Live streaming is no match for short videos: Live streaming is not as promising as short videos

Not long ago, Tencent invested in Kuaishou , which aroused people's attention and thinking about short video platforms such as Kuaishou. However, according to relevant information, there were more than 30 financing events in 2016, and the financing scale of various short video projects reached 5.37 billion yuan. Among the investment institutions, there are well-known venture capital funds such as Sequoia Capital, Zhen Fund, and Matrix China. The reason why short videos became popular is basically the same as that for live streaming .

But judging from the current development trend, short videos seem to be more valued by the capital market and major Internet giants. Not long ago, Tencent invested US$350 million in Kuaishou, and Alibaba invested 2 billion yuan to support Xin Tudou's transformation into short videos.

Toutiao , Weibo, WeChat , QQ Space, iQiyi , Youku, Tencent Video and other platforms have also made efforts in the field of short videos. Weibo is using Miaopai to completely replace its video playback service, Youku and iQiyi are already providing support in many aspects based on short videos, and Toutiao is relying on short videos to further increase user time.

Overseas, after Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2013, the traffic of short videos increased dramatically. Today, the video browsing time of Instagram users maintains a growth rate of 40% every six months. Therefore, judging from various trends, it is not surprising that short videos are favored by the capital market. But if short videos become a hot commodity in the eyes of the capital market, live streaming will be hit.

On the one hand, the users of live streaming and short videos overlap to some extent, that is, they all want to kill more fragmented time, and they all tend to consume content such as watching videos.

Judging from the current transmission technology and network environment, uploading and downloading videos are very fast, traffic is getting cheaper, and the network is getting faster. Therefore, content consumption of live streaming and short videos are both on the rise . But the trend of short videos is on the rise, while the trend of live streaming is declining.

1. Live streaming users are gradually approaching saturation, and breakthroughs in gameplay are still difficult, and the imagination space is shrinking.

Judging from the number of live broadcast users and breakthroughs, the current number of live broadcast users has reached nearly 400 million, gradually approaching saturation. There are currently more than 200 live broadcast platforms , and the current live broadcast landscape has basically solidified. The possibility of the emergence of new exclusive beasts is very low.

In addition, the mainstream of the entire industry is focusing on boring live broadcasts that focus on appearance, and users are suffering from aesthetic fatigue. It is still relatively difficult to break through in the vertical field of live broadcasts , and it is becoming increasingly difficult to have breakthroughs in new forms of expression. The frequent exposure and investigation of pornographic and vulgar live broadcasts are affecting the image and brand of the live broadcast industry. It can be said that the current imagination space for live streaming has been shrunk.

Short videos are on the rise. According to a recent short video data report , as of January 2017, the penetration rate of vertical short video apps was 19.3%, with a user base of over 130 million. On average, nearly one in every five mobile Internet users is a short video user. But despite this, compared with the user scale of live streaming, short videos are still in a period of rapidly growing demographic dividend, and the growth curve is far from reaching its peak.

Now more and more news and jokes exist in the form of short videos. Many content celebrities with great imagination have emerged in the short video field, such as Yitiao, Ergeng, Wang Nima, Chen Xiang Liudianban, etc. At the same time, some traditional authoritative media are also producing and making short videos to find new forms of content expression.

From the perspective of entrepreneurial threshold, major live streaming platforms are currently focusing on live streaming of appearance, which has triggered a stereotype of user participation: if I am beautiful, I will live stream. This results in the user groups who do not have an advantage in appearance having a low willingness to participate in live broadcasts, so it is difficult for it to become a game that ordinary people are willing to participate in.

Short videos do not require showing faces and can be shot casually. For example, the rise of Kuaishou means that it has allowed ordinary people to find a more ordinary-friendly platform. No matter how good-looking they are, everyone can be the protagonist. Therefore, in the eyes of users, short video platforms are better platforms for expressing themselves, both in terms of sense of participation and identity. From this perspective, short videos are more attractive to entrepreneurs and users to participate in creation.

From the perspective of spreadability, short videos are relatively short in duration, and concise content also means they contain more valuable information , and have strong retention and spreadability. For example, some funny, movie clips, and interesting short videos are more likely to appear in WeChat Moments or information content platforms.

Although live streaming is more immediacy and interactivity than short videos, its fatal weakness is the lack of spreadability. Although various live broadcasts of appearances meet the needs of users to kill fragmented time, it is not easy to retain fans. Users are unlikely to be motivated to forward and spread a boring and chatty live video, and the requirements for content are too high.

