DIGITAL EXPERIENCES — YouNow

YouNow is “the world’s first live social network” (Crunchbase). While perusing eMarketer for my elective course (Audience Analysis), I came across an article on the US social trends for 2017 (https://www.emarketer.com/Report/US-Social-Trends-2017-eMarketers-Predictions-Attribution-Live-Streaming-Messaging-Influencer-Marketing-More/2001920). With livestreaming listed as one of the biggest social media trends for 2017, I decided to look into one of the apps featured in the article, YouNow, which is described on YouNow’s homepage as “the best way to discover talented broadcasters, watch live streams, and video chat live with people from around the world” (https://www.younow.com/). When I got to the YouNow homepage, I clicked on one of the trending broadcasters. My first impression is that the user interface at first comes across as slightly messy and a little confusing (see screenshot below).

There’s a lot of choices between the “Trending Now,” “Editor’s Choice,” “Trending Tags,” and the chat/audience/guests toggle screens. After watching for a few minutes, you are automatically prompted to create an account in order to keep watching a livestream. (see screenshot below).

I wonder if this influences enough people to create an account? I personally did not find this broadcast enticing enough to create an account — it would be interesting to see if this is the most effective way for YouNow to acquire new users. If a user is only able to test a product/platform/service for a few minutes, I would think that many would not be incentivized to create an account.