Wen | Lianzi
Edited | Vicky Xiao
Aimee Song, a Korean-American blogger who is all over the internet, is doing a live broadcast on Amazon.
"This is my live broadcast room on Amazon. Remember to follow my account on Amazon. Aimee Song in the video said in the live broadcast that his theme today is to share his winter Amazon recommended goodies.
"Remember to click on the shopping button at the bottom of the screen to see every product I say. In addition, you can leave me a message in the dialog box, such as the size of the clothes, dress suggestions can be asked. Aimee Song's livestream attracted the attention of a large number of YouTube fans. On YouTube, her work on outfits, Vlogs, food, and décor has attracted more than 300,000 native U.S. followers to the Song of Style channel.
At the same time, click on the screen to watch more live broadcasts, and you can see many bloggers large and small in the live broadcast. Watching a few more shows, you will find that the American live broadcast with goods and the Chinese chicken blood with goods are very different. Most of them are very casual, thinking about what to say, drinking coffee, chatting about the sky, it seems that live broadcasting is important, and bringing goods is a thing of the way.
"Not at all chicken blood, not even a little bit of a sense of what they're doing." A Chinese girl who has watched Amazon's live broadcast told Silicon Star people, "It seems that every blogger is trying." ”
Overall, although the model of live streaming with goods is still very new in the United States, there are already many people who eat crabs in the first batch.
Reverse porting China model
In addition to these bloggers, the first to eat crabs is all the first-tier giants in North America – Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, Shopify and Walmart all entered the game. Although the entry time is not short, and the development of the industry is not long, the fight with each other has begun, and multiple camps of cooperation or confrontation have been formed.
Just as many years ago, Silicon Valley had Uber, Chinese entrepreneurs will quickly react to a Didi, and now whenever some new technology concepts and business models succeed in China, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will consider moving it to the United States.
From bike-sharing, takeaway services, to short videos that have set off a new wave of social media around the world, this is proof of this. In 2021, the Chinese business model targeted by the Silicon Valley giants is definitely live streaming. When China's live streaming of goods in the Double Eleven shopping festival relying on Internet celebrities to bring goods to create a surprising record that made the world feel amazing, silicon Valley giants can no longer hold back. What makes them excited is the ability to make money behind live broadcasting and live streaming. According to estimates by U.S. research firm eMarketer, e-commerce revenue generated by Chinese social media is about $352 billion, about 10 times that of the U.S. market.
It can be said that for live streaming, Silicon Valley technology companies and VCs are feeling fresh and excited. The U.S. tech media use two very Silicon Valley-sounding words to describe live streaming — Next Big Thing and GenZ. Whenever these two words are bound together, they are bound to cause a stir among Silicon Valley companies that are forever kidnapped by THE FOMO (fear of missing) sentiment. "QVC in the Gen Z era." Many reports describe live streaming in this way. QVC is the largest TV shopping company in the United States.
As a result, more and more technology companies, brands and bloggers are beginning to enter a field that is still extremely foreign to Western countries.
Giants collectively end up, and multiple camps are opposed
In the past year, Google, Meta, Walmart, Twitter to Amazon, a large number of technology giants are investing huge sums of money to join the live cargo war. Their relationships are intertwined, ranging from intimate cooperation to standing upright. To put it simply, all Silicon Valley technology companies that do social networking are planning to link up with e-commerce, while all those who do e-commerce are considering adding social media functions to realize the possibility of live streaming with goods.
First of all, companies that do social networking and want to do e-commerce - from the rookie TikTok to the old players Meta and Twitter have all announced their layout plans for live streaming.
TikTok, which belongs to ByteDance with Douyin, has a natural advantage in moving the Chinese characteristic model overseas. Recently, TikTok unveiled the function of live streaming small yellow cars with goods. In simple terms, during the blogger's live broadcast, the audience can click on the page of the small yellow car to directly purchase the products recommended during the live broadcast. At present, although this plan can only be used in Indonesia and the United Kingdom, it is foreseeable that it will inevitably be promoted globally in the future.
