This article is from the WeChat public account: Sail to the sea, author: Zimo, the header picture comes from: Visual China
Twitch, which once won 70% of the game live streaming market in United States, gradually fell off the altar, and Kick was born as a blockbuster.
With the overseas development of live broadcast applications, the live broadcast culture in Europe and the United States has a tendency to shift from games to daily life sharing, and anchors make a lot of money by live broadcasting, and fans are happy to immerse themselves in it. Twitch, which has developed for more than ten years and has high loyalty and specificity, was poached high-quality streamers by a rookie live streaming app Kick in just a few months, and took away many users, what is the reason? What are the unique charms of Kick?
Subtle card points, open cards to dig people
In October 2022, Kick entered the public eye, and in March 2023, the iOS version was launched, and the daily active users began to rise sharply in June, and entered the top 1 of the free photography and video list in many places in South America. Diandian data shows that as of now (2024.8.1), in more than a year, the total number of downloads worldwide has reached nearly 30 million, and the revenue is 5.76 million US dollars.
(Kick's global downloads since its launch, data source: Diandian Data)
The timing of Kick's launch is also very delicate. It is reported that Twitch opened a gambling ban on the live streaming platform in October 2022, which made many streamers who made money from related content lose their jobs instantly. Kick was launched in the same month and was officially launched to the public shortly after. Not only did it not ban gambling, but it also accepted an investment from Stake, a well-known crypto gambling platform that had sponsored gambling streamers from the original Twitch. This wave of operations allowed Kick to successfully attract streamers who were forced to leave Twitch due to the ban.
Compared with other live streaming apps, Kick, which is still in its early days, is slightly less lenient in terms of regulation, and although the community strictly prohibits violence, discrimination, infringement and other behaviors, the punishment is not high. If the same content appears on Twitch, it will be immediately removed or even banned. Relying on weak supervision to attract only a small number of users, for anchors, it is not easy to change platforms after accumulating a large number of users on a platform, but the "temptation" of money is not something that anyone can resist.
Most anchors still insist on live broadcasting for the purpose of making money, even if they are just out of love and sharing at first, and they don't want to make money, but after having a certain amount of traffic and fans, they will receive commission sharing, and how can they easily give up after eating dividends. Especially in the game-based live broadcast, why not make money while playing?
Kick started a price war, and it was very successful. In September 2022, Twitch announced a reduction in the share of subscription revenue for some streamers, effective in June 2023. According to its policy, senior streamers receive 70% of subscription revenue before earning $100,000, but beyond the established amount, the streamer and the platform split fifty-fifty. Although most of the affected are top streamers, it has also caused a lot of dissatisfaction and protests.
Kick maximizes the interests of the anchor, distributes 95% of the subscription income to the anchor, the platform leaves only 5%, and all the amount of the user's reward is transferred to the anchor's account, and the platform has 0 commission. And you can receive your due remuneration on the day of the live broadcast. Such an obvious income gap makes it difficult for the top anchors not to be moved.
After the Twitch share reduction policy came into effect, many high-income head streamers resolutely chose to terminate the signing agreement, but they had to pay a termination fee of $25, although the amount was not high, but since Kick was already a clear poacher, he also seized the opportunity well, showed full sincerity, and was willing to pay this fee for the anchors who settled on their own platform.
In the live broadcast ecosystem, platforms, anchors, and viewers are all indispensable. As far as users who simply watch live broadcasts are concerned, because they have no income, and even pay for them in many cases, their loyalty to their favorite anchors is higher than that of the platform, and they will move their positions with the anchors. Therefore, Kick poached the head anchor, which means that it took away the huge fan base under the anchor, and at the same time saved part of the cost of buying stream in the early stage, which can be described as "killing two birds with one stone".
Mainly focus on games, auxiliary socializing
Kick's homepage design is relatively simple, separating streams into categories, including gaming, IRL, music, betting, creative, and others. Among them, the proportion of game anchors and followers is still slightly larger. Since users are mainly concentrated in Europe and the United States, the penetration rate of game live streaming has been very high after years of accumulation in the local area.
Although live streaming is now changing to other more everyday directions, and the style of anchors has become diversified, it still takes time, and it will not be able to shake the status of game live streaming in the short term. Kick still chose a more traditional way of playing in the early days, focusing on game live broadcasting, whether it is playing games live or watching the game live to comment, it can quickly attract a large number of fans.
Before selecting the live broadcast room, we can see more subdivided tags, such as labeling the language, game type, and gameplay, to help users understand the content more intuitively and quickly filter the content they are interested in.
