Inmobi wants more users to Glance at lockscreens with Live
Piyush Shah, co-founder, Inmobi Group, and president and chief operating officer, Glance, has set an ambitious target for Glance. As the company launches Glance Live, he wants the artificial intelligence-based software company to be the leader in the ‘live internet’ space. Glance Live will look at unlocking its presence on the lockscreen of smartphones.
Shah believes the ‘live’ format as a form of content is the Next Big Thing. Just as Google owns the 'search' and Facebook the 'social media', Shah wants Glance Live to own 'live' as a category worldwide. Glance comes pre-installed and enabled on Android phones.
Live or short-video formats are not new. Nearly all major social media players, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have some offering in Live. The short-video space in India is set to be the second-biggest segment, in terms of time spent in a year, after internet behemoths like Facebook and Google, according to new research by consulting firm Redseer.
The monthly active users of the short-video space are expected to grow more than twice to reach over 650 million users by 2025, clocking the second spot after television. This growth is largely expected to be driven by the new 300 million internet users that will be added by 2025, said the consulting firm.
It is natural for Glance to also enter the segment. What is unique though in the case of Glance Live is that it will be available on the lockscreen, and a user will not need to tap into another application to access video.
Glance Live, the company said, reduces the cognitive overload by adopting a discovery-led approach for live content, and at its very core is likely to provide a deep immersive experience, engagement, and transaction.
For Glance, which raised $145 million from Google and Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital in 2020, this is about taking its bet of using lockscreens as a real estate for internet consumption a step forward. “Three years back, we saw something on the lockscreen of phones that no one else could. As a user, everyone looks at their lockscreen at least 100-200 times a day, either for a notification or a weather update,” said Shah. For perspective, Glance achieved the milestone of having an active user base of 150 million in India in the second quarter (Q2) of 2021, according to Counterpoint Research’s quarterly mobile application tracker. With 151 million active users, Glance grew 8 per cent quarter-onquarter in Q2. This means one in every four Indian smartphone users is now active on the Glance platform, which offers an interactive lockscreen experience to Android smartphone users.
Shah believes the next big frontier of content consumption is going to be live internet. “We have seen the evolution from text and visual images to long-form video and short-form videos like Tiktok. The world is now moving towards live internet, such as live news, sports, and entertainment. We want to make live e-commerce a part of this offering,” he added.
With Glance Live, Glance is also bringing together an ecosystem of content creators and developers from across genres of sports, entertainment, news, gaming, and shopping.
“It's not about simply wanting to partner five marquee production houses and take it to users. We also want content to be democratised, yet curated responsibly. We do not want it to be just another usergenerated content, but premium as well,” he said.
It's not about simply wanting to partner five marquee production houses and take it to users. We also want content to be democratised, yet curated responsibly. We do not want it to be just another usergenerated content, but premium as well PIYUSH SHAH
Co-founder, Inmobi Group, CEO and president, Glance