A complete analysis of Tik Tok’s content operations, just read this article!

Just yesterday, Douyin announced that its daily active users exceeded 150 million. This means that Douyin has become on par with Kuaishou and has become another national short video APP. In the short video war in February this year, the short video APP under Toutiao had to rely on group data to compete with Kuaishou.

In just 4 months, Douyin was able to challenge Kuaishou alone, and its ambition even began to make Tencent wary. It can be said that this year, it was Tik Tok that made short videos popular, making it a new trend in the Internet industry.

Let's take a look at the rapid growth of TikTok over the past year:

How did Tik Tok achieve this result in just over a year? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's curious. As a content operator and an in-depth user of short videos, I would like to start from my own observations and use my professional skills to restore the growth process of the Douyin APP as much as possible for myself and everyone else. I hope it helps everyone and myself.

I registered for Douyin as early as the end of March 2017. My Douyin account is in the seven digits. So far, I have contributed 15,000 likes on Douyin and uploaded more than 200 works (most of which were deleted later). The active time I have contributed to Douyin is even likely to exceed that of NetEase Cloud Music.

It can be said that I not only witnessed its growing popularity personally, but was also a deep participant!

As early as when TikTok first became popular, I wanted to write a comprehensive analysis of TikTok's operation (because I really think TikTok's operation is very sophisticated), but as a deep procrastinator, I didn't write it until I received a little stimulation recently, which suddenly gave me motivation:

When TikTok was first launched, I really wanted to join the team, but because TikTok was in Beijing (a city I really disliked) and there was no real need to resign at the time, I only participated in this evolution as a content producer and consumer. The recent commotion of Tik Tok and Weishi has rekindled my desire:

First of all, Tencent is a company I really want to work for;

Secondly, I am in the process of leaving my job;

The most important thing is, judging from Tencent’s current attitude, it is prepared to fight TikTok to the end, which is exactly what I want - if I can’t join the product team I want to join, joining its competitors and competing with them would be a very satisfying thing.

So I applied with the determination to hang myself on a tree and only applied for the position at Tencent Weishi!

However, things did not go as planned. I failed the final interview with the GM... I was too impatient and lost my composure. I answered several questions that I had thought deeply about before, but I gave terrible answers on the spot. Now when I think about it, I want to slap myself...

So, after learning from my mistakes, I decided to summarize and write down all my thoughts on short videos and content operations in one go to avoid regrets in the future.

The following thoughts and conclusions are personal opinions. If you have any objections, please feel free to discuss and correct me. Reproduction without my consent is prohibited!

My analysis will be divided into two parts:

1. The evolution of Tik Tok: the foundation of a wonderful story:

1. The important evolution of TikTok in previous versions and the logic behind it

2. Douyin’s previous content operation trend adjustments and the strategic thinking behind them

2. A complete analysis of Douyin’s content operations : a rise of undercurrents:

1. The right time, right place and right people for the short video market

2. Why is it Tik Tok that became popular instead of Kuaishou?

3. A textbook for operations that is cautious and concise

4. Some opinions on TikTok and its competitors

1. The evolution of TikTok: the foundation of a wonderful story

1. The important evolution of TikTok in previous versions and the logic behind it

Since its launch in September 2016, Douyin has undergone dozens of revisions, some of which have changed its functions and reflected some adjustments in its operations and strategic thinking.

Here, I made a simple comparison table to list the several changes I think are more important in Douyin, along with the operational/strategic thinking behind these changes:

Judging from the history of previous version updates, Douyin’s development strategy of “optimizing product shooting experience - cultivating high-quality content - enhancing community interaction atmosphere - consolidating and strengthening social relationship chains” is clearly visible based on its positioning as a “ music short video community”. This development strategy not only allows Douyin to obtain high-quality content, but also allows the production, distribution, and consumption of high-quality content to form a virtuous self-circulation within Douyin, and it also gives Douyin stronger user control capabilities compared to other apps. This is also the reason why Kuaishou, which also has over 100 million daily active users, did not arouse Tencent's vigilance, while Douyin was able to restart Weishi.

