Whatsapp, Netflix, Spotify, Messenger. What’s so familiar about all these apps? They’re all top-rated apps on Appstore and play store. But guess which app is the most popular one and the most downloaded in Singapore? The Bigo Live streaming app. Most of us haven’t even the name of this app, but it has over more than 300million downloads all over the world. And more than 80% of these downloads are from southeast Asia.
Just like Apple and Google, Bigo was also just a startup just a couple of years ago, but now it’s a million-dollar company. The story behind this successful startup, as we may call it, is not very complicated, but it hasn’t been easy either.
Here’s the story of Bigo and how it became one of the most successful startups in the world
Where it started
Bigo is a Singapore-based company, defining itself as a “fast-growing internet company” running on “video telecast and VoIP-related products and assistance all over the globe.” It declares to own over 40 franchises in VoIP including video technology. Besides the live-streaming app, it also allows a telecommunications merchandise that enables free worldwide calls and texting over the internet.
The startup is related to Chinese powerhouse YY, a social network that also relies massively on video. YY has recorded to have above 300 million users and is currently hitting its compatriot Weibo in income and growth.
According to an official press statement, YY entered an understanding with Bigo in 2014 to provide the Singaporean startup “its free voice-over IP assistance, called Weihui.” YY also declares to own a 27.8 percent paling in Bigo.
What’s so special with Bigo?
Of course, every app has its specialties, like Instagram being private for private users and the public for the ones that need fame, facebook allowing you to connect to any person to any part of the world and know what they’re doing at any point of time and snapchat being extraordinarily private and safe.
Bigo is also just a regular live streaming app, has its specialties. Here are a few of them:
1. You can go Live whenever
Singing, eating, dancing, exploring, playing games… Just one touch to go live! BIGO LIVE is the platform to broadcast all of your best moments.
2. Match & PK
With several taps, BIGO matches you with the new friends & strangers nearby and around the world. You can chat with each other or start a PK to enjoy super excitement.
3. Video Chat and Video Calls: whenever you want
Sopwith BIGO LIVE, you can always video chat with any and millions of people from various countries and make all-free video calls with your friends or even creepy strangers.
4. Join any Multi-guest Live you want
Other than a 1:1 live session, you can quickly enter any multi-guest room to group video call or audio call with your friends. Also, you can handle a party or play games there together.
5. You can watch all the live shows
Open BIGO LIVE, next you can explore the whole globe through thousands of astonishing live streams and videos. Millions of skilled broadcasters, enthusiastic dancers and singers, heavy eaters, comedians, etc. grant you with a meal for the eyes. It’s a whole new way to know life and people you never even knew about.
6. Stream your favorite games
Watch various live streaming for gaming or display your gameplay, such as Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, PUBG, League of Legends, CSGO, FIFA, RoV, Rules of Survival, DOTA2, and more.
7. Awesome Gifts
There are various kinds of virtual gifts, including roses, bracelets, angels, sports cars, luxury cruises, dream castles, and many more. You can go up spontaneously by posting virtual presents to your beloved broadcasters.
How Bigo works?
The Bigo app depends heavily on game-like components, wherever the lot of you participate (following different users, broadcasting, and so on), a lot of expertise points you get. You employ those to climb levels which appears to assist push your streams to a lot of viewers.
There’s an interior currency drawn by “diamonds,” that the user can purchase directly through microtransactions. Costs vary counting on the payment method: in Singapore, exploitation Google pocketbook, you’ll be able, to begin with, S$1 (US$0.75) to urge forty-two diamonds. That goes all the thanks to concerning US$89 exploitation Visa or MasterCard, which can purchase you five,454 diamonds. The app additionally supports the weight unit, the Malaysia-headquartered online gambling currency supplier.
You can “gift” virtual things to the streamer, from rings to tiaras to sports cars – things you get together with your diamonds. As an example, a flower prices one diamond, a hoop is price ten of them. The “Supercar” can set you back three,000 diamonds and is that the costliest item on the market.
The items you gift ar translated into “beans,” that the streamer will replenish. A lot of famous the flag, a lot of beans they incline to gather. The streamer will then live those beans for real cash. This bean charge per unit on the app is 210 beans for US$1.
