Abstract

Powered by the proliferation of social computing and user-generated content, new knowledge sharing platforms in China, including Q&A communities and live broadcasting, were launched and received widely attentions recently. This research is motivated by the tremendous growth of an online knowledge sharing platform, Zhihu Live (www.zhihu.com/lives). Built upon Zhihu community, the usability and functionality of Zhihu Live makes it easy for user to create their own broadcasting lives that can be shared in the community to a wide range of audiences, making this an attractive platform to content creators (speakers) and knowledge consumers (audiences). We therefore propose a two-phase model to investigate the daily sales of Zhihu lives. Hierarchical Linear model was employed to test our hypotheses. Our preliminary results suggest that number of “like” positively affects daily sales before a live starts (phase 1), whereas “like” number, audience review score, and interactions between speakers and audiences during the broadcasting process have significant effects on live’s daily sales after the live starts (phase 2). Implications are discussed and limitations are noted.

Share

COinS