Yoo Video Product Analysis: How does Yoo Video compare to Tik Tok?

In the short video war, Douyin and Kuaishou took the lead and occupied a large number of users and markets. Tencent was not to be outdone and launched Yoo Video accordingly. The author will benchmark TikTok and analyze the development model and optimization suggestions of Yoo Video.

1. Purpose & Background

1.1 Background

You are the product manager of Tencent's "Yoo Video". The company is currently launching this product, hoping to directly target "Tik Tok Short Video" and use it to enter the short video market. For this reason, your leader asks you to analyze the "short video market" and the "Tik Tok Short Video" App.

1.2 Purpose

(1) Research the market environment and competitive products to analyze the relative weaknesses of Yoo Video;

(2) Provide feasible ideas or methods to address these weaknesses, so as to better benchmark "Tik Tok Short Video" and enter the short video market.

2. Analysis of the short video industry

2.1 Market size

According to the report of iMedia Consulting, although the growth rate of the short video industry's market size has slowed down, its overall size continues to grow. In 2018, the market size of short videos in China reached 11.69 billion yuan and has maintained super-fast growth (growth rate greater than 100%). Part of this growth comes from the widespread use of 4G, increased network speed, reduced charges and further improvement in Internet penetration rate.

Currently, the number of short video users in China has exceeded 500 million. According to the "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" released by the China Internet Network Information Center on August 20, 2018, as of June 30, 2018, the number of Internet users in my country reached 802 million. The short video industry has covered more than 60% of netizens, so it is expected that starting from 2019, the market size and user scale growth rate of short videos will decline rapidly.

However, it is expected that the market size will still exceed 23 billion yuan in 2019, and may reach 38 billion yuan in 2020. It is expected that this is because the implementation of new technologies such as 5G will promote the overall development of the Internet industry, thereby driving the further growth of the market size of the short video industry; and the current mobile Internet user penetration rate of short videos still has room for improvement, there is still a certain user dividend, and there is a large room for user development.

It can be seen from Umeng’s data that social short video applications occupy the absolute mainstream, with device coverage reaching 83.3%; followed by information short video applications, tool short video applications, and distribution short video applications.

There are two reasons why social short video applications have become mainstream:

(1) Based on the establishment of social attributes, it is easier to create a unique community atmosphere (TikTok music) and a sense of participation (shooting videos based on topic imitation);

(2) Social applications benefit from this and obtain a steady stream of PGC and UGC content and native clips based on life. This has also led to the continuous updating and viral popularity of popular products.

2.2 Industry Map

2.2.1 Short Video Industry Map

In the industry map I drew, the entire short video industry chain is basically divided into four major parts: content production, content distribution, brands, and third-party platforms.

Content production at the upstream provides a steady stream of content to content distribution platforms, which are usually short video platforms and general entertainment platforms. These platforms then present the content to users through technical means. Brands usually provide commercial support to content platforms to gain exposure and revenue.

Therefore, specialized short video marketing platforms have also emerged in this area, such as Weiboyi and so on. Data statistics platforms such as Kas Data generally serve content producers as their main target, and usually provide user portraits, video data, competitor data, industry data and other information to content producers as a reference.

2.2.2 Classification of short video platforms

Since the object of this analysis belongs to the content distribution in the industry map - short video platform category. Therefore, it is necessary to classify such platforms in order to better understand the analysis objects.

This classification draws on the classification method of Umeng and divides the products into four categories:

(1) Social short videos

The video content platform built on social attributes has the standard configuration of "supporting the release of selfie works and displaying content based on individuals (accounts)", and the platform itself also undertakes most of the content distribution. For example: Tik Tok, Kuaishou, etc.

(2) Information-oriented short videos

A content platform that mainly focuses on news videos, with videos usually around 3-5 minutes long. And this type of video usually relies on other pan-entertainment platforms for video distribution. For example: Pear Video, First Video, etc.

(3) Tool-oriented short videos

An editing tool that focuses on video shooting, editing, and beautification. It has richer editing functions than other short video applications and is a highly demanded product for users with a strong desire for creation. For example: quick editing, word speaking, etc.

