---
title: "Lying Flat: 10 Futures of Livestream E-commerce"
description: "The author reflects on the evolution of livestream e-commerce from a mocked format to a mainstream industry, predicting major trends including the rise of professional anchors, virtual anchors, and the integration of live streaming with traditional media and retail."
author: "躺平美滋滋的"
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published: "2020-05-19"
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# Lying Flat: 10 Futures of Livestream E-commerce

> The author reflects on the evolution of livestream e-commerce from a mocked format to a mainstream industry, predicting major trends including the rise of professional anchors, virtual anchors, and the integration of live streaming with traditional media and retail.

Okay, the main text begins.
From the 4A advertising circle to the internet e-commerce circle, I've seen the real Chinese consumer; and from working to starting a business, I've become a true social person, detached from highbrow tastes.
The more I understand this world, the more I want to lie flat, to be honest. For example: you have to admit defeat; if you're not good, don't blame the uneven ground.
After two months of busywork, I finally abandoned my livestream selling career.
Watching helplessly as Luo Yonghao makes friends, Li Xiaolu acts as Twins, seeing Lu Han and Wu Yifan's eating broadcasts, CCTV boys selling goods, Miss Dong's second visit, and leaders entering livestream rooms... Today's livestream e-commerce is unexpectedly interesting, informative, and useful.
But a year ago, livestream e-commerce was mocked as human-shaped Juhuasuan, mobile TV shopping, a large-scale archaeological site for celebrities, a happy valley for third-tier entertainers, a shouting lion mountain, a ghost house without makeup, and a cloud street stall. News focused on non-stick pans, poor sales, slips of the tongue, and being outdated. Public account articles were full of sour grapes, and comments were all "never watch" and "Who are Viya and Li Jiaqi?"
The essence of success in life is not lying flat to win, but a comeback. The development history of the livestream e-commerce industry could be made into a 100-episode "Wealth Bible."
But as the saying goes, a hero doesn't boast about past glory. In the prime of its life, the livestream e-commerce circle prefers to look forward, researching 5G, 6G, 1080p... So today, let's chat about "**The Future of Livestream E-commerce**."
**-01-**
**On the Second Half or the Opening Ceremony**
For a new industry where the whole industry is a bunch of amateurs, with no industry-academia-research, no theoretical system, no professional hierarchy, and it's only been hot for three years, the media is shouting that "it has entered the second half." I think you're really force-ripening livestream.
There are no more than 20 institutions in this industry that can manage anchors well and handle the people-goods-field; no more than 10 people who can stand on stage and explain livestream e-commerce clearly.
Isn't it too early to talk about the first half and second half now? The trial operation has just started, okay?
**A major reshuffle in the second half of the year is inevitable.**
Platforms are competing, anchors are surging. In this business, starting from 0 to 1 is too simple. Many people overestimate their livestream capabilities; they only see the meat, not the hardship. When entering the 40-60 point range, a large number of people will be eliminated; and at 60-80 points, the battle of capital will appear.
**-02-**
**On Anchors**
In this circle, **as a platform, if you want to stand in the first tier, you must have top anchors.**
Taobao's Viya and Li Jiaqi, Kuaishou's Xinba and Sandage, Douyin's Luo Yonghao. Without a top anchor, there's no news, no viral cases, no scale, and you can only squat in the second tier.
**In this circle, there are only two types of anchors: top anchors and other anchors.**
To this day, overall, the professional quality, skills, and ethics of anchors are very poor.
Good anchors are rare; many big anchors who rose with the trend have gotten cocky; showing off and acting like divas is common; selling fakes and counterfeits is common; product selection, quality control, and after-sales are a mess; they don't prepare, don't research products, and just spout nonsense; big anchors have accidents every day, and merchants and consumers are paying for the anchors' growth.
The rise of the regular army, high-quality hosts, and more charismatic entrepreneurs will become the next generation of top anchors. They may not broadcast frequently, but it's not a problem to blow up in a single session. The representative figure here is: Zhu Guangquan. (Teacher Zhu, if you want to sign with an agency, please consider me; I also have an MCN organization!)
With language talent, humor, quick reactions, and thorough preparation of product knowledge for each broadcast, unlike celebrities who just go through the motions, Zhu Guangquan genuinely respects the livestream industry. His seriousness towards livestream even surpasses Luo Yonghao.
**-03-**
**On Virtual Anchors**
24-hour graphic and short-video stores are already mature, but 24-hour livestream stores don't exist, and that's the problem.
