Zhou Longhui, 42 years old this year, started doing PC live broadcasts since early 2014. At that time, his mission was to discover a group of talented Internet celebrities from the Internet, which was equivalent to a "headhunter". However, now, he has left the company.
He said that injecting live data is a hidden rule in the industry, and many "people" in the live broadcast room are robot "zombie fans". Not only fans can buy gifts, but also gifts. During the live broadcast, half of the gifts given by the Internet celebrity anchors received from users were given by the operation team of these anchors pretended to be "child care". Some people who don’t know the truth often follow the “counter” and give gifts from the anchor in herd mentality.
Zhou Longhui, 42 years old this year, has deep dark circles and deep eye sockets. He started doing PC live broadcasts in early 2014. At that time, his mission was to discover a group of talented internet celebrities from the Internet and provide a live broadcast platform, which was equivalent to a "headhunter". At its peak, his company had nearly 50 anchors, and he was the agent of these anchors.
However, now, he has left the company. "The water is too deep, I have no money to burn, so I can't play with it." Zhou Longhui said with a wry smile.
30,000 fans and viewers can be used to draw up to 3,000 "living people"
"Data is relied on brushing, which is the unspoken rule of the entire industry." Zhou Longhui does not hide the phenomenon of live broadcast data injection.
Zhou Longhui said that when the live broadcast began in the early years, basically any anchor would have more than 1,000 viewers on the platform, creating the illusion that the room was very lively. Operators of some platforms or "guilds" pretend to be viewers and keep giving gifts to anchors.
In Zhou Longhui's view, this is the same as real estate developers spend money to invite people to go to the scene to watch houses when new properties are on sale. There are fewer people in the room, so the atmosphere in the room cannot be driven. If the anchor's popularity cannot increase, users will not give gifts. The more gifts they give, the higher the anchor's ranking and the higher the exposure, the more Internet celebrity you can become. Now, Zhou Longhui's company has more than 10 operating personnel, almost one of which connects to a live broadcast platform. If its anchors start broadcasting on the platform, the operating personnel will enter the room to help attract popularity.
"I do live broadcasts on a live broadcast platform, saying that I have 30,000 viewers, and the maximum of 3,000 people in 'living'." Zhou Xinyue is one of the anchors signed by Zhou Longhui. Like most internet celebrities, this post-90s girl has big eyes, pointed chin, double eyelids, white skin, long legs, and a hot body. She has learned belly dance before and was discovered when Zhou Longhui was a headhunter. She admitted that many of them were virtual "robots" in the live broadcast room. "Robots are similar to zombie fans and do not interact with anchors, but you can see them enter the room. It can also speak automatically."
Previously, when the live broadcast platform Yingke said that when the number of users exceeded 100 million, a user exposed the fraud of his data on the spot: the user broadcasted live for 3 hours under the black screen, and even claimed that "the people watching my live broadcast were garbage!" But he found that there were still 21 "viewers" who were still there and were always present. The reporter also conducted a test yesterday. After registering as an ordinary user, he blocked the camera for "live broadcast". Even though the screen was pitch black, there were 6 people online and watched it for 30 minutes. Who was staring at the black screen for half an hour? The answer is that it is not the real person who watches the live broadcast in the live broadcast room, but the "zombie fans" automatically distributed by the live broadcast platform system.
Zhou Longhui said that the fans and popularity values of each live broadcast platform can be "brushed" and the prices are also different. There are even calls from robots, "You can do whatever you want the robot to say." The teams of some live broadcast anchors cooperate with the live broadcast platform itself. In a live broadcast, you can buy 50,000 fans from the platform for only 50 yuan. Although live broadcast platforms have stated that they will severely punish fraudulent behaviors of buying fans and brushing traffic, in fact, no one will do so.
Million- money fans bring millions of benefits
"Data fraud is called packaging in our industry. In fact, everyone knows it well. But data fraud does not harm the interests of users and does not affect his watching the live broadcast. On the contrary, if there are tens of thousands of people in a live broadcast room, the people who watch the live broadcast will be very excited. He will feel that there are tens of thousands of people watching the performance with him. In the end, whether to buy a gift for the anchor is still the right to decide whether to buy a gift for the anchor." Zhou Longhui said that fraud is also a last resort. The anchor has no confidence if he doesn't make a fake, and the fans don't come in at all when they see that there are few people in the room and there is no interaction partner. "Celebrities will also invite fans to come and be childcare for the press conference."
Zhou Longhui said that most live broadcast platforms exaggerate their user scale. He gave an example, saying that in November 2015, Panda TV said that after domestic high-end LOL (League of Legends) anchor Xiaozhi switched to the platform, the number of viewers made its debut exceeded 1.5 million. According to monitoring by third-party data companies during the same period, Panda TV's daily active users were no more than 1.4 million. "It's obviously bragging." In September 2015, Douyu anchor "Smiling" live broadcast of "League of Legends". The chat room showed that the number of viewers actually exceeded 1.3 billion. Netizens laughed at it as saying that "the centenarian and the baby who is under the month old are watching the live broadcast." The fraud of live broadcast data has become an open secret. In October 2015, when the anchor "Gogoing" was broadcasting on Zhanqi, the number of viewers reached 5.9 billion, which could be said to be a naked fraud.