Its landing in the United Kingdom is known to more people through a series of intensive festival-themed live streaming activities. For example, on the 8th and 9th of this month, TikTok hosted two live streaming events called "On Trend". The event brought a variety of discounts and gifts to the audience, including beauty and technology products. International A-list names including Charlotte Tilbury, Lookfantastic and L'Oréal will be directly involved. At the same time, in addition to the live streaming of goods, the event was also interspersed with the performances and activities of various TikTok star anchors.
The invited anchors are also TikTok's popular superstars. For example, top inspirational blogger Nikki Lilly and well-known British TV personality Gemma Collins will appear at the event. In addition, some TikTok popular internet singers will also sing live at the event.
It can be said that TikTok, a long-brewed event, is definitely a grand celebration of the shopping festival. The purpose of this event is to help local viewers in the Uk complete the purchase of Christmas gifts online through live broadcasting.
In fact, this is not the first step in TikTok's layout of social media with goods. As early as about half a year ago, TikTok announced that it would reach a strategic cooperation with Shopify, allowing its merchants to open stores on TikTok and directly put product links in TikTok's short video. In addition, Shopify also provides a series of back-office technical support for merchants with goods on TikTok. Late this year, TikTok also opened the TikTok shopping API, allowing merchants to connect their product catalogs directly to TikTok.
In addition to cooperating with Shopify, Walmart, the second oldest e-commerce millennia, was also the first merchant of TikTok to cooperate with live streaming.
After talking about the rookie TikTok, let's talk about the layout of social media giant YouTube and its parent company Google in the field of live streaming.
In fact, many of the big vs that TikTok currently relies on are still early YouTube bloggers. Since this summer, the YouTube team has had two more members. Among them, David Katz is a veteran of the e-commerce industry. Another Bridget Dolan was once an executive at Sephora's beauty line. The two are currently leading the team within YouTube to expand the e-commerce field.
It is worth noting that since the parent company Google has a mature online retail network, YouTube has a natural advantage in doing e-commerce live broadcasting. At present, Google has reached a united front against Amazon with the e-commerce platform Shopify, the payment platform Sqaure and many other platforms. It can be said that when there is no winner in the field of e-commerce live broadcasting, the team has finished standing. Almost every tech giant other than Amazon wants to rely on the new model of e-commerce live broadcasting to suppress Amazon's oligopoly position in the e-commerce field.
On YouTube, Patrick Starrr, who has 4 million followers, intends to make his e-commerce live streaming debut at the red carpet unveiling of the movie House of Gucci. In addition to Patrick, YouTube has also gathered leading bloggers including Gordon Ramsey and Mrbeast to stream live during the festival at the end of this year.
Previously, most bloggers added links such as Amazon to the bottom of the video to direct users' consumption behavior out of YouTube. But now, YouTube wants to get the money back into its own hands.
Compared with YouTube's layout of live streaming, Meta (Facebook)'s plan is more ambitious, involving the entire e-commerce field.
A month ago, Meta officially announced the mode of live streaming of its anchors. At the same time, they also announced that they would try another "entrepreneurial model with Chinese characteristics" - group buying.
Regarding online live streaming with goods, compared with the past model, influencers let them guide viewers to other platforms to watch live streaming with goods, and now, Meta can let influencers broadcast live on their own pages and brand pages at the same time. In fact, Meta's ambitions in the areas of e-commerce, carrying goods and live streaming may be even greater.
According to Business Insider, a revealed document shows that Meta will make more layouts in the e-commerce field in 2022, allowing people to stay on Meta with their final consumption behavior, such as placing orders directly on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. And this move, Meta is targeting a company called Shopify.
"Shopify is our opponent." A person familiar with the company told Business Insider.
At Meta's latest earnings conference, Zuckerberg also said: "Our next most important product will be e-commerce, that is, to help people discover the products they are interested in and leave their purchases in our app." We will unlock very many opportunities. It can be said that Meta already has a very specific plan for becoming a combination of social + e-commerce.
The last to announce the participation in the live streaming war was Twitter. It is Walmart that chooses to work with it.
