With over 10 million new users every month, how can TikTok avoid the fate of being a flash in the pan?

Throughout July, the number of users on the entire Douyin platform increased by more than 12 million. Its rapid rise to fame and advancement also made Kuaishou a little wary. If Douyin, which has a monthly user growth of over 10 million, wants to challenge Kuaishou, can it really do it?

Kuaishou in the north and Douyin in the south, I don’t know when such slogans started circulating on the Internet.

In fact, whether in terms of size or daily active users, Kuaishou’s data is nearly 30 times that of Douyin. According to a report released by Aurora Big Data in July: As of July 23, 2017, the number of installations of Douyin was 20.86 million, while the number of users of Kuaishou has already exceeded 500 million; in terms of daily active users, the former's daily active users have rapidly climbed since April, rising from 290,000 to 1.73 million in just 4 months, while Kuaishou's daily active users have remained stable at more than 50 million since 2017.

This kind of parallel relationship is like "Qiao Feng in the North and Murong in the South", with a huge gap and opposing temperaments.

It would be fine if Douyin was not popular, but the fact is that this product, which was only launched in September last year, has been dormant for 6 months and has been showing a thriving and upward posture since the second quarter of this year. According to the product manager of Douyin, the total number of Douyin video views has exceeded 1 billion and is still growing rapidly. Reports from various third-party data sources also show that in terms of UCG short video penetration, Douyin is currently second only to Kuaishou and Meipai .

There is no doubt that this music short video application incubated by Toutiao has become popular.

Become famous

“If you missed Kuaishou three years ago, don’t miss Douyin now.”

The person who said this is Yan Ran. She is the person in charge of the talent business of Pro Culture Media Company, and is also one of the first people in China to start a short video business .

"I started to use short videos after I graduated from university. The first one was on Tencent Weishi . Now many of the influencers with excellent shooting skills on various platforms came from Weishi."

Years of accumulation have enabled Yan Ran to possess a huge circle of internet celebrity resources, and he also helps some internet celebrities to operate themselves. Her experience tells her that now is the best time for internet celebrities to enter Douyin, "after this bonus period, it will be hard to say."

"Many big Vs on Douyin now come from Kuaishou, Meipai or live streaming platforms . Kuaishou is too big. A girl in my family only gained 40,000 followers after playing it for a few months. Douyin is much faster. It is easy to gain hundreds of thousands of followers in a month."

Wang Ran (pseudonym) also has similar feelings. Wang Ran has only joined Douyin for 3 months, but he has already achieved impressive statistics - 1.831 million. In comparison, he has only accumulated 190,000 followers in three years on Kuaishou.

In Wang Ran’s account “Lao Wang Oppa”, he often posts videos of himself and his father dancing together. In these videos, the son's exaggerated and lively movements and the father's serious and stiff performance form a strong contrast, which has its own characteristics compared with the transformations of other handsome men and beautiful women.

“In fact, I also post some daily life of my father and I on Kuaishou, but I don’t gain fans as quickly as Douyin.”

In Yan Ran's opinion, the main reason why Lao Wang Ouba succeeded is that he entered Douyin at a good time. "A few months ago, Douyin was in great need of funny life bloggers like him, so every video of his got a recommended position. Later on, he should have signed a contract with Douyin. For a period of time, six out of ten recommended positions were his. If he didn't increase his popularity, who would?"

From this we can see that Douyin’s operating strategy is actually completely different from that of Kuaishou. Kuaishou’s product philosophy has always been centered on algorithms and does not interfere with users in any way. But on Douyin, algorithms only play a supporting role, and the power of operations is more highlighted. Not only are the recommended positions screened by both manual and algorithm methods, but Douyin will also establish contact with top producers with content creation capabilities very early on, and even sign contracts with them to ensure the continuous output of content.

Take the bath scrubbing dance as an example. This series of videos was first initiated by Douyin user Liu Xizi, but Douyin's operator felt that this song had the potential to become a hit, so they took the initiative to contact Liu Xizi and asked her to adapt the movements of the song together with the site's expert Xia Muchunguang. Douyin then took the lead in promoting this tag to off-site platforms such as Meipai, Weibo, and Kuaishou.

Wang Ran learned about Douyin through the bath scrubbing dance. "At that time, many internet celebrities were filming this kind of dance, and the videos they shared had a Douyin watermark in the lower right corner. I was curious, so I downloaded one to give it a try."

After trying it, Wang Ran quickly became addicted to Tik Tok. In his opinion, for the same theme, the videos shot by Kuaishou will be rougher, "the videos shot by Douyin are very cool, because they have to be matched with music, editing, special effects, so naturally they will be more thoughtful, and they will also add ideas and performances."

In other words, Kuaishou's videos present unprocessed, rough and real real life, while Douyin integrates shooting and post-production into one, allowing anyone with a little idea to use it to shoot a modified product that meets the passing line. All you need is a mobile phone, a little creativity and some practiced photography techniques.

