In Sina Weibo’s product portfolio, live streaming is part of its high-efficiency information circulation chain, from short video premier, live streaming premier to live streaming, post-production and traffic accumulation (take People’s Daily for an example); in Sina Weibo’s ads strategy, however, live streaming is only one type of video ads.

According to Lei Tao, co-founder of Yixia Technology, show room only tapped into the needs of a minority group of people. “In the future, 80 per cent of internet users will become live streaming users, while only 5 per cent will become show room users,” he predicted. The revenue model of mobile streaming will no longer be limited to user contribution and product recommendation. Instead, live streaming may be able to grab the ads revenue of video websites and mobile games, according to Lei.

“The problem is: advertisers’ awareness often lags far behind the trend. At present, live streaming is considered one of the marketing methods, but there isn’t any settled budget for it. Therefore, randomness prevails,” Leiexplained. Besides, he believed the market boom would come in two years. As a matter of fact, Yi TV has already accounted for 50 per centof mobile marketing activities at present.

While Weibo considers live streaming a part of its effort to integrate video social networking, Momo regards live streaming as a core part of its video social networking strategy. By emphasizing on “social networking”, Momo might have realized the limited user base and potential of show room streaming and intend to differentiate itself with China’s show room giant YY in front of investors.

In Momo’s pan-entertainment and pan-social networking product portfolio, live streaming has always been a “gateway”. For Momo, live streaming not only contributes to its earnings report in the short term, but also possesses prolonged value underneath. However, it takes the wisdom of Momo’s management board to strike a good balance between short-term revenue and long-term strategic development.

For Sina Weibo, however, the primary focus is to improve ARPU as user growth rate slows down and user satisfaction worsens. As a matter of fact, the most-liked comment under Sina Weibo Assistant’s relevant post reads: “through user experience has been worsened, thanks to various kinds of short video ads”.

Fundamentally, the gap between Sina Weibo and Momo in earning ability lies in the different paths they’ve chosen: whether to attach higher importance to short term profit or long-term strategic development? We have every confidence that we shall see the result of different choices within this year.

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The article is published with authorization from the author @Zhang Yuan, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.