Some people may think that what I said is alarmist, and seems to ignore the boost brought by the hot Toutiao algorithm and the entire short video industry. Both are certainly important, but I have my own reasons for thinking this way, which I will mention in detail later. Now, after we have sorted out the thoughts on the development history of Douyin products, we also need to sort out the evolution of Douyin's content operations.

2. Douyin’s previous content operation adjustment and the thoughts behind it

Similarly, we still use time as the axis, compare the phased operational actions, attach my own thoughts, and sort out Douyin's content operation strategy. Since it is impossible to find accurate time records for many changes in operational logic, there may be some discrepancies with the actual situation. We welcome discussions and corrections.

Time: June 2017 and before

Focus: Head (seed/expert) content operation

Means: Each channel looks for experts to cooperate with, and at the same time cultivates experts on its own platform, gives priority to selecting and recommending expert videos, encourages experts to initiate topics, and gives priority to operating expert topics

As a content-based APP, in the initial stage of the product, in addition to improving the 0-1 experience, the 0-1 tone of the content is also very important (refer to Kuaishou for the final result of free growth). Therefore, at this stage, Douyin attaches great importance to the cultivation and maintenance of seed users . Not only do we rely on them to produce the content that the platform needs, but we also rely on them to provide benchmarks and content guidelines for the platform's mid-level users (users who watch and have certain production capabilities).

Therefore, the discovery of influencers and the weight of their videos play a key role in the operation of Douyin. The “Featured” label is a necessary and iconic product of this stage.

Selections will not only be given priority to cooperating influencers, but will also be allocated to videos that meet Douyin’s content requirements. Moreover, videos with the “Selected” label will receive priority exposure in the recommendation flow.

The expert topic operation is initiated by users (mainly experts), officially promoted, with user participation and priority exposure. It is equivalent to providing mid-level users with propositions and reference templates for producing high-quality content, lowering the production threshold of high-quality content and the "centralized" effect. During the self-growth stage of Douyin's content, this content operation method helped Douyin complete an organic self-circulation from content production to distribution to consumption, all of which were promoted within the user community. This not only increased operational efficiency with half the effort, but also ensured the fit and completeness of the content with the positioning. More importantly, this played a key role in laying the foundation for the formation of Douyin's unique community atmosphere.

Time: Starting from July 2017

Focus: Content generalization

Methods: Reduce the proportion of featured videos in the recommendation flow, launch positioning functions and "nearby" pages, and collapse the discovery page to search

All media and analysis say that Tik Tok has always been extremely cautious about "content generalization." In my opinion, Douyin’s caution is mainly reflected in its grasp of the timing of generalization.

The advantages of Tik Tok’s immersive interaction are very obvious - the recommendation flow is completely controlled by the official, so it can maximize the exposure of high-quality content and play a vital role in establishing the platform’s tone.

But the disadvantages are equally obvious - excessive content intervention will make the content in the recommendation flow out of touch with the market, that is, what the official considers to be high-quality may not be accepted by users.

This caused Douyin's data growth to reach a bottleneck period from July to September. It was the generalization of content that pulled Douyin out of the predicament in time.

Although the choice of this timing was semi-passive, Douyin’s previous operational preparations and subsequent operational successions provided good conditions for maintaining the tone of this "generalization".

During this period, there are two representative videos that were “ruined” on TikTok:

Zhang Xinyao's "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" triggered a wave of interaction among other users;

Tunnel Brother’s post “My ex-girlfriend got married, so I drove 7 kilometers to chase her” has been imitated or spoofed by other users.