The general anchor's physical limit is 5 hours; no one can sustain a full day. The biggest problem with a three-shift model is that user stickiness decreases, because remembering three faces is a bit difficult, unless they're triplets.
The emergence of virtual anchors solves a big problem: brand store customer service livestreams. During peak hours, real people go on; during late night, robots take over. Every store becomes a 7-11, and you can happily sleep your beauty sleep.
Of course, virtual celebrities can also work, whether it's Luo Tianyi or Le Zhengyi; these are just the beginning. Later, there will be virtual Viya and Li Jiaqi, Xiao Zhan and Dilraba. When celebrities sign endorsements, they'll have "virtual portrait rights." In the future, brand livestream rooms will have the spokesperson working 365×24 hours. How tragic.
Investment banks should pay attention to the "virtual anchor" industry.
**-04-**
**On Anchor Echelons**
Schools are mass-producing anchors, but note that they also need to cultivate operations and planning talent. 3 points for the anchor, 7 points for the team; not all problems are solved by the anchor.
In the post-pandemic period, the main force transitioning from offline to online as anchors is not shopping mall salespeople or tour guides, but actors who have no films to shoot this year, models with no runway to walk, and bosses whose export business is bleak.
For celebrities, livestream is an upgrade of their commercial endorsement model; for CEOs, livestream is a shortcut to becoming an internet celebrity themselves.
In 2018, a large number of high-quality anchors died out, indeed because the consumer market was immature, brand goods didn't sell, and it was all low-price promotions.
But **2020 is completely different**. The supply of a large number of first-line brands brought in a large number of first-tier city users, allowing a batch of high-quality anchors to break through. Unemployed white-collar workers, stop agonizing over company compensation. You know how to dress up, have professional skills, and are so good at pitching and tearing into clients. Why not try this?
**-05-**
**On Livestream TV Stations**
Single camera - single camera push-pull - dual camera switching - four cameras - eight cameras. There are more and more cameras in the livestream room, observing the anchor and products from various angles, starting to take shape as variety shows. A large number of directors, photographers, sound engineers, and editors laid off from TV stations are re-employed, and they can also grab red envelopes. How wonderful.
From TV variety shows, to online variety shows, to livestream variety shows. A new entertainment consumption industry is emerging on the livestream track.
The appearance of CCTV boys is not the beginning of official media MCN institutions, but rather the traditional TV media that couldn't be killed by Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, or Kuaishou has finally hit it off with livestream, and completed a rebirth of its business model.
Hosts finish the news and then sell products. Merchants can not only advertise on CCTV but also sell big on CCTV. The fragrance is real! A wave of traditional brands smells it and comes over.
Those half-dead PGC livestream programs have finally seen their spring.
**-06-**
**On Livestream Institutions**
The surreal status quo is: **There are more MCN institutions than anchors.** Countless small bosses dream of being surrounded by beautiful anchors, selling hundreds of millions overnight, and reaching the pinnacle of life.
In addition, countless brands have been bullied enough by big anchors and plan to incubate their own anchors, so they all open MCN institutions.
👉 This is likely to fail. If brands could do MCN institutions, they would have been able to write 100,000+ articles on public accounts back then, and could have started their own advertising agencies. It's necessary to have a scale in your heart and weigh yourself.
Not only is the Matthew effect severe among anchors, but MCN institutions are also either stuffed to death or starved to death.
As the three-party commission affiliation model gradually collapses, institutions' control over anchors will be further weakened. The era of lying on anchors to make money is gone forever.
Now, if you want to start a livestream institution, unless you have **the combined capabilities of an e-commerce company + marketing company + advertising company + brokerage company**, you might lie flat from the start and be ravaged by cruel reality.
In terms of overall returns, doing livestream institutions is indeed not as good as doing brands; the revenue is large but the profit is low.
Moreover, many institution bosses believe that "people" are the most uncontrollable "product," with terrible stability. As long as the anchor is unhappy, the bosses' hearts race immediately. Anchors are harder to appease than girlfriends.
But doing e-commerce brands is also unstable now; the iteration speed of hit products is too fast. Brand lifespan is even shorter than an anchor's career. An anchor can last three to five years without cooling off, but what about a brand? What was the hottest internet skincare brand five years ago?
