网红经济

20160729ou 一中两外锵锵三人行 今日话题：网红经济 今天我们来聊聊网红的赚钱之道,我们不难发现,当年靠颜值和靠才华的网红们，他们中的一些人已经依然靠后续开发,开始赚取高额的收益了。 MB: Now, online celebrities are certainly very popular indeed in China, with the huge potential traffic driven by websites such as Wechat, Weibo, Youku and others, but what about the business behind their success? Wu You, what have you got for us? WY: [Internet celebrities are a booming industry in China, but] now the job has turned into something more lucrative. In China now, people know how fast someone can become an internet sensation, then what about the next step? The internet sensation would like to turn the fame into real cash, so one example here is a Weibo star – let’s call her Miss Shui – she has a nice picture, pretty clothes and a Weibo account with 270,000 followers. Now she seems like a model for a Taobao clothing shop, but in fact she is also the owner of that shop, and to talk about the numbers, you know that Shui’s 12-hour days are paying off. Her company’s income was 50 million yuan, which is over $7 million last year. MB: OK, so it clearly seems like there’s a huge amount of cash in this sector. So essentially, what you’re saying is these are just completely ordinary people who have an account on Weibo or Wechat or whatever else (WY: Social media), on any social media account, and they put something on there, some videos, or some vlogs or something like that that get extremely popular, and that’s how their popularity starts? (WY: Yes) Brian, what do you make of all this? It seems like it’s incredibly popular here in China. BK: It is, and it seems to be largely based on the visual there, as opposed to, say, like YouTube [which] you see in the west, or the rest of the world, really, where you’ll see a funny video, or it’ll be interesting in some sort of way. It’s an interesting, unique trait here, but obviously people are finding ways to monetize that. I guess the analogue that it reminds me of would be like the Kardashians in the US, not that they rose to fame by this way, but I think their phenomenon right now is centred around [taking] pictures or maybe recording videos or things like that, as opposed to someone being famous just for their tweets or whatever. WY: And I think the difference is just like the Kardashian family [which] has already become very popular, and they are so rich, and people want to follow her, or at least look at her picture and their life, what they do every day, but this is quite different because those are ordinary people and they suddenly became famous online. This is quite different from the Kardashians, and also you can see Miss Shui is only one of hundreds of people who are making a living based on this internet fame in China, but how long can it last? Can you really just attract people by your appearance? Will people be tired of your appearance some day? MB: Well, I mean, there are lots of jobs out there, Wu You, which are solely based or largely based on your appearance. I mean, if you’re a model, for example, you only have a certain shelf-life until people are going to stop taking photographs and videos of you. I imagine this is the same sort of thing.