These two videos are typical examples of Douyin users pushing a type of content to a phenomenal level beyond the topics they are currently operating. These two seemingly ordinary phenomenal videos actually imply that the opportunity for generalization of Douyin's content operations has matured - a community atmosphere that encourages users to produce the same type of content through topic operations has been formed, and users have developed the habit of spontaneously imitating hot content within Douyin. After the generalization of content is released, this habit can maintain the cycle of users' content production and consumption within the tone. Combined with the control of distribution by recommendation logic and official review, even if the proportion of amateur videos in the recommendation flow is increased, the overall tone of the platform will not quickly change to the Kuaishou style.

In fact, when this trend of imitation first started on Douyin, there was still controversy among Douyin users, and many imitation videos would have accusations like "disrespecting the original". However, Douyin saw the value of this kind of imitation video in producing high-quality content and maintaining the community atmosphere of Douyin, so it increased encouragement and exposure in the later stage, and added it to the recommendation flow algorithm, which ultimately proved its value.

Time: After March 2018

Focus: Social media

Means: Introduce a large number of P UGC content accounts, relax the emphasis on content production on the mobile phone side, and calculate the recommendation weight based on the quality of content and the ability to attract and retain fans. Encourage enterprise accounts to register and launch enterprise account service functions.

In fact, as early as July 2017, Douyin has introduced a large number of PUGC content production accounts. Zhuang Xiaoyu, Office Xiaoye, Museum Director and others all joined Douyin as the first batch of PUGC accounts introduced. This move actually preceded the generalization of Douyin's content, but the community atmosphere had just matured at the time, and the sudden introduction of a large number of content with high production thresholds would cause mid-level users to lose the motivation to produce content to a certain extent. So personally, I have developed a certain resistance to TikTok during this period of time. Later, as content began to become generalized, UGC content once again became mainstream, which brought me back to Douyin. However, it must be said that the introduction of this type of content has played a positive role in helping Douyin maintain its content tone after generalization.

As Douyin's data grew, more and more self-media and companies saw the value of its traffic . Coupled with Douyin's open attitude, Douyin's PUGC and PGC accounts began to rise wildly since 2018. This not only played a positive role in improving the platform's tone and enriching the diversity of its content, but also laid the groundwork for Douyin's future evolution from a short video community to a social media. This month, Douyin also launched a function specifically for corporate accounts, which brings Douyin closer to WeChat and provides more room for imagination for Douyin's future monetization.

Time: Since May 2018

Focus: Diversified content

Means: Encourage users to produce creative content

In fact, although the operational strategy at this stage cannot be separated from official control, I believe it is more the result of market free choice.

With the prevalence of imitation in the Douyin community, society has increasingly questioned the homogeneity and excessive repetitiveness of Douyin content, and Douyin's own users have also become resistant to similar imitation content. Naturally, the authorities realized this problem and began to encourage the production of creative content through topic activities (#You can also shoot new things with this song) and recommendation algorithms. But I think that users’ choices have played a more important role during this period. Compared with previous imitation videos, which always matched exposure with completion or high appearance, users have become more and more inclined to like creativity, and the platform has also taken advantage of this opportunity to increase the recommendation weight of creative content.

So we see that “G uc ci Gucci, Parada Parada” became popular, and the following trend was “I won’t eat it, I’m scared, I’m scared”; “1, 2, 3, love is like the blue sky and white clouds” became popular, and the video of a perfume bottle accidentally breaking received more attention; “All Things Grow” became popular, and everyone started to split the screen to make fun of the little brother’s flying hair… The market itself has its own judgment, and users themselves feel more deeply about other people’s doubts about the content, so as long as the operation follows the trend and guides the market, the market will be able to make the most suitable choice - the so-called “just enough”. This idea runs through the entire process of Douyin's products and operations, and it is something I admire very much about Douyin. We will explain it in detail in the following analysis.

2. A complete analysis of Douyin’s content operations: a rise with an undercurrent

In this section, I will elaborate on some of my insights into the industry based on my observations as an operator and in-depth user of short videos.

1. The right time, right place and right people for the short video market

At the beginning of this year, the public account "Everyone is a Product Manager " published an article titled "This should be the most in-depth analysis of Douyin on the entire Internet", which was once widely circulated in the circle.

