jianzhang live broadcasted unambiguously and seemed to be happy, and the audience also bought it.

Meituan released a poster about “travel live”in late April of this year. You can search for “travel live” through the Meituan app to enter the live broadcast collection interface. Tickets for the Meituan Group have been launched on the “Scenic Spot Live”, claiming that the country’s travel experts will broadcast the way for you. In addition, Meituan is also recruiting travel anchors to build a live broadcast ecosystem.

Xiaomi also pushed out Lu Weibing, president of Xiaomi China in early April of this year, and carried out the first live broadcast of the president. The supporting word is “General President Lu will fly bravely, and Reed will follow forever!”. In addition, on the eve of the “Rice Noodle Festival” this year, Xiaomi Youpin quietly launched the new channel “Youpin Live”.

Netease Yanxuan released the “Xing Chi Plan” on May 26 this year. It plans to recruit 1,000 high-quality celebrity anchors and 100 MCN institutions for the entire network such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, Taobao, etc., and set up generous financial rewards and flow support.

The business of these giants is not very closely integrated with live broadcast, so the pace is relatively small, more or less with some sense of trial and error.

So far, except for Didi, there are no big moves, the Chinese Internet giants have already arranged in the live track. Although the enthusiasm and depth of the giants’ participation in live streaming are different because of the difference in business nature and corporate genes, at least one thing is clear, they will not give up this big cake.

In the future, the competition and game of giants in the live broadcast ecosystem will become more and more exciting.

Today’s topic

Which live streaming platform do you like in China?

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