On Black Friday this year, Walmart launched its own live streaming campaign on Twitter. This is also the first live streaming event of Twitter Live Shopping.
Relatively than social media, they all want to add e-commerce attributes, becoming the first position of live streaming with goods, and the E-commerce platform in the United States is not idle. They want to add social attributes to their e-commerce platforms or cooperate with more social media platforms to attract more bloggers and viewers to place orders through live streaming.
In the past year, in addition to choosing Twitter, Walmart has also conducted live streaming campaigns on Youtube and Tiktok. It can be said that in order to win the battle against Amazon in the battle of live streaming with goods, Walmart has united almost all social media to stand on the same front.
Its campaign on Twitter was hosted by blogger Jason Derulo on its page. Currently, Jason is the 12th most popular blogger on Twitter. Up to now, Walmart has completed 15 live streaming activities on multiple platforms.
From the above entangled strategic relationships, it is not difficult to see that whether it is e-commerce platforms or social media, after entering the field of live streaming, Amazon is regarded as an opponent.
According to the observations of silicon star people, Amazon may be the only platform that opens the app forever and has live streaming with goods. Amazon is taking the initiative to contact more IBs like Aimee Song for live streaming cooperation, hoping to divert their traffic on other platforms on Amazon.
Most of these collaborations are part of the Amazon Celebrity Live Streaming Project. Previously, most overseas bloggers obtained profits through external links. Now, in the process of live streaming, by guiding users to purchase recommended products through the link at the bottom of the screen, bloggers can directly get the corresponding commission. According to reports, on holidays such as Prime Membership Day, some top bloggers can earn tens of thousands of dollars.
The industry started lively, and the live broadcast opened awkwardly
When more and more technology companies plunged into the blue ocean of live streaming, the entire industry suddenly became lively. However, the live streaming of goods in the United States still does not attract the attention of enough ordinary people.
After watching many Amazon live broadcasts, the direct feeling of silicon star people is "no one watches".
Even in the afternoon of US time, the live broadcast room that the silicon star people clicked into was only a few dozen viewers. And when the silicon star people clicked on a live broadcast room on the heat ranking, they found that there were only two people in the live broadcast room, the anchor and the silicon star people.
"Is there an audience?" The anchor asked the Silicon Starman. "I'm also broadcasting live for the first time." In the awkward and panicked few minutes, Silicon Star people did not hear any product introduction and promotion, nor did they see any other viewers join the live broadcast room, and finally chose to quit. In the inquiries of silicon stars and American friends around them, few people know that Amazon currently has a live streaming function.
In addition to the lack of an audience, there is a more fatal problem - there is no anchor, and the anchor has no experience in carrying goods. Compared with china's current excess of anchors, it is difficult for platforms such as Amazon to find a sufficient number of anchors in the United States who are willing to launch live streaming activities.
In the United States, it is currently the platform that is actively contacting bloggers to open live broadcasts. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who does cross-border e-commerce live broadcasting told Silicon Star people.
In addition, doing live broadcasting on Amazon is not the same as casually opening the mobile phone at any time in China, and bloggers need to provide high-quality live video according to the scale required by Amazon.
In addition, overseas bloggers have not yet tasted the huge benefits brought by live streaming like domestic head bloggers. According to reports, even the head blogger's income on the platform is only tens of thousands of dollars.
And even bloggers who have chosen to start live streaming are still inexperienced.
Compared with most of the domestic anchors' full chicken blood, every second counts, and a variety of live broadcasts with goods, overseas live broadcasts can be said to have very little to watch, plain and plain, and even the anchor and the people around them have a chat without a ride. The introduction of the product is simple, and the rhythm of not rushing to place orders makes the entire live broadcast room occasionally fall into an embarrassing situation.
However, it is foreseeable that the next year-end shopping season with holidays will become an opportunity for more bloggers to step into the field of live streaming. Open TikTok and you'll already see more bloggers sending out previews of the year-end holiday season live streaming campaign.
And North American tech companies, including Walmart, Amazon, TikTok and Twitter, will also enter a more violent fight in the following shopping season.