From the perspective of spreadability, live broadcasts are more likely to trigger secondary spread by people than well-edited interesting short videos.

2. Live streaming is not as good as short videos in terms of content value accumulation

Therefore, the advantages of live streaming are long-term online time, good real-time performance, and strong interactivity. The content presentation format also makes the live streaming content instant but lacks value. Its greatest value lies in interaction, but it is difficult to precipitate the value of the content itself. After the live streaming is completed, its value has been consumed. Fans are less likely to forward the content for the second time after jumping to different live broadcast rooms , because live broadcast is far less interesting and spreadable than short videos.

So we see that there are very few real word-of-mouth hits in live streaming content, but there are a lot of interesting and funny short videos. These things can be watched repeatedly by netizens, and through secondary dissemination and comments, they can easily become hits and are more likely to generate commercial value and long-tail effects.

Because for video content, if the value of the content cannot be precipitated and disseminated secondary, it means that it will be difficult to leave behind something truly substantial to elevate its content value and brand value. Its disadvantage is that it is also very difficult to produce high-quality content , and the continuous output of high-quality content often relies more on the operation of an organization or team.

3. Many offline fragmented scenes are not suitable for live broadcasting, but short videos are suitable: short videos are more likely to occupy fragmented time

Live streaming actually has certain requirements for offline scenarios and also has considerations of time and traffic. For example, a popular anchor will often broadcast live during a specific time period. If you miss this time period, it will be difficult for users or fans to watch the replay due to lack of interaction. Because the core value of live streaming lies in interaction, secondary dissemination and playback are not interactive. It can be said that live streaming’s success depends on interaction, but its failure also depends on interaction.

In addition, traffic is a big problem. Watching live broadcasts for a long time requires a certain amount of traffic, so it is limited to the scene and does not have the characteristics of fragmented viewing anytime and anywhere. However, short videos will not do this. They are basically calculated in seconds or minutes, which is suitable for users to watch in fragmented mobile time periods.

The reason why watching live broadcasts is limited to certain scenarios is that based on the national psychology and character, people generally will not watch an entire live broadcast of an internet celebrity posing in a public closed space (such as a subway or bus). Live broadcasts are not particularly suitable for offline fragmented time scenarios such as queuing, waiting for red lights, taking the bus, or taking the subway.

Because from the current content attributes of live broadcasts, which are mainly about appearance and borderline content, watching live broadcasts is more of a relatively private personal behavior . After all, if vulgar content accidentally appears in the live broadcast, it is bound to be embarrassing. It is necessary to consider the eyes of the surrounding onlookers and the individual's image and taste in the minds of others. Short videos are more about interesting and funny content, and are suitable for stress-free viewing in various fragmented scenarios.

From the perspective of content form, live streaming is a content form that gathers traffic in a short period of time, allowing fans to have enough sense of participation and show-off. Short videos, on the other hand, provide a sense of identity and fun, and are a form of content entrepreneurship . The advantage of short videos is that the current user base and niche market have already emerged, and in the future a large number of users will pursue more personalized short video content and services.

4. Short video content is more focused, and there is more room for commercial monetization models

In addition, most live broadcasts are boring and sporadic, and the duration is long. People are more likely to be distracted by such boring content and constantly enter and exit various live broadcast rooms. Moreover, advertising insertion in this type of video format appears stiff and boring.

Short videos generally focus on a certain topic or vertical content area. Currently, short videos have already formed some top content influencers in the fields of movies, comedy, food, astrology, cars , etc. The quality of this type of short video content is easier to attract fans, and then brands can be brought in based on the content for commercial monetization.

Because the content is vertically segmented and focused, short videos are more likely to have "patch" ads inserted in the beginning and end of the video, or to insert soft ads around the theme of the short video, which is similar to the way soft articles are inserted. The only difference is that the presentation format has changed from text to video.

The other is the e-commerce shopping guide business monetization model, which is similar to live streaming, using internet celebrities as the main body to carry out advertising placements for cosmetics or clothing. There are also other membership fee models, which are generally suitable for those who have established a certain influence in a certain vertical content field and accumulated a certain number of fans. Membership fees are charged based on fan stratification to create circle culture.

Another category is brands that directly enter the short video platform to output brand content. Snapchat started to invite brands to open exclusive channels and create filters for brand advertisements a long time ago, attracting many brands to join. For example, Burberry was the first to enter Snapchat as early as 2015, where users can watch Burberry's live shows or other related product information.

