How a Chinese startup won the hearts of American teens

Doin’ the dab. Photo credit: Gokudabbing.

Teenagers are mysterious. Beyond rare reports from the field and the occasional inside source (read: younger siblings), not much is known about their culture. To outsiders, teens are inscrutable.

But Musical.ly, a Chinese social networking startup, gets them.

“You know what a dab is, right?” says Louis Yang, co-founder and CEO of Musical.ly. When I look confused, he shoots me an incredulous look.

Louis stretches out his left arm in a salute and tucks his head into the crook of his right arm. “This is called a dab,” he explains. “The kids in the US, they really want people to dab. In everything.”

Musical.ly took off last summer, about half a year after it launched its first app. The 15-second video platform was a hit with North American teens, rising to the top of app store rankings next to Instagram and Snapchat. What started off as a platform for lip-synced music videos has now expanded to include all kinds of performances, from comedy skits to dancing. Some ‘Musers’ (Musical.ly users) have even found fame through the app, launching their own clothing lines or going on music tours.

Now, the Shanghai-based startup is working on a live streaming app called Live.ly.

“Live.ly is the platform for people to engage the fans and to engage their friends,” says Louis. Unlike Musical.ly, the focus is on connecting with friends, not strangers, he says.

Five virtual coins buys you a panda; 1000 coins buys you Trump’s face.

Live.ly is less about building a portfolio of videos and more about daily footage and peer-to-peer interaction, hence the live streaming. It’s also more immediate. Each user has their own channel, which includes photos, videos, and live streams. But Live.ly channels are deliberately ephemeral. If you don’t update your channel with new content within 24 hours, your footage disappears.

“You just keep posting. If you don’t add new content, you just fade out like this,” he says, pointing to a test user’s account, where their channel shows white static.

So far, Live.ly’s been a hit with Musical.ly’s loyal teen fanbase. Just a few days after the app launched in June, it surged to the top of app store rankings. About 60 percent of Live.ly users come from Musical.ly, says Louis. Part of that is by design: there’s significant crossover between the two apps. For instance, Live.ly lets Musical.ly users pull their existing fanbase into the app.

Typical live stream on the left, danmu comments on the right.

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