Among them, the author expressed his own views on the reasons for the rise of short videos: instinct, threshold, scene and degradation

“Instinct” means that thanks to the human brain, we are naturally more inclined to obtain information in the form of video;

"Threshold" means that compared with other content forms, the threshold for content production and consumption of short videos is very low;

"Scenes" means that in the fast-paced life of modern people, there is a greater demand for scenes that consume fragmented time;

"Degeneration" means that the development of the Internet has made information within easy reach, and humans have begun to abandon memory and deep thinking, and are increasingly pursuing simple and efficient content stimulation.

The above reasons are certainly reasonable, but they can only explain the "trend" but not the "timing". Why 2018, and not earlier or later? I think the following points should also be added:

① Not "degeneration" but "evolution":

With the development of science and technology, the amount of information humans obtain every day is growing exponentially, and the amount of information that needs to be processed is also increasing, so people will naturally choose to seek more efficient ways of processing information. Short videos have undoubtedly become a good carrier. Before this, even if you play with bracelets every day, it may not be easy to know how spectacular the sawdust piled under the bead bed is; even if you know that the winter in Northeast China is very cold, you may still have to rely on coincidence to see an open-air ice cream stall in Northeast China in winter.

This 15- second video content produced by ordinary people from all over the world sharing their daily lives seems to have opened up a new information-intensive world for everyone. Within one APP, all the new things in the world are only one screen away from you.

This is an evolutionary choice of human information processing methods and also the evolutionary result of human information distribution. The distribution of information has changed from being centralized, which requires active search to obtain, to being decentralized, which allows passive waiting to obtain it. Centralized content distribution has limited content and direction, and consumers' information processing is relatively simple and passive. However, decentralized content distribution allows the amount of information to grow exponentially, which requires more efficient information processing methods.

Therefore, between text, pictures, and videos, between active search and automatic algorithm matching of recommendation streams, people naturally choose the most efficient and most suitable way of information processing. How can this be called degeneration rather than evolution?

② The battle of thousands of broadcasts paves the way for the pan-entertainment of mobile Internet

In fact, I have always had a doubt in my heart: live streaming content actually has a high production threshold, and its efficiency in gaining fans is very low compared to short videos, but the live streaming industry has become an industry hotspot earlier than short videos. Why is this? Shouldn't short videos become popular first, allowing a group of internet celebrities and fan relationships to settle in the mobile entertainment circle, and screen out those who truly have the ability to produce content, and then ignite the live broadcast craze more smoothly? If that were the case, perhaps the 2016 Thousand Broadcast War would not have ended so disastrously.

But the reality is that these two forms of mobile entertainment, which I consider to be complementary and complementary, have actually reversed their order of becoming popular! It really baffles me, and I can only convince myself with this explanation: "live streaming can monetize quickly, so everyone goes for the money first, and then they calm down and start to settle down the relationship chain between high-quality content producers and their fans."

But no matter what, video, as a highly efficient form of interactive entertainment, has been blessed by the nationwide popularity of the Thousands of Broadcast Wars. The decentralized and socialized content has instantly narrowed the distance between consumers and content producers, making "watching handsome boys and girls", "experiencing a life you have never experienced", "consuming others to entertain yourself", or "going from an ordinary person to being loved by everyone" all within reach. Once this kind of pleasure has been satisfied once, who else can satisfy everyone's desire?

③ A sharp drop in 4G tariff costs

When Tencent launched Weishi in 2013, it actually took into account the arrival of the 4G era and felt that the time for short videos seemed ripe. However, although bandwidth has arrived, the bandwidth charges have not come down. Even until the 2016 Thousands of Live Broadcasters War, many anchors still had to rely on Taobao to buy 4G data packages for a few hundred yuan to meet their traffic needs for outdoor live broadcasts. In order to save costs, more anchors choose to broadcast indoors.

