Camming in China

[Sevrin]

What if MFC, Twitch and Karaoke had a Baby?

I was reading this article about social networking in China, and I came across this site called yy.com. It claims 300 million :roll: users and it's a mixture of young people (mostly girls) sitting in their bedrooms in front of a big honking microphone talking, and occasionally singing, to their audience and others (mostly guys) streaming video games to theirs.

Little Watermelon - 10364 viewers


Being China, there's no nudity, but the chat, according to a Chinese co-worker, is mostly guys offering these little flower and telling the girl how pretty she is, that she has a nice body (as she just sits there at her mike), etc., much like you'd see on MFC. Then there are also rooms where people teach, stream video games Twitch-style, and do pretty much anything else people might want to see someone else doing that doesn't involve taking your clothes off. One model I saw was talking to people with her own laugh-track.

The thing is, that they sell virtual teddy bears, flowers, or whatever, that viewers give to the performers, who can, in turn, trade them in for real money.

Anyway, here's an part article from Forbes about the site from a couple of years ago.

Singers, teachers, or other people using the service can earn money on YY via virtual goods. While many just earn pocket change, the top performers on YY earn more than $20,o00 monthly–a remarkable figure. Audience members buy and give virtual roses to performers they like and the performers cash them in for real money. The singers thus have an incentive to deliver high quality performances. YY could help “rejuvenate a lot of industries,” Li says. ”As many know it’s very difficult to make real money on the music business because of rampant piracy. But if you’re a talented singer or performer, and you have YY, a webcam and an Internet connection, then you can perform (and make money).”

There are also other uses of the service. One recent college graduate, for example, began teaching Photoshop skills in a virtual classroom on YY, which includes educational tools such as embeddable whiteboards, PowerPoint-like slides and videos. Users who create rooms can customize the look and feel, and also make the session public or private. The young man now makes a staggering amount of more than 1.2 million Yuan per month ($188,000), according to Li. The teacher currently doesn’t have to pay anything to YY. In the second half of this year, however, YY plans to add monetization for educational rooms or what it calls channels.

Further reading.

 

[YelloMit]

And I thought a model on MFC getting over 500 viewers was a lot.... Geez.

 

[NataliaGrey]

Okay... I think it is fucking adorable that they use items as currency. I want roses, lollipops, and piglets, too!

 

[Shaun__]

Okay... I think it is fucking adorable that they use items as currency. I want roses, lollipops, and piglets, too!

I teep you piglets BB.

 

[zippypinhead]

It claims 300 million :roll: users

Just a thought: we are reaching a point where sites claiming such astronomical numbers is not so fantastical to imagine. That's especially the case when taking into consideration the online culture of places like China, which comprises about a fifth of the world's population, yet has habits that are still largely not paid attention nor understood by the West. By way of comparison, there's apparently 1.35 billion active monthly Facebook users, and Youtube gets a billion unique visits per month. Knowing that, it seems to be less eyeroll-inducing to hear that a major social networking site in China could be pulling 300 million users.

 

[jessie125]

afreeca.tv is the Korean version. this is where you'll find the infamous "mokbang", where people make stunning amounts of money by eating food on cam for their audience. the fraction of tips that a broadcaster gets to keep is on a sliding scale but can get up to 70% - not bad at all!

there are also very pretty girls who just talk to fans, and get MFC-sized tip bombs without having to show a thing. on afreeca.tv you get tipped balloons or chocolate, but it's exactly the same thing as tokens.

I really like how many people use afreeca.tv for lifecasting, and would like to see something like twitch used for everything under the sun, not just for video games.

 

[Sevrin]

afreeca.tv is the Korean version. this is where you'll find the infamous "mokbang", where people make stunning amounts of money by eating food on cam for their audience. the fraction of tips that a broadcaster gets to keep is on a sliding scale but can get up to 70% - not bad at all!

there are also very pretty girls who just talk to fans, and get MFC-sized tip bombs without having to show a thing. on afreeca.tv you get tipped balloons or chocolate, but it's exactly the same thing as tokens.

I really like how many people use afreeca.tv for lifecasting, and would like to see something like twitch used for everything under the sun, not just for video games.

That's probably just a matter of time. YY.COM started out just for games. In any event, if you want to go on Twitch and eat strawberries on cam, there's nothing stopping you as long as you're fully clothed, but it's not yet set up to promote that kind of channel.