"You divide the number of people in the live broadcast room by 10 to 20. In some special occasions, you need to divide by 50. The actual number of people watching is almost the same." Zhou Longhui said that an engineer once simulated N users on a single PC and visited the live broadcast room at the same time. He found that the real number of people online in the live broadcast room of 100,000 people does not exceed 10,000 people, and the moisture exceeds 90%. There are three reasons for live broadcasting to "flip data".
First of all, in order to make the anchor famous, the anchor or anchor agency creates the illusion that a certain anchor is very popular online, which makes ordinary users become curious due to the anchor's high traffic. After entering the chat room, they reward them out of herd mentality.
Secondly, high fans often bring high traffic, and traffic advertising sharing is also an important source of income for brokerage companies and anchors. Zhou Longhui's brokerage company's revenue sources include platform share, traffic advertising, and e-commerce. Zhou Longhui conducted a test. If an anchor’s fans increase to 1 million, the traffic advertising revenue it brings can reach 1 million yuan.
In addition, the broadband and operating costs of live broadcast platforms are also a considerable expenditure. In addition to the cost of live broadcast itself, storing historical live broadcast content also increases cost expenditure. Bandwidth determines the picture quality and speed of live broadcasts. These factors directly affect the user experience of live broadcasts, and the platform dares not save in this regard. The monthly bandwidth cost of first-line live broadcast platforms is more than 20 million yuan. In order to increase profits, some live broadcast platforms attract investors' attention through inflated popularity and traffic, thereby obtaining financing.
Half of the gifts received by "my own people" are given
Not only can fans win, but also can gifts given to anchors from fans. Three years ago, when Zhou Longhui joined the industry packaging internet celebrity, he also doubted whether there were indeed audiences giving gifts. Later he found out that there were really hardcore fans. As long as the anchor he liked went online, he would give gifts and he would make a lot of money. A fan gave his favorite anchor 999 roses. Each of these virtual roses costs 0.3 yuan, and this item alone costs nearly 300 yuan.
In most cases, it is not ordinary viewers who give gifts to female anchors, but transactions between guilds and live broadcast platforms run by the agency. "Do you think there are so many rich people who are idle and have nothing to do to deliver rowing, planes, and flowers to the anchor? Many users give gifts to herds acts led by other audiences."
Zhou Longhui said that the entry threshold for online anchors is low, and computers, beauty cameras, and high-quality audio equipment are "three-piece sets", but it is extremely difficult to reach the top of the pyramid. Popular anchors have brought more than 90% of the audience to the platform. They are the main entrance to traffic and the core resource of the platform. Unlike traditional video websites that mainly focus on advertising revenue, the only "money tree" for show live broadcasts is the anchor himself. Users purchase virtual gifts from the platform to reward anchors, and then share the funds between the platform and the anchor. This is an important source of income for the platform and the anchor. Generally speaking, the share ratio between the platform and the anchor is "55% share", and very popular anchors can get the "37% share" or even higher.
Zhou Longhui said that the agency and the live broadcast platform have agreed privately to give gifts to its anchors with a super low internal price, without even having to pay. Although anchors and platforms cannot directly obtain profits, they can cause some "rich" who are not aware of the truth to "fight" with real money and silver, and can also make anchors' popularity soar and compete for more traffic. "For example, the live broadcast platform spends 10 million yuan to sign an internet celebrity, and the money is handed over to the internet celebrity agency. The brokerage company will use another 10 million yuan to buy gifts and rewards for this internet celebrity on the live broadcast platform. In this way, neither party actually spent money, but the live broadcast room of the internet celebrity is very lively and the traffic is also rising. Other viewers who are watching the fun will also give gifts together."
Too worried about pornographic and vulgar live broadcasts can hardly have a way out
In addition to browsing data, pornography and vulgarity have always been an indelible shadow in the live broadcast industry. In Zhou Longhui's view, this is a problem that will inevitably face in the development of live streaming.
Zhou Longhui said that the transformation from PC to mobile was only three years, but the current show live broadcast is seriously homogenized. Even the beautiful anchors on various platforms look the same, with big eyes, awl face, white skin, long legs, and big breasts, just like they are carved from the same mold. It is an inevitable trend for the audience to experience aesthetic fatigue, forming a vicious cycle of spending money to exchange traffic, traffic to deceive investment, and using investment to spend money again. In the past three years of live broadcasting, although he has also made several internet celebrity female anchors famous, most of them are short-lived. Under tremendous pressure, he had almost never slept well in three years, and he slept less than 5 hours a day. "As long as the live broadcast room is not lively for a day, I will be so worried that my hair will turn white."
"You ask me what the future prospects of online live broadcasts will be. To be honest, I don't even know. I am worried that the bubble will burst, so I quit." Zhou Longhui said, "The false fire of data fraud will sooner or later cause the live broadcast industry to burn. When investors know that a beautiful data report is false, will he still invest rashly in? Without the support of investors, can live broadcasts that burn a lot of money last long?" Data shows that as of June this year, there have been more than 200 video live broadcast platforms nationwide, and it is expected that the number of online platforms will increase to 400 throughout the year, with a market size of 50 billion yuan. The "2016 China Online Live Streaming Industry Special Research" released by a third-party data survey agency shows that in 2015, the number of online live streaming platforms in China was close to 200, of which the market size of online live streaming was about 9 billion yuan, and the number of online live streaming platforms reached 200 million. But Zhou Longhui said that the competition in this industry is too fierce, and there are still hundreds of live broadcast platforms this year, and in two years, there may only be dozens of them. "I want to live a few more years and don't want to worry about this anymore."
Source: Guangzhou Daily
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