But since 2017, all major operators have launched tariff packages with no cap on data traffic. Many people are even so willful as to use data traffic just to watch TV series! Such low bandwidth costs provide a good breeding ground for short videos that can be used to kill fragmented time anytime and anywhere.

Therefore, driven by the above conditions, short videos in 2018 became popular!

2. Why is it Tik Tok that becomes popular instead of Kuaishou?

Kuaishou is a veteran short video APP that was launched as early as 2014. At the beginning of this year, it also reached 100 million DAU ahead of the entire Toutiao product line. But why is it that the short video app that has grown the most in this trend and even made Tencent alert is Douyin rather than Kuaishou?

I think that Toutiao’s ambitions were not limited to Kuaishou from the very beginning.

In Jin Yechen's in-depth popular article "Douyin's Ambition, Kuaishou's Crisis" written at the beginning of this year, he described Toutiao's ambition as "encircling and suppressing Kuaishou" and compared Douyin and Kuaishou as direct competitors. But in my opinion, Toutiao may not have regarded Kuaishou as a direct competitor from the beginning, but just a target that must be swallowed up on the road to progress. Toutiao’s intention should be to seize the “social media” sector that has been monopolized by WeChat, while Douyin’s intention and ambition should be to become the domestic INS (in fact, judging from the latest revision of Douyin’s follow-up page, this intention is self-evident).

It is true that in the process of the flourishing of short videos, the contempt of people in first- and second-tier cities for Kuaishou's content has formed a certain acceptance threshold and market gap, but I think this threshold is not enough to distinguish the users of the two, allowing a powerful competitor to appear in the market so quickly. To put it simply, with Kuaishou's previous strength and scale, it would not be difficult to attract more users in first- and second-tier cities by improving its brand tone. It could have completed the transformation of its brand image and the improvement of its content tone before Douyin grew up, but Kuaishou did not do so. Why? Because both have their own ambitions.

(As can be seen from the chart, the user structures of Douyin and Kuaishou are actually very similar. The difference between the two is not even as big as that between Douyin and Huoshan. So the gap between highbrow and lowbrow content that the public feels is actually not that big. You are just confused by what Douyin wants you to see.)

In my opinion, Douyin and Kuaishou are respectively a businessman and a craftsman.

It cannot be said that Kuaishou has no ambition, but its efforts all along seem to be just to build a platform for uploading and sharing short videos, and then consider business models and monetization on this basis. It is so Buddhist that as a content-based product, it never engages in content operations and lets the market take its own course, so it is inevitable that the content tends to become "vulgar". In any content community without human intervention, the content that ultimately dominates the mainstream will definitely be the most vulgar content. This is determined by the breadth of the user base! So Kuaishou is not "vulgar", it's just too "free".

However, Douyin has shown its business acumen from the very beginning. It can be said that the different paths and destinations of Douyin and Kuaishou started when Douyin put the background music in the front and operated the topics of experts.

It’s nothing more than putting the background sound in the front, why can it make such a big difference?

Here we need to start with the threshold and population of content production. Both Tik Tok and Kuaishou are platforms where any amateur can produce and upload videos, but the difference is that the music selection on Kuaishou is post-production. That is to say, when users shoot this video, there is no script or prompt telling them what kind of video to shoot and how to shoot it. For most amateurs, if you ask them to shoot a video, they may be confused and have no idea what to shoot, so they will probably just shoot some life scenes or shake the camera casually.

This kind of video is far from meeting the requirements of "high quality". Therefore, shooting videos with Kuaishou places high demands on the user's content production capabilities. Those who can really become popular on Kuaishou are relatively speaking people who have higher content production capabilities. Such people can continuously produce high-quality content without any prompts or guidance. Even if they are asked to do live broadcasts, they can still stand the test of the market (this is also an important reason why Kuaishou's live broadcasts run more smoothly than Douyin's). So Kuaishou seems to be a decentralized short video platform where everyone has equal opportunities, but in fact, the production of high-quality content on Kuaishou is centralized, and the production threshold is there, which ordinary people may not be able to cross.

