On YY, fans paid real money for virtual gifts and sent them to singers they had never met. The Guangzhou company started as a voice chat tool for online gamers and grew into a stage. Hosts sang and talked to rooms full of listeners, and YY took a cut of every gift. By August 2012 it had 70.5 million monthly users. That November it went public in New York.

From Gamer Chat to Stage

David Xueling Li, a former chief editor at NetEase, co-founded the company with Lei Jun, who later became chairman of Xiaomi. It began with Duowan.com, a gaming website. In July 2008 it launched YY Client, a program for real-time group voice, text and video chat. Users organized themselves into channels. The bet was that people would pay for status and virtual items inside those rooms. YY reached 400.5 million registered accounts by September 2012.

YY Becomes JOYY

YY priced 7.8 million American depositary shares at $10.50 in November 2012 and listed on Nasdaq as YY. Live streaming grew into its main business. It spun off the game-streaming site Huya, and in 2020 it renamed itself JOYY. It later sold its Chinese YY Live business to Baidu and focused on Bigo Live, an app used mostly outside China. JOYY remains public on Nasdaq, now based in Singapore.

Cover: Singer at a Café-Concert, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a singer performing to a crowd (live streaming).