[TechWeb] October 26 news, October 22-23, RTE2021 Real-time Internet Conference hosted by Voice Network Agora was held in Beijing. In recent years, the epidemic has forced the public to live in a more online way around the world. in this process, real-time audio and video, as the underlying technology for the establishment of these scenes, has become more and more important. Organizer Agora invited Soul, Chizi City, Yalla Group, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment and singing Bar to participate in the social pan-entertainment and sea sub-forums on October 23rd. Although the current attention players in their respective industries are in different subdivisions, they also overlap with each other, which almost forms the current global vision of China's audio and video social industry.

How to see the meta-universe clearly?

With Roblox and Facebook Inc bringing fire to the concept of meta-universe, the latter has become many people's ultimate fantasy about the virtual world. Very low latency real-time interaction is one of the necessary conditions to achieve metasmology, and it is only natural that metasmology has become a high-frequency vocabulary in this forum.

Ten years after the mobile Internet, a number of updated technologies are gradually taking shape and application scenarios can not fully stimulate the potential in the mobile Internet. The emergence of meta-universe is inevitable in a bottleneck period when such new technologies are bound by the mobile Internet.

"5G, XR, blockchain and other new things require a unified imagination to accomplish the ultimate mission. Just like the era of the mobile Internet, Apple Inc's mobile phone actually carries 4G, display and battery technology, and eventually all of these technologies become the mobile Internet we have today. " Wang Qi, head of social pan-entertainment products at Agora, said.

Photo: Wang Qi, head of products in the social pan-entertainment industry of Voice Network

This first led to the second wave of AR/VR devices after a long period of disappointment.

"Why did we come back to the industry in the second half of 2019?"

Lin Junquan, vice president of Panax Notoginseng Mutual Entertainment Investment, raised this question at the forum. His answer is that some of the technical conditions involved in this concept have gradually matured in the past two years.

"the landing of 5G is a critical time node. Its low latency can further promote the play of content, such as adding more rendering. Combined with cloud games, the device can be more lightweight, and the AR/VR device itself has been more optimized over the years, whether it's improved resolution in detail or improved performance of all-in-one machines. "

Facebook Inc's Quest series of VR wearable devices is a concrete expression of the qualitative change and evolution of this kind of hardware devices. In August, Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook Inc reality Lab, said publicly that Facebook Inc would reach the target of 10 million VR users faster than initially expected. The shipment of 10 million units has always been regarded as a sign of popularity in the hardware market.

Apple Inc combined with 3G network, began to have application content, at the same time, the hardware coordination of all parties has become better. At that time, Apple Inc shipped more than 10 million mobile phones. This means that developers are starting to pour in, "Lin Junquan said." when more than 50 apps with revenue of more than 1 million begin to enter the market, more developers will slowly enter the market. "

"now there are more than 60 apps with revenues of more than $1 million for VR. Although this is a small number compared with mobile games and entertainment App, it is showing a very benign exponential growth momentum."

One of the most important reasons for the loneliness of AR/VR a few years ago is the lack of high-quality content.

Photo: Lin Junquan, vice president of Panax notoginseng mutual entertainment investment

Wang Qi's view on what the meta-universe will eventually look like is that the current "portraits of the future" are actually of little significance.

"We need to have a clear self-awareness. Now trying to understand the behavior of meta-universe is actually equivalent to going back to the Qing and Ming dynasties to tell people at that time what online reward or live e-commerce is. In fact, he has no way to understand it at all, because he doesn't know what a smartphone or mobile Internet is, or even what electricity is."

In the view of Zheng Daosen, founder of Entertainment Capital, he hopes that meta-universe can become a natural extension of people's life, rather than a carnival of a small number of people. this will be good for increasing acceptance of meta-universe or for the further development of this concept in the future.

But if the meta-universe is finally formed, the starting point is in the present, and audio and video social communication is one of the inevitable aspects.

Audio and video socialization in Z era

Soul, a new generation of social platform, proposed to build a "social meta-universe for young people" at the beginning of this year, and it is also one of the players who came up with the concept of meta-universe quite early in domestic social products. According to Wang Qing, editor-in-chief of Soul App, social meta-universe, as an expansion form of meta-universe, means that people can rely on their own virtual avatars in a real-time online "world". Find like-minded friends to build social relationships based on your personal interest map, and the process will be immersive.

Wang Qing mentioned that McCann China's relevant report on Generation Z released this year shows that 72% of Generation Z believe that individuals' insights and achievements in a certain field are more representative of themselves than consumption and career. This means that a new generation of young people are gradually moving away from a unified standard of success and want to have more self-expression. This kind of self-expression tends to follow interest.