According to monitoring data from third-party monitoring platform Snaplytics on 500 brands operating independently on Snapchat, nearly 54.8% of brand-following users will watch Stories released by brands, and 87.5% of them will watch a brand's entire Story.

What we know is that short videos have higher user acceptance because their content is more focused and their commercial monetization model is more flexible. This shows that the stickiness and competitiveness threshold of attracting fans for commercialization by using content operation as the core selling point will be higher than that of attracting fans by using cone-shaped facial features as a selling point.

In this sense, short videos bring real fans, while live broadcasts bring bored audiences. The former are more loyal, while the latter keep jumping from one live broadcast room to another to satisfy their own voyeurism.

From the user's perspective, for more and more young photographers born in the 1990s or even the 2000s, they can shoot some original but personalized video content with a relatively low threshold. Abroad, on platforms such as Youtube, Vine, and Instagram, a large number of young photographers are very active. Short videos are undoubtedly more convenient and suitable for user visual expression in various mobile scenarios. In this sense, the threshold for using live streaming is higher than that for short videos.

From the current perspective, many small and medium-sized live broadcast platforms have collapsed, and many large live broadcast platforms, in order to avoid users fleeing the live broadcast platforms and the tendency of low stickiness, have introduced short videos to save the situation. For example, Yingke and Huajiao began to launch the "Video" and "Nearby" functions, and Momo also began to introduce short videos to accumulate content and undertake monetization tasks.

5. Live streaming takes up a lot of bandwidth, but the content produced is a lot of "industrial wastewater"

In the final analysis, judging from the current fatigue and shortcomings of the live broadcast industry, live broadcasting takes up a lot of bandwidth, but the content that comes out is a lot of "industrial wastewater", and the business model is difficult to form. From the perspective of return on investment, the monetization cycle is long and the output and input are not equal.

Judging from future trends, both short videos and live broadcasts will coexist, but short videos will have a longer lifespan. It is a relatively slow-heating product form, and there will be more room for imagination for content mining experts based on vertical segmentation and professional fields. So to a certain extent, short videos are more like a content product than live broadcasts, and they will gradually erode the fans of live broadcasts. The coexistence and integration of these two content forms will become the next trend.

The integration of short videos and live broadcasts may break through the current growth ceiling

Regarding the integration of short videos and live broadcasts, we can talk about the product Kuaishou. It operates with short video content as the core and relies on algorithms to recommend content that users like. Users can consider whether to subscribe to its live broadcast based on the relevant short video content of interest. The live broadcast content of the short video content operators that users follow will also appear in the user's information flow .

In other words, Kuaishou currently uses short videos as the content forerunner to integrate live streaming. That is, content creators publish short videos on the platform that can show their personality, professionalism or fun. After fans consume and spread the content and become interested, they will follow the creators. Creators use short video content as a touchpoint to connect with fans, start live broadcasts and guide users to follow their live broadcast trends and then receive rewards.

From this we can see that short videos, as an important carrier for content to reach fans, will open the way to connect with fans, which will be more sticky and loyal than opening a live broadcast room to attract fans , and the consumption value is higher than live broadcast.

From this we can see that the integration of short videos and live broadcasts allows content creators to first let users understand their work, then understand the person, and after matching their values, preferences and interests, they can then look at their appearance. This video social model relatively extends the depth of the social relationship between fans and creators, and increases user stickiness.

For the capital market, short videos are more meaningful as investment references. At present, the overall growth of mobile Internet users has slowed down. At a time when traffic is becoming more and more expensive and even the traffic of WeChat public accounts has encountered bottlenecks, the traffic of short videos has been growing rapidly this year. This is also due to the fact that the temperament of short videos is popular. It is a combination of social interaction + information acquisition + entertainment and leisure + fragmented reading. The future trend is that short videos will become a product for ordinary people to show themselves, while live streaming will be a product that is more in line with the temperament of the anchors with good looks.

The positioning of live streaming and short videos is more similar to Weibo and WeChat. The latter will have a higher chance of winning due to the word-of-mouth effect among grassroots and civilians.

Short videos are a combination of social interaction + information acquisition + entertainment and fragmented reading . They will obviously attract more capital in the future. Various short video experts who tailor-make PGC or professionally produce PGC content may be the first to rely on advertising creativity to implant e-commerce traffic diversion models for monetization. The content production of personal short video producers with UGC as the core may also be gradually guided. In the second half of the live broadcast platform, it may be necessary to think about how to integrate the form and content of short videos to break through the current ceiling and growth dilemma.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @王新喜 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map