À̹ÌÁö È®´ë V Live. [Photo by Naver Corp.]
South Korean internet giant Naver Corp. has its hopes up to hit another LINE-like jackpot in Japan and Southeast Asia with live video streaming service.
The video streaming service dubbed V Live, which allows Korean celebrities to broadcast live videos on the internet and live chat with fans from around the globe is on a roll riding on K-pop superstars like BTS, WINNER and EXO.
The number of V Live downloads surpassed 61 million cases globally after its release in July 2015, Naver said on Sunday. Its fast growth is striking in Vietnam. The number of monthly active users - a measurement on the success rate of social networking services - doubled in 10 months to hit 6.5 million. New user flows are created fast through V HEARTBEAT, a music program co-launched by the Vietnamese government and the Korean web portal, in July. It is being positioned as the country¡¯s flagship music show as Korean idol bands such as WINNER, SEVENTEEN and MONSTA X take to the stage together with some 50 Vietnamese stars every month.
A strong sustainability element of V Live is Channel Plus, a paid subscription service for communication between selected stars and fans, which is emerging as Naver`s new cash cow. Channel Plus users can enjoy a wide variety of video content including reality shows, concerts, fan meetings, and behind cam scenes. V Line has already 160,000 Channel Plus subscribers.
Naver is testing various artificial intelligence applications to the services, for example to automatically recognize and highlight users¡¯ favorite members of idol bands on the screen, in hopes of further expanding the reach of the services. Payments on the V Live platform amounted to 30.8 billion won ($27.4 million) for the first 10 months of this year.
By Lee Dong-in and Minu Kim
[¨Ï Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]