So the point is not whether doing "people" or "goods" has a future; don't listen to investors' nonsense. **As long as your skills are up to par and you know all the moves, you can do anything; otherwise, nothing is stable.** The big trend is segmented livestream institutions. The cake is big enough; from the people-goods-field division, vertical institutions will become more and more numerous.
These days, I've even encountered an institution that only does middle-aged and elderly accounts, one that only does agricultural products, and training institutions for anchor psychological counseling and voice protection... So, why would you want a bicycle?
**-07-**
**On Livestream E-commerce Bases**
Real estate developers need concepts the most. A building of reinforced concrete can be a single apartment, a film base, an art park, or Silicon Valley, Beauty Valley, Medical Valley, Pharma Valley, or: a livestream e-commerce base.
But what is the standard for a livestream e-commerce base?
The ideal state is: **A place where the superior management unit + livestream association + livestream institutions + livestream merchants + livestream service companies + livestream technology R&D + livestream training + livestream forums can fully display livestream e-commerce.**
The actual state is: There's a livestream base in Panyu, Guangzhou, located in a food city. It has gathered over 100 stall merchants, provides free training, and lets merchants self-broadcast. Merchants choose suitable platforms to livestream based on their goods. Livestream institutions send anchors to patrol and rotate broadcasts. For merchants, self-broadcasting is like paying wages, and anchor broadcasts are like giving bonuses. Each takes what they need, and neither is completely dependent on the other.
But the benefit is that everyone sticks together. If they say discount, they all discount; if they say new arrivals, they all release new arrivals. And the boss ladies even visit each other's livestreams to earn commissions from neighbor Wang. This model is more grounded, without flashy pretense.
**-08-**
**On Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen**
**1\. Beijing**
**Beijing has the most entertainers, the most influencers, and the most content creators.**
The e-commerce atmosphere is relatively poor, but Douyin and Kuaishou headquarters are in Beijing, and CCTV is also there, so livestream selling focuses more on entertainment content. In the people-goods-field, Beijing's "people" are the strongest, such as the CCTV News selling boy group, Luo Yonghao, Zhang Mofan, Li Xiang. This is a city that always produces "big names."
To borrow a quote from a literary friend: Beijing, the weather is bad, the food is bad, the city planning is bad, but the "people" are too interesting.
**2\. Guangzhou**
**Guangzhou has the most supply of goods and the most Kuaishou old-timers (surprised?).**
MCN institutions like to make money quietly, with little communication and no circles, so many make small money, but few make big money and become famous. But recently, as a government consultant in Guangzhou, I took stock of MCN institutions and found the industry chain is very complete: from anchor incubation, traffic purchasing, livestream room decoration, livestream room control, livestream room atmosphere group, livestream equipment, product supply chain, warehousing and logistics, data analysis, virtual anchors, marketing planning, IP building, livestream training, advertising marketing, shared livestream rooms, livestream real estate, livestream factories—everything is available. I was shocked. Guangzhou's reaction speed is too fast.
**3\. Hangzhou**
**Hangzhou is the Mecca of e-commerce and the Bright Summit of the livestream selling world.**
Everyone clusters around Alibaba. The current problem is that, constrained by city resources, the industry chain is incomplete, and livestream institutions iterate slowly. There are no decent international brands, 4A companies, or large film and television economic companies. To recruit a decent copywriter or planner, you have to poach from Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. So when livestream becomes more mainstream and mainstream economic forces rush in, Hangzhou reacts slowly. Quite a few people are still immersed in the fun of driving traffic and guessing algorithms. But the development of livestream influencer breakout, livestream advertising marketing, livestream interesting content, and livestream commercialization is slow. For example, influencers who strut around in Hangzhou are nothing when they go to Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou.
**4\. Shenzhen**
**Shenzhen got up early but arrived late for the market.**
It was exposed to livestream selling early, but the cost of the whole city is too high. And it's very impetuous; many hype concepts, few do real work. They put up a sign for a livestream base, and then double the rent. So far, it's made the least noise. Shenzhen's comeback opportunity comes from Tencent. When Tencent's PCG department figures out livestream and opens the complete path from public domain traffic to private domain, Kanjian Livestream will become a new private domain selling field.
But by then, how many players will be in Shenzhen? How many MCNs from outside will come to challenge? How many old-timer anchors from other platforms will come to do dimensionality reduction strikes?
**5\. Shanghai**
**Shanghai is the most stable and has the most style.**
To this day, Shanghai is still the city with the best offline shopping experience in China, and the city's overall living standard is infinitely close to Tokyo (prices too). So Shanghai sits there, never embracing this or that, waiting for others to embrace her.
