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NTU Management Review Vol. 32 No. 1 Apr. 2022

gifts are bought from the live-streaming platform using real-world money. This latest
internet technology (i.e. virtual paid gifting) has contributed a new business model to the
gift economy (Zhang et al., 2019). Figure 1 is an image of a typical live-streaming channel
captured from DouYu (douyu.com), one of China's most famous live-streaming platforms

(Zhou et al., 2019). In the live-streaming platform, viewers can send comments or virtual
4
gifts in danmaku.
While viewers in China are fairly familiar with the paid gifting function, and paid

gifting also contributes a large amount of revenue to firms running the live-streaming
platforms (Zhou et al., 2019); however, paid gifting is relatively new in the western
markets, and some US-based live streaming platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Live,
have just begun generating revenue from this concept in recent years (Bearne, 2017).

Figure 1 Channel Page on DouYu

In addition to the novel feature of paid gifting, live streaming platforms are quite

distinct from each other in terms of their streaming contents, primary sources of revenue,
or interactive functions. Twitch, for example, livestreams various games and offers
interactive functions similar to those of DouYu (e.g., the streamer interacts with the

4 Danmaku is shown in the comments in Figure 1, which means that viewers can post their comments
while watching a live stream. The subtitles will be displayed in real-time when all viewers watch the
live stream, thus increasing the interaction between the viewers.

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