The video-sharing app is now considering extending the perks that its live-streamers can give to their subscribers, including several new options that have now begun testing in the app.

TikTok first unveiled live subscriber perks two years ago and has gradually been adding to them ever since.

At launch, TikTok offered three subscriber perks:

Subscriber Badges – A membership badge displayed next to the subscribers' name and can be upgraded over time.
Custom Emotes - Unique reactions that the creators have created specifically for LIVE sessions
Subscriber-Only Chat – To increase engagement of community members who pay
As noted, TikTok has been incrementally adding to these options and there are currently a few features in testing
there are now a few new subscriber benefits currently in testing, including performance requests, live shoutout prompts, Discord roles, gaming partnerships, and priority comment response.

New features will then create more incentives towards pushing subscription rates and, in turn, help the live-streamers make more money from their in-app activities.

Live streaming, on the other hand, has been a significant winner for Douyin, the sister app of TikTok and its Chinese incarnation, particularly on commerce streams especially if they promote big things in terms of money raised. Douyin grabbed over $US274 billion worth of sales during streaming last year alone, to which the in-streaming sale total reached $US3.8 billion globally, so not surprisingly TikTok is focusing more intently on using live-stream more frequently with the onset of product offerings.

In fact, TikTok has also recently established its own live-stream studio in Los Angeles, where creators can record content in a more professional environment, which again replicates the approach that the company has taken in China, thereby further facilitating opportunities for live sales.

Subscriber benefits are another part of this broader push, and though live-shopping isn't catching on as fast as it did in China, where 100x increases are possible in sales, based on its earlier success, you can expect that emphasis to persist for some time yet.