When entering the live broadcast room, in addition to watching the live broadcast, the chat room function is also opened, and you can interact with the anchor and express your opinions at any time when watching the live broadcast. In the user reviews browsing chat rooms, we also found the reason why game live streaming is more popular - assisted socialization.
Users who are active in the chat room are easy to be noticed, and driven by these people, other viewers will form a dialogue with them, and even directly become friends to play games. Invisibly, the live broadcast platform has become a social application with games as the carrier, which is difficult for other types of live broadcasts to do quickly.
Loose supervision does not mean that there is no restraint, and uncivilized users encountered during the live broadcast will be banned by the anchor, and users who enter the ban list can be seen by the audience in the same live broadcast room. This is equivalent to a "public execution" if you violate the in-app rules.
Kick's live chat rooms also offer a message timestamp feature that can be turned on or off at any time. Avoid communication costs due to time differences. In a large live broadcast room, user comments are brushed quickly, and you may not have finished reading the previous comment, and then the following n more than one is brushed up, which reduces the user experience. In the web version of Kick, you can swipe to pause your comments and go "climbing" without time limit to read the chat.
Following, subscribing, and tipping are almost all common functions of live streaming apps. Kick also satisfies users' sense of engagement and interaction by displaying fan tip rankings in real time, and the higher the ranking, the higher the chance of being noticed by favorite streamers. Anchors rely on subscriptions and tips to earn commissions, and fans rely on interacting with anchors to get emotional price increases, and over time, stickiness will naturally continue to rise.
In Kick, in addition to the live broadcast room, there are also two sections: video and live broadcast editing, which provide a "remedy" for users who miss the live broadcast time of their favorite anchors, fans will edit some highlight clips in the live broadcast and share them on the platform, and the anchors will usually upload some videos to attract traffic and maintain users.
Efforts to advertise, ecological tilt
Diandian data shows that since March 2023, Kick's in-app purchase revenue has reached 4.05 million, accounting for about 70% of the total revenue. Among them, United States has become the absolute main force of payment, contributing 83.36% of in-app purchase revenue, followed by Canada and United Kingdom, which are in a high position for the recognition of game live broadcast.
(Kick in-app purchase, source: Diandian Data)
Although the platform only charges a 5% subscription fee, Kick's revenue has continued to grow steadily this year, but some people are worried that this mechanism is only temporary, designed to attract users in the early stage, and will not be implemented for a long time, and will eventually reduce the streamer's income commission like Twitch.
There are traces of this concern, with Amazon standing behind Twitch, and Youtube also relying on Google's support all the way to today, even with the help of internationally renowned companies, it finally fell into a situation of grabbing commissions with creators to increase income. In contrast, no one is sure how long Kick, a helpless start-up, can go with this commission-sharing model.
Since it has chosen to increase creator income, Kick's own income has to be maintained by other aspects, and the current path chosen is advertising. Kick has partnered with some well-known advertisers and plans to launch in-video ads. However, Twitch once focused on advertising, but it backfired. When entering the live broadcast room, ads will be inserted in the middle of the live broadcast, which causes user disgust and causes the retention rate to plummet. Whether Kick, which is still in the layout stage of the advertising business, can achieve a balance between implantation and user experience needs to be verified by time.
The most common way to improve user retention and stickiness is to build a community, but Kick's community is still only superficial, and there is no in-depth development and maintenance, which has also been verified from user reviews. In addition, in terms of technology, since the launch, there have been users who have continuously reported the delay in the live broadcast, Caton, and the problem of mobile phone heating, which is the key point that can easily cause user loss, but it seems that it has not been well solved so far.
Twitch streamers who have been banned have been able to make a splash on Kick without being affected. Under weak supervision, some videos in the gray area can still be approved and have a high number of hits on the platform, and Kick has been negatively labeled as a "xx supporter".
In the ecology where anchors and viewers need to be balanced, the current Kick is still inclined to the anchor group, using funds to motivate anchors to drive fans, but it does not maintain the user viewing experience well. How far the mixed Kick can go is worth keeping an eye on.
epilogue
Live streaming platforms are a bridge between creators and viewers, and a channel for effective communication between people around the world. As an intermediary role of the service, the platform can jointly build a benign live broadcast ecosystem by providing appropriate creator incentives and high-quality user experience. Even if you have your back against a big tree, if you can't serve with your heart, you can't escape the fate of falling. If you want to turn over and become a top stream, you must learn to start from the pain points; If you want to stay in the head position for a long time, you have to be prepared for difficulties.
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