In the online entertainment and social sector, platforms are facing a series of challenges as the market and products evolve. As more and more businesses enter this sector, competition intensifies and products become increasingly homogenized, making it more difficult for platforms to acquire new users. Besides, there is a significant change in the user demographics, i.e., Gen Z has become the largest cohort of users. Platforms need more innovative and youth-friendly products and services to meet the needs of the young generations to achieve growth and revenue breakthroughs.
Looking back at the development of online entertainment and social networking over the past decades, it can be summarized into the following phases:
1) BBS or online forums in the early days
2) Social networking platforms for friends and acquaintances (in general, people who know each in person) like WhatsApp
3) Content-based social platforms and communities form around common interests
4) Social networking platforms for strangers, which have been growing rapidly in recent years
This development shows that online entertainment and social networking platforms have been undergoing changes from socializing among acquaintances to socializing among strangers, from enabling people to find romantic relationships to helping people gather around shared interests. The reasons behind these changes are inextricably linked to the fact that Gen Z has gradually become the main force of Internet consumption today.
According to the research report “Insights of the Gen Z” published by QuestMobile, as of November 2020, the number of active internet users of the Gen Z cohort (born between 1997 and 2012) has reached 320 million, which represents 28.1% of the total mobile internet users, and has contributed 50% of the growth of mobile internet.
The change in user demographics has also resulted in more diverse needs for online social networking. According to the “Social networking report of the Gen Z” published by Soul, young people of Gen Z desire more diverse online experiences and want to find more friends with common interests to mingle with.
ZEGOCLOUD Launches a Portfolio of Social 2.0 Solutions
To help the platforms satisfy their users’ needs for more novel, diverse, and customized online entertainment and social networking, ZEGOCLOUD launches a portfolio of social 2.0 one-stop solutions that, in a nutshell, are combinations of social networking and creative content such as gaming, karaoke, virtual reality, live quizzing, and avatar. This solution portfolio includes the follows:
1) A one-stop “social + gaming” solution
2) A one-stop “social + karaoke + music copyrights” solution
3) A one-stop “live streaming + virtual reality” solution
4) A one-stop “live streaming + live quiz” solution
Let’s introduce these solutions one by one in more detail here.
The 1-Stop Social + Gaming Solution
Social networking and gaming are said to be the “eternal needs”, and both are the main sources of monetization for online entertainment and social platforms. Compared to a gaming product, it is easier for a social product to retain current users but harder to attract new users. On the contrary, it is easier for a gaming product to attract new users but harder to retain current users. So, they can be a perfect combination, complementing each other with their respective strengths.
To help businesses quickly build such a platform that combines social networking with gaming, ZEGOCLOUD releases a one-stop “social + gaming” solution. The “social” part refers to the real-time solution that allows users to interact with each other via voice or video in real-time; while the “gaming” part refers to an collection of mini games that come with the solution. With this solution, users can play a game together in the app anytime they wish while in a voice/video chat.
Currently, ZEGOCLOUD provides a collection of mini games that cover several genres, including “player versus player”, “voice social games”, “interactive live streaming”, “board games”, “chess and card games”, etc. There are about a hundred games for you to choose from, including “Murder mystery game”, “Werewolves”, “Draw and guess”, “One-two-three wooden man”, “Overcooked”, “Number bomb”, “Taming monster”, “Fruit machine”, etc.
The 1-Stop Social + Karaoke + Copyrights Solution
Online karaoke is another feature that Gen Z loves. Data has shown that Gen Z has a higher preference for music apps. They like listening to music and also like singing karaoke.
To satisfy Gen Z’s desire to “make friends through music”, ZEGOCLOUD’s online karaoke solution provides many features, including sing-and-record, sing-on-request, snatch-to-sing, sing-in-chorus, and online-merge-offline karaoke rooms, etc.
Besides, to help online entertainment platforms overcome the music copyright issues, ZEGOCLOUD has come into partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE: TME) to provide stable and secure access to an enormous repository of copyrighted music resources. By calling the related APIs of ZEGOCLOUD’s SDK, an application can search, retrieve, and download copyrighted songs, accompaniment tracks, and lyrics.
The 1-Stop Live Streaming + Virtual Reality Solution
Live streaming has become a very popular type of online entertainment nowadays, and live streaming features are becoming increasingly homogeneous amid fierce competition. How to create a novel and differentiated user experience? This is a challenging question that lingers in the mind of many platform founders, operations managers, product managers, and alike.
ZEGOCLOUD launches a one-stop “live streaming + virtual reality” solution to help online entertainment and social platforms address this challenge. ZEGOCLOUD’s virtual reality technology combines live streaming videos and virtual 3D scenes to create an online performance conducted in a virtual 3D space, delivering an experience comparable to that of an offline live concert. With cinematic video quality and immersive virtual scenes, the solution takes the experience of virtual performances to a whole new level.
Besides virtual reality scenes, background music is also paramount for streamers’ performances. ZEGOCLOUD’s solution provides background music that blends seamlessly with the virtual scenes. In addition, the solution also supports virtual gifts with 3D effects, bullet screens with 3D effects, and other fun and engaging features, bringing amazing visual effects and innovative ways of interactions that greatly improve the attractiveness of live streaming performances and create great monetization opportunities for social platforms.
The 1-Stop Live Streaming + Live Quiz Solution
Quiz contest has been a wonderful and attractive form of entertainment as always. It was brought online as a type of live streaming in late 2017 and had become a phenomenal business model just a few months after its debut. However, it is very challenging to implement an online live quizzing system since it is very demanding to guarantee the quality and quantity of quiz content.
To make it easier to build live quizzing features into various applications, ZEGOCLOUD launches a one-stop “live streaming + live quiz” solution, offering first-class live streaming performance and live quizzing features. In this solution, ZEGOCLOUD provides a repository of a massive amount of quiz contents, which includes quizzes for song name guessing, picture guessing, movie name guessing, etc.
The solution provides live quizzing with different player settings, including single-player, pair-up, etc. These rich live quizzing formats can help platforms improve their abilities to attract new users and generate revenue.
Conclusion
As always, ZEGOCLOUD is dedicated to bringing value to its clients, helping them attract new users, retain current users, and increase revenue. With all these solutions, you will be able to quickly build customized real-time communications and online entertainment features to capture the market opportunities with shorter time-to-market and lower development costs, deliver a better experience to your users, and achieve significant growth in users and revenue.
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