“We’re different from YouTube because you dictate what’s going to happen,” explains Thomas Damek, founder of Zeemi.tv,
which went live just last month in Jakarta. Zeemi.tv aims to be
Indonesia’s first online stage for creating, watching, and interacting
with live entertainment content.
“It’s quite captivating when you see it,” says Damek. “As the
audience, you become part of the performance. So without you there, the
performance would be different.”
Still in its beta phase, Zeemi.tv’s user experience is relatively
straightforward. Once on the site, visitors may choose from a handful of
popular channels and see which ones are streaming live at any given
moment. After selecting a channel of interest, users can send messages
to the live performers in a chatroom-style message box to ask questions
or make requests about specific content.
All viewers are rewarded with a certain number of points that they
can use to buy and send cute icons as gifts to performers as a way to
show satisfaction. These gifts include adorable icons that range from
everything including puppy dogs and roses to champagne glasses,
cupcakes, and teddy bears.
Damek says Zeemi.tv will only broadcast live content, and only target
Indonesians. “With it, you offer the audience [a chance] to be much
closer to the stars than they normally would be,” he explains. Damek
claims there is no way he would want to start another YouTube. Instead,
he describes Zeemi.tv as an engagement tool, and a way for users to get a
better entertainment experience.
Damek is also the co-founder and former CEO of Lazada Indonesia. Prior to that, he held staff positions at McKinsey & Company, Hero food and beverages, and JP Morgan Cazenove in London and Europe.
See: These two entrepreneurs are taking Indonesia’s TV shows global
A round about monetizing method
“We don’t force people to buy anything,” explains Damek. “But the
gifts serve as an incentive for better content, and it’s actually one of
the ways we plan to monetize.” The incentive for Zeemi.tv performers to
create top-notch content is that all the gifts they receive from
viewers can also be redeemed for real-life cash. Viewers will soon be
able to pay for points that allow them to purchase the gifts (similar to
buying the cute icon stickers on the popular chat app Line).
They can also receive points for using services that fall under
Zeemi.tv’s list of subsidies, like utilizing the service of a partnering
telco vendor or making purchases with a partnering credit card brand.
Damek hopes Zeemi.tv will make money for itself by extracting a small
percentage of the transaction each time a user buys points. He did not
comment on the size of that percentage, or on how much money performers
can earn per gift redemption. He explains, “whenever there’s a
transaction we’ll take a bit, but then [we] hand the most of the money
over to the users. We really want to enable people who are entertaining
to make money.”
Damek claims that his competition is really anyone (not even
necessarily in Indonesia) who creates live engagement. According to him,
this ranges greatly and includes big names like Facebook and Buzzfeed,
but can also be local radio and television stations. He says, “No one in
Indonesia is doing directly what we’re doing. We have a lot of
performers that range from crazy beatboxers to stand up comedians,
musicians, singers, and indie artists. We also do a lot of things with
local bands too.”
Keeping it clean
Damek claims that a big part of what his staff does is monitor and
curate the content that Zeemi.tv allows to go live. According to him,
the last thing Zeemi.tv wants is to become Chatroulette,
the notorious chat site which ultimately turned into a cesspool of nude
and lewd behavior. For this reason, Zeemi.tv has a feature to report
offensive material, and Damek says the technical team is constantly on
the lookout for users who are abusing the site. He adds that Zeemi.tv
has no qualms with banning users for inappropriate content. “You can
basically put on any content that is engaging, fun, and legal,” he says.
According to Damek, Zeemi.tv has just a “little less than 10,000
users,” all of whom he considers to be active. Damek claims the site has
several foreign and local angel investors who understand the tech
sector and how it fits into Indonesia. Zeemi.tv is currently up and
running, but Damek notes that he won’t “officially launch” the site
until November, when his team will start aggressively promoting the
platform.
by : .techinasia.com