(4) Distribution to short videos

The prominent feature is the use of bounties to encourage users to post and browse video content. This part of the application usually takes money as the core interest point and targets users usually in third- and fourth-tier cities. For example: Feiya short video, etc.

Based on the above data from Umeng, we can know that social short video applications occupy an absolute mainstream position and therefore also undertake the most important content distribution work.

At the same time, the long-tail effect in the short video platform field is also quite obvious. Kuaishou and Douyin have 230 million and 220 million users respectively in the entire short video market, ranking first and second. In comparison, Xigua Video, which ranks third, has only 66.95 million users, less than one-third of Kuaishou's users.

Therefore, how to seize the only incremental market and retain existing stock users will be the mainstream development of the short video industry in the future. Because of this, Douyin, which is very popular and has a relatively younger user group, is a very suitable research subject.

3. Analysis of Douyin products

3.1 Users, Scenarios, and Requirements

3.1.1 Users

The basic attribute data obtained from the iResearch APP Index can provide a preliminary summary of TikTok users:

Gender: Mostly male Age: More than 50% of users are under 30 years old, and most of them are between 25 and 30 years old, and most of them are young people entering the society. Region: More than 10% of users are from Guangdong, followed by Jiangsu and Shandong, with 7.03% and 6.87% respectively; and according to the map, Douyin is also mainly concentrated in the southern and economically developed regions.

However, based on the current size of Tik Tok users and basic user classification methods, it is very unrealistic and inaccurate to classify users based solely on demographic attributes.

So I categorize TikTok users based on their behavior:

The usual usage path for content-based products is: content production - content consumption - content reproduction. The corresponding path for Douyin is: video production & release - play video - like, comment and share the video.

Therefore, Douyin users can be divided into two categories:

3.1.2 Scenarios & Requirements

According to the data provided by Umeng, the active usage time of short video applications in a day is usually distributed between 7-8 o'clock, 12-13 o'clock, 19-21 o'clock and 23-0 o'clock. It covers almost all fragmented scenarios: commuting, eating, going to bed, going to the toilet, etc.

For users who mainly consume content, they need to consume some content and information to pass the time in these life scenarios. Some users may choose text, but the brain's efficiency in processing text is usually very low. Video is different. It not only retains the advantages of pictures - the brain processes pictures more efficiently, but also has irreplaceable continuity, which further improves the ease of obtaining information. Therefore, videos are very suitable for such users to pass the time.

Penguin Research Platform once conducted a survey on TikTok users to find out why they post videos on TikTok/Kuaishou. It can be seen that the number one thing that stimulates creativity is "seeing interesting videos shot by others and can't help but try them out." At the same time, the proportion of Douyin users who meet this requirement is much higher than that of Kuaishou users. It can also be seen that imitation is the initial motivation for many Tik Tok users, which is consistent with the unique community atmosphere and sense of participation of the social short video application mentioned earlier.

However, among users who mainly produce content, there is another very important part that cannot be ignored - users who operate content through videos. They mainly produce content on Douyin, and the videos are usually related to brands and products, hoping to achieve goals such as brand promotion, product sales and market understanding on Douyin.

3.1.3 Typical User Stories

Content consumption users:

Xiao San, a boy, is currently attending college. He used to like watching live game broadcasts, especially those hosted by female anchors. The first is to watch the game; the second is naturally to see the face. One time, he heard a host he followed say that he had posted a video on Douyin and hoped that everyone would go and support him. Then he downloaded the Douyin APP, followed the host, liked the video, and posted barrages in the live broadcast room. Later, while using Tik Tok, he found that there were many videos that interested him - games, beauties; at the same time, the content of the videos was not much, so he would watch them for a long time before going to bed and after waking up. Recently, he became obsessed with videos about XX girlfriends group.

