Always on, never still: navigating the tensions of value creation within the livestreaming ecosystem

Livestreaming is transforming influencer marketing by enabling synchronous, improvised, and prolonged interactions that challenge the temporal and relational assumptions of traditional social media. Yet, little is known about how value emerges and is sustained in real-time. Adopting a netnographic research design, this study examines how prolonged synchrony reshapes value creation within influencer ecosystems. Extending Libai et al., 2025 equity-based framework, this work conceptualizes value creation as shaped by three core tensions (endurance vs. fragility, unpredictability vs. control, and specialization vs. diversification), each navigated through adaptive mechanisms: self-disclosing, improvising, and anchoring. This study introduces relational equity to capture the cumulative value that originates from the continuous alignment of a growing number or interdependent actors involved in adaptive mechanisms. Throughout this process, value creation unfolds in a spiral dynamic, as the result of tensions which are continuously rebalanced in real-time. This work advances a processual understanding of value creation under prolonged synchrony.