Speaking of the latest social trends, Wang Qing said that Z-era people are more keen to create their own virtual human settings, and virtual human settings plus a new worldview is scene-based social interaction. "being virtual doesn't mean it's not real, or even, on the contrary, 58% of Generation Z are more focused on being who they really are. In a more diverse and comfortable scenario, the feelings and needs expressed by young people may be more real. "

Photo: Wang Qing, editor-in-chief of Soul APP

Singing has been dabbling in some products for young people based on music play since last year. From the point of view of user reaction, Shen Chenglei, vice president of research and development of singing bar, feels that young people in the Z era will pursue more equal interaction. "the traditional (social model) is eccentric, while they pay more attention to the expression of their personality, which is a decentralized and more equal way of playing," says Shen Chenglei.

The global market of audio and video social communication

In addition to Soul, Chizi City Technology, a young company that also focuses on audio and video social and pan-entertainment, is that, unlike the former, the main users of Chizi City are overseas. After China Mobile Limited's gradual popularity of the Internet, its huge population base and the number of young people have brewed a huge testing ground, and a large number of social pan-entertainment products focusing on the domestic market can rely on their different ways of playing to find their own user groups. At the same time, some companies with the same keen vision as Chizi City have chosen to set their sights on more open emerging markets overseas. Since Chizi City Technology began to lay out its overseas business in 2013, its main products have been around the combination of social networking, audio and video and games. With diversified subdivision products, we started from Southeast Asia, Middle East, South Asia and other emerging markets, and gradually expanded to Europe, America, Japan and South Korea and other developed markets after strengthening barriers in these areas. The strategy of multi-product and multi-market layout enables Chizi City to provide rich experience for more teams in China who are interested in doing audio and video social networking.

"the Middle East market has a large number of users and strong spending power, and the Internet infrastructure here is improving day by day. Due to the cultural, religious and other factors in the Middle East, local people have a huge demand for online social networking. The Southeast Asian market has a large young population base. The average daily use of mobile devices is extremely long, and there is also great potential for development."

As for the developed markets with high barriers to development, he Wei, vice president of Chizi City Science and Technology, said at the forum that users in North America and Europe are more mature and have stronger ability to pay; users in Japan and South Korea are sticky and have very high payment potential, but there are certain barriers to entry.

As an Internet company, he Wei believes that insisting on local management is another core point in addition to product innovation.

From localized operation to localized operation, the difference is that we believe that localized operation is a marketing strategy, which is something that must be done to promote the company's products overseas. In he Wei's view, "localized operation is more based on the level of company development, and the organization of an offshore company must be localized. In addition to having a local team ahead, it is also necessary for those who can hear the gunfire in front to make decisions, rather than passing them on to the local team. Only by truly achieving a long-term doctrine rooted locally can the company continue to increase its global scale and influence. "

Picture: he Wei, vice president of Chizi City Technology.

By contrast, Yalla Group is one of the few internet companies with headquarters in the United Arab Emirates and R & D in China, rising in the Middle East and North Africa. Since its establishment in 2016, Yalla Group has launched a number of popular voice social and entertainment applications in the Middle East and North Africa. At present, it has formed a product matrix, including Yalla, Yalla Ludo, Yalla Baloot, Yalla Parchis, 101Okey Yalla, YallaChat and other products, and is gradually building a comprehensive Yalla ecosystem.

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) market has some common characteristics of emerging markets, with a huge demand for social and entertainment products, but less "supply" for a variety of reasons. According to Frost & Sullivan, only 3.4 social and entertainment apps were downloaded from a single active user in the MENA market in 2019, compared with an average of 6.2 and 13.8 in the United States and China. On the other hand, local offline entertainment venues are relatively simple. In 2019, for example, there are 135 cinemas per million people in the United States and 43 in China, but there are only 7.3 cinemas per million people in MENA.

It can be seen that the popularity of mobile devices is much faster than the replenishment of urban entertainment facilities, which due to the shortage of urban construction, social customs or purely hot environment, also means that the MENA market has more desire for online social networking and other entertainment.

According to Hua Qianli, chief strategy officer, what Yalla Group does is to get social back to its essence, which is a huge local demand.

"in the Middle East and North Africa, people are keen to get together and chat. A common example is majlis, a party where friends and neighbors socialize, exchange gifts and play casual games. "

"instead of creating a new type of social activity, we have moved their offline social activities online by deeply tapping the social needs of local users, and innovated to provide an online social and entertainment platform. Although the voice may seem simple, it is the oldest and most traditional way of socializing. The voice-centered social approach helps the vast majority of ordinary people lower the threshold for social participation, giving ordinary people the opportunity to truly participate in their own social platforms. " Hua Qianli said.

Photo: Hua Qianli, Chief Strategy Officer of Yalla Group

While the rich play methods of different scenes or regions based on audio and video social interaction can be realized, real-time interaction as the support of the underlying technology is very important. Shen Chenglei said that the technology of real-time interaction has broken through very quickly in the past two years, which is the comprehensive effect of changes from infrastructure to audio and video acquisition and processing technology.

From the technical service provider Agora to players in their respective scenes such as Soul, Chizi City or singing Bar, Yalla Group, the ecology of the entire RTE industry is being enriched, and it can be foreseen that this TRE conference is only a starting point, and there will be more innovative scenarios based on pan-entertainment and going out to sea to join in in the future.