To live, the bean saver should have a minimum of six, 700 beans in their account. That interprets to concerning US$32. A stream I watched had virtually 890,000 beans, which might, in theory, web the streamer around US$4,200 if he selected to money it all out. Not a foul payout for principally sitting around and reproof your phone’s front-facing camera – though it’s quite doable there are details there I’m missing that might mean a lower quantity.
The feature has landed the app in the plight in countries like Vietnam, wherever the web exchange of real cash runs foul of constitutional laws.
Bigo Live may be a free live-streaming app that doesn’t have advertisements. Work into the app, and you will find associate degree endless stream of broadcasters. Most of them are not particularly gifted. Nor are they celebrated individuals (which is one amongst the explanations for the success of apps like Instagram or Musical.ly).
How Bigo lets users interact better
For short-term retention, there are tons of broadcasts to follow. Mostly it is an audience of men wanting in to watch women (stereotype alert). Some people dance, sing, host game-show, drama queens, and many many other characters that make swiping through the app fun.
But studying at long-term maintenance is when we find the real fun stuff. Broadcasters build individual relationships with their watchers. Most often, it’ll be the higher level callers in a broadcast that are on more “I know you, and I like you” terms with the broadcasters. They usually get hired as Admins to manage the chat – which can some times get toxic. They are forward with times when broadcasters come online and are often especially welcomed by them. They are peculiar superfans. The app has its fascinating social dynamics, fights, relationships, in-app boyfriends, stalkers, fake accounts – and these superfans are in the core of it all.
The app performs long term holding by providing a set of tools that make person-to-person commitment highly satisfying. Here are a few:
• Top Fans: The app displays the top fans of a broadcaster. This is shown on a regular and all-time basis. This is an excellent way to get seen by some of the more popular broadcasters.
• Guest Live Chat: A broadcaster can take one or two spectators on a live chat or call. For this to happen, all the viewers must attach themselves to a list showing they want to communicate with the broadcaster – who can then choose anyone from the queue. So really, it’s a waiting list. Still, one picked it can feel like a unique experience to talk live with the broadcaster while everyone else watches
• Chats and calls: There is a continuous chat stream flowing through every broadcast. The broadcaster will frequently call out the names of watchers who transfer premium gifts (which add to the total Beans tally). This too feels so good as a viewer, of course.
• VIP status for the not so VIPs: when the chat becomes too crowded – a usual position with the other popular broadcasters – there is an answer to break through the confusion. Three levels of VIP status, each of which cost progressively more and more. And, Once of the VIP status, you’ll get great benefits.
Why is it extraordinary?
The overall quality of private live streaming and the native player advantage facilitate Bigo on. The optical instrument was the primary key player within the area, eclipsing initial mover mierkat and obtaining snapped up by Twitter, and Facebook jumped on the bandwagon with its Live Video providing.
In Asia, there are many such services. Japanese app Twitcasting has been providing personal live-streaming since 2010. Different apps like Indonesia’s Cliponyu diversify the idea by giving it a selected theme, during this case, DJing. Another Indonesian live-streaming app referred to as Nonolive conjointly options stunning folks with taglines like “Fall soft on with Pine Tree State,” “Fun, easy-going singer,” and “I wish to present your attention.”
With Bigo, initial, and foremost, the school works. The app performs well, and everyone stream loads quick and square measure typically of excellent quality. Given the breadth of markets and web connections, it’s to figure with, and it’s no tiny exploit.
The gamey nature and also the gift and currency systems in Bigo square measure a giant part of the charm. In contrast to the optical instrument, wherever your follower and viewer count square measures your solely real feedback, Bigo keeps you engaged by obtaining you endowed in its community, each virtually and figuratively. The payout for prolific streamers is an additional incentive to stay exploitation the app.
The younger demographic is additionally a draw. Like Snapchat, Bigo has ostensibly been engineered up around young users United Nations agency square measure additional willing to make and watch video content perpetually. The very fact that users will maintain the app and notice folks precisely like them helps unfold the message.