Content producing user A:

Xiaojie, an ordinary female white-collar worker with a pretty face. She likes to watch "Who's the Detective" and she also learned about the TikTok APP from "Who's the Detective". So out of curiosity, I downloaded Tik Tok. I found a lot of interesting videos on Tik Tok. At the same time, C哩C哩’s songs are very popular recently. Many tall girls are dancing to them, and they have received a lot of interaction. She was born in the 1990s and was forced to learn some dancing when she was a child, so she has some dancing skills. Besides, the C哩C哩 dance itself is not difficult, so she feels that she can dance it too. Then I started releasing my first dance video. And we also hope to obtain good interactive data.

Content producing user B:

Xiaoke is a new product person who joined a startup company in June 2018. At first, it was said that I would be doing product work, but as time went on, Douyin marketing gained a lot of attention in the operation circle. Therefore, the boss felt that the product tasks of Xiaoke were not too much, so it would be better to help with Douyin. As it was the boss's request, Xiaoke had no choice but to start the Douyin operation work. It happened that Douyin opened an enterprise account, so he registered one and then started to post videos in the official name of the company. Gradually, Xiaoke managed to gain a good amount of interaction and fans in a few videos. Therefore, the company not only began to add Douyin's interaction volume standards to the performance of small courses, but also proposed the need to obtain a certain amount of user conversion on Douyin.

3.2 Douyin Business Model & Functional Structure

The core of Tik Tok lies in video content. Basically all functions and interactions are centered around videos:

When you enter the APP, you first go to the homepage and the recommended information flow. Tik Tok uses full-screen playback, and you can switch videos by swiping up and down, and swiping left and right to jump to the user account page for taking and posting videos. It can be said that all major operations can be basically completed by swiping. The most important function of click is the interaction between users and videos - like, comment, share, etc. The second TAB page is Follow, which displays all the newly released videos of the followed accounts, and there is also a dedicated video stream for friend relationships. Paying attention to this module is not about recommending information flow, but about the time flow based on social relationships. Therefore, this module also plays a certain social role. The center position is “+”, which usually means publish, upload, create, etc. Tik Tok is no exception. You can upload videos and photos after clicking, and you can edit them to a certain extent. The fourth TAB page is messages, which brings together all messages from the Tik Tok platform. In addition to providing a more prominent position for video interaction data, it also places all system notifications in the message assistant, giving the user most of the space in the message list. The fifth TAB page is the account page. What makes Douyin's account page different from many community content platforms is that it displays the content (videos) posted by the account in the form of a list, rather than just a few numbers that require users to click to view.

3.3 Douyin’s main business process diagram & key pages

3.3.1 Publish Video

(1) Lowering the threshold for video creation Imitation is one of the main motivations for users to post videos. Douyin also provides two functions to satisfy users in this scenario:

The first step is to take pictures of the same style. Users can click on the video music in the lower right corner or click on the topic to enter the video list using the music/topic. A "Take Pictures of the Same Style" button is provided in the list. When the corresponding topic/music gives users inspiration, they can take pictures directly.

Then there are the buttons for co-shooting and stealing the spotlight. After clicking share on the current video, you can see the buttons for co-shooting and stealing the spotlight. In this way, when they encounter suitable videos, they can directly use them as users' video materials.

(2) Make video production more interesting

During the filming process, Tik Tok provides a fairly rich selection of props, many of which are important factors in helping the video gain attention. At the same time, this also provides users with a considerable amount of material for their free creation, and on the other hand, it also increases the utilization rate of props, gradually forming a virtuous circle.

3.3.2 Video Recommendation

The page for playing videos seems simple, but the logic is quite complicated. The reason is the video recommendation logic behind Tik Tok. Since this part is too complicated, I will only give a brief explanation:

(1) Real-time training: All user behavior information - including but not limited to likes, shares, comments, completion rates, and downloads - can be quickly captured by Douyin's algorithm model and fed back into the recommendation effect for the next swipe. The benefits of this are naturally obvious - users who launch the app for the first time will find the content increasingly attractive, thus attracting them to continue using it.

