Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, May 30

• Why the Chinese Will Pay for Content That Americans Won't: Back in early 2016, Li Xiang was just another overworked magazine editor in Beijing. Then along came an opportunity to produce a business newsletter on a brand-new app called De Dao. In just a few months that app—which means “I Get”  in English—had attracted millions of users looking for daily advice and to learn everything from music to economics. And Li? Within months, he had close to 100,000 subscribers paying about $30 a year—which works out to almost $3 million in annual revenue. It's the kind of story that couldn't happen in the United States, where many people believe content should be free. In China, meanwhile, companies and individuals alike have managed to monetize smartphone apps, making money from news, entertainment and social media—by making people directly pay for it, instead of relying on advertisers. Chinese watch streams that others might find banal in part because they have fewer entertainment options, thanks to the government's strict regulation of media.There are cultural and demographic forces at work, too. In China, tens of millions of young people have migrated to the large industrial cities. They live far away from their families. So video livestreaming in particular has become a form of digital companionship. The upshot is that thousands—maybe millions—of people are able to earn a living this way.

• Snapdeal receives Rs113 crore from Nexus, founders in surprise funding: Struggling online marketplace Snapdeal has received Rs113 crore in an emergency financing round from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners and the company’s founders. The funding will not affect Snapdeal’s proposed sale to Flipkart, three people familiar with the matter said, on condition of anonymity. Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Ltd) has been in talks to sell itself to bigger rival Flipkart amid a boardroom battle involving its three most powerful investors and its co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Japanese technology and telecoms conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp, Snapdeal’s largest investor, is trying to engineer the sale after giving up on the online marketplace, which has lost out to Flipkart and Amazon India in the e-commerce battle. At the other corner are Nexus, Kalaari Capital and the Snapdeal co-founders, all of whom were initially opposed to the sale.