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Will webcast spree come to a quick end?

china.org.cn / chinagate.cn by Wu Jin, February 9, 2017 Adjust font size:

Yang Haoran, a native of Shenyang, Liaoning Province, who left home to secure a job in Beijing, has installed six webcast apps in his cell phone.

Equipped with just a cell phone and a microphone, the hosts and hostesses often receive large rewards at extremely low costs. [File photo / Chinanews.com] 



Every day when he gets off work, Yang opens the apps alternately, with one for cooking at dinnertime, one for sports after the meal and one for video games before bedtime. He also counted on one downloaded for the purpose of snatching red envelopes during the Spring Festival when he was tipped more than 100 yuan (US$14.5) from the platform.

Yang's obsession for webcasting is nothing surprising. According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), users of webcasting in the country had reached 344 million by the end of last year, constituting 47.1 percent of the country's netizens.

The number of active users reached 100 million last year, and about 15.1 to 20.7 percent users watch the live streaming of concerts, reality shows, sports and video games.

Equipped with just a cell phone and a microphone, the hosts and hostesses often receive large rewards at extremely low costs. According to Wen Jing, a 24-year-old webcast hostess, she used to pocket 300 yuan less than an hour after she started her show; professional hostesses may earn tens of millions yuan a year from their webcast programs.

Chen Peng, vice professor of the Communication School of Nankai University, said that webcasting has shortened the distance and fostered instant interactive relations between audiences and hosts or hostesses through sending gifts.

China now owns more than 300 webcast platforms, many of which are strewn with homogeneous performances that are unable to keep the interest of audiences.

Last year, the Cyber Space Administration enacted regulations to regulate the webcast services. So far, about 30,000 webcast accounts and 90,000 webcast rooms have been shut down, signaling the initial overhaul of the emerging industry.

Yu Zhichao, founder of an incubator of online celebrities in Shenyang, said that webcasts should be centered on content to avoid bubbles.