(2) Overlay recommendation: This can also be said to be a traffic pool, which is a type of decentralized content distribution method. Simply put, each video will definitely get some views, and the system will decide whether to allocate more views based on their performance among these views. High-quality (or popular) content will be easier to spread, and to a certain extent reduce the gap between large and small accounts.

(3) Manual weighting: Douyin uses machine recognition and manual review to review video content. At the same time, there will also be manual intervention when distributing video content. For example, the "Discover Wonderful" feature on the search page can not only ensure the quality of the content but also ensure timely tracking of hot spots, while minimizing the impact from regulatory authorities.

3.3.3 Interaction Correlation

From the above flowchart and key pages, we can see that Douyin’s key business logic is relatively simple. From editing and producing videos to playing videos, the overall logic is clear and easy to understand, and the interactive distinction makes it easier for users to get started.

From the perspective of human physiological habits, sliding is usually a more natural operation than clicking, so in the interaction for content consumption, Douyin mainly uses the sliding gesture, so that users can more conveniently switch videos and perform other operations while ensuring full-screen playback.

Clicks, on the other hand, are relatively more able to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of operations, so they are widely used in content production and interaction.

Polishing these small details reduces the user's learning cost in the early stages, allowing users to focus more on the quality of the content rather than the inefficiencies and discomforts in use.

3.4 TikTok historical data

3.4.1 Version Iteration & Operation Events

3.4.2 Tik Tok Growth Curve

The operation of Douyin has evolved from weight to popularity and then to fame and profit.

The product goal is also very clear: first meet basic needs, then meet expected needs, and finally meet exciting needs and pursue commercial interests.

At the same time, the above two pictures also provide an understanding of the core driving force and product evolution of Douyin:

(1) In the early stage, we relied on product technology to build basic tools as the basic layer of the entire product, and then relied on inviting experts and celebrities to enrich the content, and then distributed this content through recommendations.

(2) We then began to think about how to expand the boundaries of the product, including adding live streaming capabilities to popular video formats and improving peer-to-peer social networking.

(3) After building and perfecting most of the product architecture and content, Douyin also began to explore different directions of commercialization, including but not limited to advertising, selling playback volume, and connecting with corporate accounts.

4. Yoo Video

4.1 Product Status

Yoo Video is a video application launched by Tencent on August 31, 2018.

However, since 2016, short video platforms have emerged in large numbers and have continued to develop to this day, forming a two-strong situation. The launch time of Yoo Video is not early, it can even be said to be very late. Therefore, unlike before when there was not enough incremental market to acquire new users, the company is currently mainly competing in the existing market in the short video industry. Simply put, it has missed out on a relatively large traffic dividend.

First of all, the user overlap between Yoo Video and Tik Tok is relatively high. Here are some basic attribute data of Yoo Video users:

Regardless of the main age range or region, the user overlap between the two is still relatively high. In terms of gender ratio, Yoo Video has more female users, but the gap is not large.

Secondly, we can also see the initial clues from the growth of the number of monthly independent devices:

The number of independent devices reading Yoo Video is less than 0.2% of Douyin, and the growth rate is only about twice that of Douyin. It can be said that Yoo Video is still in the exploratory stage.

4.2 Product Positioning

Douyin’s product positioning:

Music: Music is the cornerstone of the entire development of Douyin. Simple, loopy and brainwashing, it has given Douyin its own unique brand tone. Short videos: Most of the videos on the platform are short videos of about 15 seconds. Whether it is dissemination or production, the difficulty and cost are much lower.

Yoo Video is positioned as a high-quality original short video platform. The main points are:

Interactive video: Users decide the character’s next action while watching the video. Vertical screen animation: This area mainly relies on Tencent's strong entertainment capabilities and provides rich video resources. High-quality micro-drama: a short drama with each episode lasting about 1-3 minutes. Video template: When users upload videos, they can select a template and apply it directly.

It can be seen from this that the positioning of Yoo Video and Douyin is still very different, so we cannot simply use Douyin to match the development direction of Yoo Video. Therefore, by combining the characteristics of Tik Tok and its own platform content to see how Yoo Video creates its own differences, we can more effectively think about the problems Yoo Video is currently facing and its possible future development directions.