In terms of livestream e-commerce, one Li Jiaqi can conquer the world, one Xiaohongshu does all the grass-planting, one Nanjing Road is full of big brands, and one Pinduoduo handles all the promotions and discounts. So, with the people (top anchors), goods (brands), and field (apps) all present, why would she be anxious? Better to get some late-night snacks.
These cities all have, or are developing, their own urban livestream heroes.
**-09-**
**On Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou**
There's a saying in the industry: anchors who can't survive on Taobao go to Kuaishou, and anchors who can't survive on Kuaishou go to Douyin. The logic is very similar to the employee flow system of Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent.
A three-way standoff is basically the trend this year. All three have top anchors: Taobao's Viya and Li Jiaqi, Kuaishou's Xinba and Sandage, Douyin's Luo Yonghao. Having one top anchor means at least 100-1000 waist anchors. One top anchor can support a complete anchor system. This is already industry consensus.
**Strongly operated Taobao, interest-algorithm Douyin, and private-domain-heavy Kuaishou.** No matter the platform's traffic form, in the end, it's the Matthew effect. Matthew didn't start with livestream e-commerce; every human industry has the Matthew effect haunting it.
So you either become a top anchor or shut up and admit defeat. Whoever among Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou lacks a top anchor falls to the second tier, and without a top anchor, there's no scale. Platform traffic is meant to make money; average distribution is just a pipe dream for small players.
**1\. Taobao Livestream**
Taobao Livestream is stable but with a bit of flair this year. The leadership's endorsement will make the entire group attach great importance to the livestream business. With Tmall's continuous support, more brands will send a large number of celebrities, stars, and CEOs into livestream rooms. Marketing and PR departments will create a lot of exposure!
Taobao Livestream is no longer an internal startup department; the good days have finally come!
**2\. Kuaishou**
Kuaishou experienced a collective suspension of top anchors, but the strong purchasing power of Kuaishou fans was unscathed. To this day, in the third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier city segment, Kuaishou is still number one, with no competitors.
And recently, you can clearly feel that Kuaishou is on the rise. From celebrities to high-quality content, Kuaishou is no longer just a playground for urban youth. Ryuichi Sakamoto's butterfly effect is still ongoing.
**3\. Douyin**
Douyin is incredibly hot, like a video version of WeChat.
The Douyin talent ecosystem is terrifying. With the massive influx of official media and celebrities, huge content supply, and continuous algorithm optimization, the information cocoon is disappearing. It's not just showing you what you want to see; it's expanding cognition and giving users the feeling of opening the door to a new world.
**-10-**
**On "Livestream+"**
**Tipping + selling goods will become the mainstream**, and Pinduoduo and Taobao can't escape it either. This classical business model hasn't been broken; the core reason is that when platforms design products, to reduce consumer learning costs, they all become the same, just like all fast-food restaurants copy McDonald's and KFC.
When the tipping + selling model of Douyin and Kuaishou is accepted by more people, it will force Taobao and Pinduoduo to become selling + tipping models.
Actually, Taobao Livestream had a tipping function when it launched in 2016, but it was later canceled. So it's not that they didn't think of it, but whether the timing is right.
In addition, I think for everyone in the livestream industry, whether you're a boss lady supplying goods at a stall or a white-collar worker in a 5A office building scheduling Li Jiaqi, as your time around livestream increases and your work focus shifts more towards livestream, congratulations, you already have one foot in the door as a "livestream e-commerce practitioner."
And in the future, livestream e-commerce practitioners will be able to enter the professional canon like teachers and doctors, get professional titles, and have nationally recognized qualifications as a mainstream profession. So, everyone can start making a "livestream career plan."
The possibilities of livestream+ are as many as a hundred thousand.
**Summary:**
Recently, I've seen more, thought a lot, but written less. When I encounter nonsense, I'm too lazy to refute.
I've also stopped livestreaming because I've surveyed a large number of resources, from government, state-owned enterprises, listed companies, manufacturing, media, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fudan's School of Economics and Management, Sun Yat-sen University, and other places, and consulted a large number of experts to demonstrate the various possibilities for the future of livestream e-commerce. **Livestream e-commerce is not just new retail; it's a brand-new industry, a top-down industrial chain revolution.**
Source: Zhao Yuanyuan (ID: lordofthemind), Author: Zhao Yuanyuan
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption.


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