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JOYY runs live-streaming and social apps where people watch broadcasts, chat, and send virtual gifts that they pay for.
JOYY is a social media company built around live video. Its best-known apps let people watch livestreams, join group voice chats, and meet new people online. Users spend real money buying virtual coins, then spend those coins on digital gifts — a rose, a sports car, a crown — that they send to their favorite hosts during a broadcast. That gift money is the core of how JOYY makes its cash.
The economics are unusual and worth understanding. JOYY collects the money users spend on gifts, then shares a big chunk of it with the hosts and the agencies that manage them; the company keeps the rest. So revenue is large but a wide slice immediately flows back out to the talent. The model only works at scale, because the fixed costs of running the apps stay roughly flat while each extra dollar of gifting adds a small margin. JOYY's main markets are outside China — the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other regions where live chat and virtual gifting are deeply embedded in social life. The company's history has a sharp twist. JOYY started life as YY, a Chinese livestreaming pioneer, and in 2020 it sold its massive China live-streaming business to Baidu. That deal turned JOYY into a mostly international company — which is also why it moved its headquarters to Singapore. Today its apps include Bigo Live for livestreaming, Likee for short video, and Hago for casual games and group chat. These compete with TikTok, Meta's apps, and a crowd of local rivals for the same scarce resource: people's attention. JOYY is a cash-generating but tricky business to love. Gifting revenue depends on a relatively small number of heavy spenders, so a weak economy or a change in app-store rules can hurt quickly. The company has responded partly by buying back its own shares, a sign management sees the stock as cheap. The big question hanging over it is whether live-streaming gifting is a durable habit or a fad that fades as short-video feeds and new social apps keep pulling users away.
Saved answer · last researched 22 Oct 2026
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