4.3 Platform Content

4.3.1 PGC

When a user enters the APP for the first time, the first thing they open is the discovery TAB. In this module, most of the content is PGC content, horizontal screen video, and about 1-3 minutes in length. This also indirectly illustrates the importance and proportion of PGC content in the entire Yoo video.

In fact, we can see from the product positioning that Yoo video has three outstanding features: professionalism, story and duration.

(1) Specialization

Whether it is interactive videos, vertical screen animations or high-quality micro-dramas, the realization cost of these contents is relatively high, and ordinary users cannot imitate them at all. Therefore, it is easier to control the overall content quality and it is also easier to gather a large number of high-quality original short videos. However, due to the high cost, users' desire to imitate will be lower compared to Douyin, which may easily lead to too little UGC content on the platform and fail to form a virtuous circle. Therefore, Yoo Video has also added a unique short video template function. Users can choose the template to apply when uploading videos, which reduces the production cost to a certain extent.

(2) Story

The several types of PGC content featured by Yoo Video are all storytelling types, which is what they call Vstory, which focuses on micro variety shows, micro short dramas, etc. However, since it is a story-telling content, vertical screen shooting is relatively immature in terms of producing story content, so most of the current Yoo video content is still horizontal.

(3) Duration

A complete and high-quality story content is usually difficult to convey in a very short time. Therefore, the average length of Yoo videos is 1-3 minutes. Compared to the fact that most videos on Tik Tok are no longer than 15 seconds, the average length of Yoo’s videos is quite long.

The advantage of this is that it can tell a story more completely, but it means that if you want the best video viewing experience, you need to turn the phone sideways. When the video is too long, it will take longer to load and require more traffic (user perception). Then, when watching most videos, you cannot quickly switch to another video. To switch videos from exiting the full screen, users need to move their fingers a longer distance and perform more actions. Therefore, compared with TikTok, Yoo Video is difficult for users to have an immersive experience.

The pursuit of professional and refined content has allowed Yoo Video to take a completely different path from Tik Tok, but quality is always a major problem for this type of content.

Especially since Yoo Video is just starting out, there are too many non-original contents in the video stream, which makes it not much different from Tik Tok. Many marketing accounts on Douyin often post variety show clips, crosstalk collections and other content, which are also reorganized. This is much better than some accounts on Yoo Video that simply edit the clips and post them. At the same time, several of the main featured contents do not often appear in the recommendation flow - interactive videos, vertical screen animations, and high-quality micro-dramas. Therefore, users are not able to have a very deep impression of the content features of Yoo Video at the first time.

At the same time, due to the increased proportion of PGC content, the product will lose a lot of sense of life - compared to Douyin, which also has some short dramas, many Douyin accounts will perform more life-like performances in real environments - which can easily cause aesthetic fatigue.

4.3.2 UGC

Yoo Video uses Vlog and Vstory as content expressions to meet the needs of young people to express themselves and show their individuality, and showcase Yoo Video's y (youth), o (fresh and aerobic), and o (originality) attitude towards life.

Vlog is actually not a new term. This type of video that emphasizes real records and personalized expression has been favored by more and more young people. Of course, there are not many people in this group at present. However, its content attributes - real and personal - make this type of UGC video more likely to attract attention and acceptance. Moreover, these creators have a much higher desire to express themselves than ordinary users, and their creative skills are also beyond ordinary people.

Therefore, Yoo created an unfamiliar term - track. It is somewhat similar to the topic challenge in Tik Tok, but it is connected to Tencent’s own variety show resources (including but not limited to traffic, commercial and other rights) to attract Vloggers who want to build their personal IP.

However, judging from the existing video data, the amount of video interaction is not very high, and from my personal experience, compared with Douyin, the overall content quality is difficult to guarantee. From the product perspective:

First of all, the Yoo video selection list display actually gives the user the right to choose the video. However, users often don’t know what content they like. It is very easy to click on a video and not be interested; then click on another video and not be interested; and only after searching for many times can you find a video you like. Moreover, it is easy to make people anxious when searching for content of interest among so much content.