Although this method is relatively troublesome for ordinary users, it greatly lowers the entry threshold for ordinary people to become Internet celebrities. This is why Douyin can attract a large number of Internet celebrities to migrate from other platforms.

On the other hand, with the rapid increase in the number of users of Douyin, the incremental and relative number of internet celebrities are smaller, which also creates a so-called bonus period for the latter. More young people who have no hope of making a name for themselves on Kuaishou are also turning to this new topic platform.

Douyin has taken away some of Kuaishou’s celebrities below the waist level, and has also brought a sense of caution to Kuaishou.

Since the beginning of this year, Kuaishou has allocated at least 300 million yuan for marketing promotion . The money eventually turned into sponsorship of four variety shows, pre-screening advertisements for mainstream theater films throughout the summer, and building advertisements on Focus Media in the five major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

On the other hand, Kuaishou has also changed its operating strategy.

In July, Kuaishou launched two new positions in Lagou, namely the product director of internet celebrity economy and the advertising system R&D expert. Among them, the former’s job description is to formulate the development direction and construction management of internet celebrity brokerage products. The latter's job description is to be responsible for the development and optimization of systems such as advertising engines, advertising settlement, and data analysis .

These two positions correspond to internet celebrity operations and advertising monetization respectively. This is obviously contrary to Kuaishou's previous style of not actively intervening in users and not rushing to monetize.

Since the beginning of this year, Kuaishou has reached a point where it must put monetization on the agenda. If it wants to monetize better, it is obviously extremely important to acquire more young users in first- and second-tier cities. Because only in this way can we break through the user circle and gain the favor of more investors and advertisers.

Douyin has fewer worries in this regard. It has no trouble with tonality and appears trendy and cool. The young audiences in first- and second-tier cities that it targets happen to be the same people that Kuaishou has spent a lot of money to please this year. According to information detected by Aurora Big Data, currently 37.7% of Douyin users live in first- and second-tier cities, while the proportion of Kuaishou users in first- and second-tier cities is 30.5%.

Tik Tok user city distribution data

Kuaishou user city distribution data

Attack

The figure below is the Weibo index of Douyin. It can be seen that users have mentioned Douyin on Weibo since April, and since June, this software has exploded on Weibo.

Although Douyin did not carry out large-scale promotion in the first two quarters, it has suddenly shown a very eager desire to expand since July. First, it launched a creative H5 on major platforms - "World famous paintings are shaking and shaking", and later sponsored this summer's hottest online variety show "The Rap of China".

The figure below is a chart of the daily new users of Douyin since July provided by Aurora Big Data. It can be seen that in July, Douyin added more than 400,000 users on average every day. In the whole month of July, the number of users on the entire platform increased by more than 12 million.

Among them, the climax in mid-July corresponds to the release time of its H5, while the climax at the end of July corresponds to the broadcast time of the fifth episode of "The Rap of China".

In August, Douyin invited Lu Han , Wu Yifan and Li Yifeng to promote their new songs and new movies on Douyin. The three not only opened accounts on Douyin, but also launched unique celebrity stickers and exclusive challenges on the official platform.

On August 19, Tik Tok also appeared on Happy Camp , whose traffic diversion effect was obvious to all. With such continuous exposure, Douyin’s new user data in August will not be ugly.

However, it must be mentioned that with the gradual growth of platform users, Douyin has also undergone significant changes in content. The most obvious of these is the increasing number of funny original-sounding videos on TikTok.

Wang Ran is the best example. Three months ago, faces like Wang Ran and his father were rarely seen on Douyin’s recommendations.

According to a former TikTok intern on Zhihu, TikTok’s positioning at that time was still very vertical, that is, a trendy and cool music short video community.

"In the early days, TikTok would recruit many dance clubs from various universities to shoot videos, but the genres were very limited. They only required trendy, fashionable and cool styles, and had no interest in other styles, such as ancient style girls."

This is the same as my subjective feeling. In May, I used this app intensively for a period of time because I was going to interview a Douyin internet celebrity. The initial experience was amazing, and I can completely describe it as addictive. But after using it for a long time, I found that the content in Douyin's recommended positions was very homogeneous. It was nothing more than handsome men and beautiful women with simple camera shaking and music additions, and even the music was rarely changed.

But now, when you open the recommendation section of Douyin, the situation is completely different.

Li Rui, operator of Yuedu Media's Internet Celebrity Center, summarized to the Jiemian Venture reporter the types of content that are most likely to be recommended on Douyin - "good-looking, cute pets, creative videos, celebrities, and those that play the family card with parents, children, grandparents, basically these five types."

It seems that Douyin has given up its past heavily vertical music content and chose to slowly expand its content format, making itself more and more like a refined version of Kuaishou.

In Li Rui's view, such a change is actually what everyone wants.