Tik Tok is different. Before you actually start producing a piece of content, Tik Tok has already given you scripts and examples through music selection and topic operations. They even encourage you to imitate and plagiarize. The platform has already guided you in the most difficult things like choosing topics and materials, all you need to do is to act! This greatly lowers the threshold for content production, allowing many amateurs with average content production capabilities to easily produce high-quality content. So although Douyin is a centrally operated short video platform, the production of its high-quality content is decentralized. If Kuaishou is a fair competition that brings everyone to the same starting line, then Douyin is a competition that gives everyone the same running ability.

(The competition from Kuaishou gives me the feeling shown on the left, and the competition from Douyin gives me the feeling shown on the right)

This completely different way of content production has created completely different community atmospheres for the two apps. While people are interacting with their friends on Kuaishou, they can also watch beautiful young men and women on Douyin. If they let themselves go from time to time, they may become internet celebrities. Therefore, the user overlap between Douyin and Kuaishou is getting higher and higher, but the time of "dual-open" users has not increased. They choose Douyin, which has better content recommendations, and the user time of Kuaishou will naturally be squeezed. Ultimately, behind everyone's motivation to show themselves is a desire to be discovered and recognized. Given such human nature, it seems obvious who users should choose to discard.

To put it bluntly, Douyin has huge ambitions, and when it realizes its goals step by step, it will inevitably cause corresponding social repercussions. However, Kuaishou did not have the motivation to make this industry a hot spot at the beginning, but was passively pulled into the arena in the process of others realizing their ambitions.

(TikTok and Kuaishou have overlapping user growth trends)

3. A textbook for operations that requires careful planning and a sense of just enough execution

In my opinion, the operation of Douyin has always been very sophisticated and can even be used as a textbook for study. I think the biggest highlights of Douyin's operation lie in two aspects: taking every step carefully and stopping at the right time.

Regarding the point of taking each step carefully, I have already discussed it in detail in the previous analysis of Douyin's products and operational ideas. Here we will only discuss it "to the point".

Douyin’s “just enough” approach can actually be reflected in every aspect of the product:

In terms of shooting function, Douyin's shooting interface has not changed much for a long time. Except for the addition of the countdown card rhythm function, most other changes are just performance optimizations, which do not give users too fancy choices;

However, users have developed a variety of shooting methods based on this: biting the camera to shoot from a subjective perspective, switching between very slow and very fast shooting to create a sense of ritual in life, and using the overexposure phenomenon...

In terms of special effects, Douyin is very restrained in developing even creative stickers, and has not added too many effects in the later special effects for a long time. But with the help of human robotic arms and various props, you can see all kinds of cool effect videos on TikTok;

· In terms of filters, Douyin’s filter switching has a hidden function - you can fix the edge of the filter to the middle of the picture to show a "double filter effect". I think this should have been a bug before, but users had a lot of fun after discovering it, so Douyin did not modify it;

In terms of gameplay, Douyin has not developed too many complex gameplays. Special gameplays are basically launched only to meet the marketing needs of the stage. But judging from the extremely popular "All Things Grow" some time ago, who can deny that Douyin users are having a lot of fun?

In terms of content guidance, after closing the discovery page, users’ perception of Tik Tok’s content guidance becomes even weaker. But whenever a creative content appears, Douyin can quickly start a trend of imitation and spoof, and continue to create more creative content for Douyin.

There is a saying that "the creativity of the masses is unlimited." Sometimes we think that users are too naive and always want to launch more comprehensive functions to guide users. But in fact, maybe what we need to do is to “stop at the right point” and give users more blank space to let them develop on their own. Creativity can only flourish better when it is not restricted.