Secondly, the content of each track does not give users enough expectations or prompts. Like the Cat Demon’s Temptation track in the picture above, it’s really hard to know what the content is at first glance. At the same time, the video cover is not equal to the title of the news, and it is difficult to judge whether the content you are interested in is based on the video cover, unless the video cover has been specially processed.

Finally, I personally think that the main information hierarchy of the track is problematic. According to the 80/20 rule, the vast majority of users are content consumers. As a content-consuming user, why should you care about what track a video belongs to? Why should you care what the rewards for this track are? In many cases, users only care about these contents because they are already interested in the corresponding videos.

Now we can summarize the similarities and differences between Tik Tok and Yoo Video:

4.4 SWOT Analysis Yoo Video

4.5 Summary and Recommendations

4.5.1 Content Distribution & Production

Judging from its driving force and product form, the current Yoo Video is an operation-driven content product. Therefore, manual labor actually accounts for a relatively larger proportion of distribution - BANNER, track, etc. This may be because Yoo does not have enough data and is not confident enough in the algorithm, making it difficult to achieve a "hit-with-one-shot" situation.

But there is a very strange situation. On Yoo Video, PGC content is more dependent on machine distribution, while UGC content is more dependent on manual distribution. Compared with machines, humans are more suitable for selection, compilation, etc. Therefore, relatively more complete and more distinctive PGC content should be the preferred content pool. Moreover, the current regulation of Yoo Video is not strong enough. For example, after users enter the APP, what they see are clips from various variety shows, movies and TV shows, and there is a lack of original content.

Therefore, in the early stages, it is recommended to strictly control the content of the videos displayed when users first enter the APP, and give more exposure to high-quality content on the platform. At the same time, for UGC content, we should learn from Douyin and reduce the manually controlled part of video recommendations (for example, displaying by track, dividing content types, arranging content according to fixed rules, etc.), and give more content review power to users. In order to reduce the interference of other irrelevant information in the content consumption process, the UGC content needs to carry the video in the form of full-screen video stream and rely on algorithm recommendation to distribute the video.

On the other hand, information related to content production (tracks, rewards, etc.) should have its information display hierarchy lowered in priority, for example, it can be integrated into the publishing module. Some people may say that this cannot encourage users to create, but creation is a brain-consuming thing, and the current Yoo videos basically use the proposition composition method to motivate users. The cost of user creation is much higher than that of Douyin's creation based on BGM, for example:

Temptation of the Cat Demon vs C哩C哩 Youth Track vs Brain Pain

The fundamental problem is how users are guided to create, rather than where information about content production is displayed.

At the same time, Yoo Video is also trying to break the limitations of "traffic thinking" and return to the value of the content itself, so Vlog will be a very important part.

However, most of the video templates that occupy a relatively important position in the publishing module are related to topical content such as festivals, entertainment hotspots, etc., while Vlogger users may pay more attention to less content. Therefore, strengthening the exploration of Vlogger shooting needs may be a product direction that can be explored in the future.

4.5.2 Others Currently, there are three types of interactions for switching videos: sliding left and right, sliding up and down, and clicking. It is actually difficult to cultivate user interaction habits in this way, so it is recommended that there are only two interaction methods at most: one horizontal screen and one vertical screen.

Network experience issues: Since a large amount of Yoo video content is 1-3 minutes long, the loading and playback experience is more difficult to optimize than Tik Tok. At the same time, during my experience, the problem of watching a part and loading for a few seconds often occurred on China Unicom's 4G network with full signal. Moreover, since a lot of content is displayed in list style, it is difficult to pre-load Yoo videos. Every time you click on a video, it will take a while to load.

5G is coming, and every change in mobile networks will bring a new wave of opportunities. I dare not assert now that 5G will definitely bring any new direction, but the change in underlying technology may be the key to Yoo Video's overtaking.

Author: Xu Kecheng

Source: XKC's 123