(Chinese Version)

　　On May 25th, Momo released its 2017 Q1 earnings, which shows that the company’s net revenue had jumped by 421% year-on-year to $265.2 million, registering a net profit of $90.7 million, a 615% year-on-year growth. There is no doubt that the previous quarter had been a great moment for Momo as it had soared in both revenue and profit.

　　YY, the Internet company that has been the top leader of the livestream in industry in China, amassed $88.2 million in profit in the first quarter this year. Although YY’s Q1 statistics are still slightly higher than Momo, Momo has already surpassed YY in terms of the net profit. If Momo can maintain its strong growth, it’s only a matter of time for the company to outperform YY in revenue too. And this might happen in this year.

　　Despite the fact that the livestream business has brought about an income of $212 million (a 1263% year-on-year growth, accounting for 80% of the revenue), to Momo, the company still doesn’t see itself as a livestream company, but a social company dedicated to building a greater entertainment platform. From this perspective, Momo and YY have very different positioning, and therefore there is no need to compare the two on revenue and net profit.

　　In fact, I am more interested in Momo’s monthly active users instead of the company’s revenue and profit. The earnings report shows that Mom boasted 85.2 million monthly active users in the first quarter, which is an 18% increase compared with last year’s 72.3 million, a record high. In this second half of the mobile Internet game, the data flow dividend is providing less and less thrusting power. Every mobile product that relies on user growth has met the bottleneck. So how could Momo achieve such revenue while maintaining user growth as well?

　　Momo’s monthly active users growth A unique world

　　After Aleng left Momo, Hong Xiaoqiao became the leading female liveshow broadcaster on the platform, with 1.19 million fans. Besides regularly broadcasting liveshow every day, she has also posted 17 short videos and joined seven communities and three circles, posting 209 personal posts.

　　The personal posts here resemble to Twitter’s tweets, in which she shares her persona thoughts with everyone on the platform. She has got 30,000 to 50,000 views, over one thousand likes and hundreds of comments for each one of her posts.

　　Momo’s communities are like WeChat’s chat groups. Hong Xiaoqiao set up four communities named Hong’s Army in an attempt to connect with her loyal fans.

　　"Circle" is a new feature on Momo’s latest version, which is quite similar to Baidu’s Tieba (a social forum). The only one-month-old Hong Xiaqiao Fans circle already has 5,007 members and 310 posts.

　　The short video feature has also been Momo’s recent focus as well, as the company has deployed advertisements on its short video feature in over 300 cities in the country. Hong Xiaoqiao’s latest nine-second video has been played 302,000 times, receiving 2,756 likes and eight gift rewards.

　　It’s apparent that Hong Xiaoqiao has been spending all of her time on Momo. She is either livestreaming, or using communities and circles to connect with her fans. After getting a huge amount of data flow through short videos, she is also posting videos more often.

　　She didn’t even have a Weibo account 15 days ago and the public knew little about her. But it only took her one year to become the leading broadcaster in Momo’s unique world, forging a relationship with over one million fans.

　　Hong Xiaoqiao is not the only case here. Most of Momo’s popular broadcasters only run their social business on Momo, paying little attention to other social platforms.

　　However, in contrast to other platforms, Momo does not rely on its popular livestream broadcasters who have an average monthly income of over ￥30,000. These popular broadcasters only generate 50% of the livestream business income. Besides the popular broadcasters, Momo also has a great number of ordinary broadcasters. These people don’t broadcast professionally. They treat livestream as a social-networking channel that allows them to get to know people around them and make some friends. During the earnings phone meeting, Momo’s founder Tang Yan stated: “Momo’s livestream feature is not merely a new entertainment service, but more of a community-based social-networking experience.”

　　Momo’s strong social-networking gene allows popular and ordinary broadcasters to build and maintain their own social network on one platform. They no longer have to connect with their fans on WeChat every time they finish broadcasting liveshows. Momo is continuing to refine its social gameplay and features, providing a one-stop platform for users.