"You have to admit that Douyin's previous content was nice to look at, but it was too easy to get bored with. If the breadth of content is not expanded, users will be lost."

The figure below shows the monthly retention status of Douyin starting from April. It can be seen that as of April, the platform's monthly retention is still very high. However, since May, monthly retention has been at a low point, and it was not until June that it returned to its previous level. According to Li Rui's recollection, Douyin's expansion of content also began in June. It is safe to guess that the platform also noticed the retention problem and adjusted its content operation strategy.

The future and concerns

Although internet celebrities are gaining fans quickly on TikTok, monetization has become a problem.

Under this premise, Yan Ran believes that changes in content strategy are necessary:

"For short video influencers, their main means of monetization at this stage are still advertising and e-commerce , and it is actually difficult to derive business from the original content of Douyin. If you let an influencer have millions of fans but cannot monetize, then they will eventually choose to transfer their fans to other platforms, which is also disadvantageous to Douyin."

This is indeed the case. When you open TikTok, you will find that most of the top influencers will write their Weibo or live broadcast account in the description. Some veteran TikTok players, like Xue Dashi and Joker, have even added their own Taobao accounts to specialize in selling TikTok props.

A small number of people have started to accept creative advertising, but it is still very difficult to promote using Tik Tok videos. If it is too obvious, it will not be selected for recommendation and gain traffic . Those influencers who have successfully transferred their fans to live streaming platforms have more or less reduced the frequency of updating Douyin. After all, live streaming brings in real money.

It is understood that Douyin currently does not have a complete mechanism to allow influencers on the platform to monetize. Although they will also sign contracts with top internet celebrities and give them certain subsidies, this is obviously not a long-term solution. In the future, Douyin still needs to develop a mechanism to allow influencers to monetize in a more reasonable way. It may be user rewards or advertising subsidies, but in short, it must be a method that both influencers and users can accept.

On the other hand, competitors are also catching up quickly.

Although Tik Tok is the first music short video app to explode in China, this product has more or less borrowed from musical.ly, which focuses on the overseas market.

The musical.ly team is also from China, but in the past they have always focused on overseas markets, with impressive results. Not only does it have 200 million users worldwide, but it also has more than 18 million daily active users.

Since the beginning of this year, musical.ly has also extended its tentacles back to China, changing its name to Muse to compete directly with TikTok.

In addition, Xiaokaxiu also separated Huangka, which has the same functions as Douyin, into a separate App. The similarity between this App and Douyin's products can be said to be at the pixel level, but Douyin still has certain advantages in video clarity.

On June 6, an app called Naitang was announced to be launched. It also targets young people in first- and second-tier cities, and its product positioning and form are very similar to Douyin and Muse.

A new track has emerged and all entrants are ready.

At present, Douyin still has an overwhelming advantage over other competitors.

Recently, Douyin even announced the launch of its overseas strategy. In an interview with reporters, Wang Xiaowei, Douyin's product manager, said: "With no strong challengers in the domestic market, it is reasonable for Douyin to seek overseas growth." Moreover, behind this overseas expansion is the support of over 100 million US dollars from Toutiao.

I believe that with both domestic and overseas development being equally important, TikTok will be able to maintain a good growth trend in the short term.

But the problem is, similar to Weibo, strongly operated products will inevitably encounter a lack of UGC in the end. Even though TikTok has always emphasized that it is a decentralized platform, in fact, it is still supported by a number of small centers.

Kuaishou can produce 6 million original short videos every day, while for Douyin, users can easily be stimulated to have a strong desire for UGC just because they have shot a good video at the beginning, but in the later stage, as the novelty fades, the high time cost will gradually reduce users' willingness to shoot.

It is understood that to shoot a recommended-level video on Douyin, it takes at least half an hour from conception to shooting. Some videos with plots, storyboards and multiple costume changes may even take 5 hours.

If TikTok turns itself into a platform where most users can only be spectators, then its lack of informative content will make it difficult to retain users for long.

At present, Douyin must pay attention to the following points to avoid the fate of being a flash in the pan:

• First, continuously optimize distribution through algorithms to increase the chances of ordinary users being seen;
• Second, lower the threshold for users to shoot, add more templates and special effects, and stimulate users' UGC willingness;
• Third, improve the sharing mechanism, increase social elements, and reduce the tool attributes of the platform; Fourth, increase reasonable ways for influencers to monetize and maintain good relationships with influencers on the platform.

Compared with other short video applications, Douyin has reached a point that makes Kuaishou feel nervous. Next, it must make itself like Kuaishou and yet unlike Kuaishou. On the one hand, we need to seize the user circles that Kuaishou has missed; on the other hand, in terms of recommending videos, while insisting on manual screening to control the aesthetic tone, we must also emphasize the role of algorithms to make recommendations more personalized and avoid content homogeneity.

This app is nothing like the one made by Toutiao. It already has a good hand, and all it needs to do next is play it well.