But no matter whether it is to proceed step by step or to stop at the right time, it requires the operation personnel to control the operation nodes steadily, accurately and ruthlessly. I believe that an important part of operations is to reduce the "uncontrollable" factors in work and try to quantify all unstable factors into "controllable" factors. But this degree is often difficult to control. Excessive control over users will cause them to lose interest in the product, while too little control will cause the product to eventually become low-end due to market selection. Therefore, it is very important to find the key nodes that need to be controlled in operation. We must be clear about which areas the government must take the initiative in, and at which nodes we can guide the market onto the track we want with just a little guidance. Douyin has successfully controlled these operational nodes and has been able to produce such a brilliant operational report card.

I think the logic behind Tik Tok's control over each operational node is still a topic that can be explored in more depth. I will dig a hole here first and fill it in after I do more research.

4. Some opinions on TikTok and its competitors

In recent times, the battle between Alibaba and Tencent has been fierce. Let’s not discuss who is right or wrong. In this war, we can see that both sides have their own hidden concerns.

In an article titled "Why Toutiao is determined to fight Tencent to the death" published not long ago, Pan Luan believes that for Toutiao, which lacks GR, the painful lesson of losing a key member of Neihan Duanzi has forced it to consider its own public influence as it grows in size.

For Tencent, a strong competitor suddenly appeared in the battlefield for mobile users' active time, and it was impossible to ignore it in any way.

Perhaps at present, the data volume of Weishi is far less than that of Douyin, but overall, the financial, media, and social traffic resources that Weishi can inherently utilize are enough to make any competitor tremble. So the prelude to the competition has just begun, and everyone is actually on the same starting line.

Douyin’s shortcoming lies in its social aspect. Although the community atmosphere is very good, the comment section, which is one of Douyin’s biggest charms, does not provide a product experience that is anything like what a community-based product should have . Therefore, I think that Douyin should continue to work hard in this area. While optimizing the comment area experience, it should also consider how to make the views and likes in the comment area help Douyin users expand their social channels and form effective social conversions .

However, Weishi's weakness lies in videos. Although it is backed by China's largest social empire, the video experience is too poor. If it is now linked with social media, it may not be able to take over well and may even suffer losses.

Putting aside other detailed experiences, Weishi is contradictory in terms of content consumption and production alone : ​​Weishi's content consumption interface can be said to be a pixel-level copy of Douyin, even adding a "follow" button; while the content production interface is very similar to Kuaishou.

(Left: Weishi’s content consumption interface, Center: Weishi’s content production interface, Right: Kuaishou’s content production interface)

(TikTok’s content consumption and production interface)

In my opinion, this is a very awkward combination. On the one hand, it seems that Weishi wants to encourage users to lower the threshold for content production by imitating each other and to produce content in a decentralized manner; on the other hand, it completely ignores the necessary prerequisites for such content production - topic selection and templates, and instead wants users to produce content in a recording manner. In addition, Weishi's background sound editing and timing experience are very peculiar, which makes it easy to mislead users to produce Kuaishou-like content, but this is obviously not what Weishi wants. (Do you feel divided when reading this paragraph? This is how I feel when watching Weishi.) Weishi does not have the recommendation algorithm of Toutiao, and its review team had major problems some time ago. It is hard to imagine how much manpower Weishi has to invest in content distribution to make its content more exciting than Douyin.

There was a joke on the Internet before: What defeated chewing gum was not another kind of chewing gum, but WeChat. I agree with this logic. Similarly, given TikTok’s current size, you can’t rely on another TikTok to defeat it, unless you have a lot of money (of course, Tencent is not short of money either). Relatively speaking, I think a strategy with a higher input-output ratio should start with social networking.

Tencent already has its own social empire and wants to use short videos to regain more user time that once belonged to it. Perhaps what it should do is not to copy Douyin, but to increase the proportion of video interaction in the social relationship chain. How exactly? Perhaps, the airplane shooting, WeChat step counting and mini-programs of the past can give us some inspiration?

By the way, I have another thought. If we only make changes to the interaction, what do you think is the truly effective anti-immersion method of TikTok?

It took a week to finally finish writing it. It’s hard to write, please be careful before you go~

Author: Vanessa, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: Vanessa's Growth Diary