Analysis of Toutiao's competitive products

With the rapid development of the Internet, people are increasingly inclined to browse news and information on mobile devices. On one hand, it is one of the four major portals and a "veteran" in the news and information industry; on the other hand, it has become popular thanks to the traffic from Douyin and its numerous video copyrights.

1. Product Overview

1.1 Product Overview and Version

Sina News is a news information client under Sina Group. It is committed to using big data and artificial intelligence technologies to provide users with a richer, scenario-based and personalized content reading experience. Sina News and Weibo have connected the content, data and account systems of the two platforms, providing users with exciting content such as full-network information, hot news, in-depth selections, wonderful videos, high-definition photo albums, etc.

Sina News has always served users' needs for high-quality content reading. In addition to pushing high-quality content and edited topics created by various channels of Sina.com to users, it also cooperates with many authoritative mainstream media such as Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily, and China Central Radio and Television to provide users with high-quality news; in addition, it also invites many top self-media creators in different fields to settle in, providing users with more high-quality long-tail content.

As of the fourth quarter of 2020, the monthly active users of Sina News APP have maintained rapid growth for 20 consecutive quarters, with the scale of monthly active users reaching 136 million and the scale of daily active users exceeding 68.5 million; the average daily number of users of Sina Mobile reached 57.74 million, and the average monthly number of users exceeded 176 million; Sina Mobile's monthly ecological traffic exceeded 510 million, leading the entire industry.

Latest version 7.61.0

1.2 Experience Environment

• Device model: iPhoneX
• Operating system: ios14.6
• Test network: Telecom 4G

1.3 Reasons for selection

The author is an old user of Sina News and usually uses the Sina News app as the main way to watch news. As the first competitive product analysis report in my product career, it is more appropriate to choose an app that I like and am familiar with for analysis.

Moreover, no app is perfect. In this market full of gunpowder, outstanding competitors are always watching their opponents' every move, and the battle for resources is imminent. If Sina News wants to catch up with its competitors and surpass the competition, it still has a long way to go. Only by enhancing its own advantages and making up for its disadvantages can it win a broader market.

2. Competitive product selection

2.1 Selecting a target

Toutiao (current version 8.2.6)

Toutiao is a recommendation engine product based on data mining developed by Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., Ltd. It recommends information to users and provides services that connect people and information. Founded by Zhang Yiming in March 2012, the first version was released in August 2012.

2.2 Reasons for selection

Based on personalized recommendation engine technology, Toutiao makes personalized recommendations based on multiple dimensions such as each user's interests and location. The recommended content includes not only news in a narrow sense, but also music, movies, games, shopping and other information. It is one of the most popular news mobile clients today, and through the traffic from Douyin, a large number of new users have flocked in. There are many things worth learning and drawing lessons from.

2.2.1 Market Analysis

Information Market Overview:

• User demand in the new information industry has declined after the peak of the epidemic period, and the number of active users declined month by month from March to May 2020; but from June to July, perhaps affected by the "graduation season", the industry's active users showed a small increase, and the MAU in July was close to 700 million.
• As a bridge connecting users and information, content is the core element for new information platforms to attract and retain users in the long term. Information content has developed from the initial single professional editing and compiling to a flourishing production model, and the content ecology is gradually improving at this stage.
• At present, the construction of information content has developed three modes: self-collection and self-editing, self-built ecology and content aggregation; the self-collection and self-editing mode can ensure the content quality, the content aggregation mode has higher content richness, and the self-built ecology mode combines the advantages of the above two.

2.2.2 Market trends and industry status

2.2.2.1 Development Trends of News and Information Industry

The news and information industry has evolved from the PC portal era in 2012 to mobile and video-based development, and now has entered a new intelligent era brought about by 5G and the Internet of Things. The information platform has a total monthly active user base of over 600 million, covering nearly 80% of mobile Internet users.

According to the statistics of various types of apps used by users every month, news ranks 6th and effective usage time ranks 4th, which shows that news apps are used more frequently in people’s daily lives, and some users have the habit of getting information through news apps.

Data source: iResearch

2.2.3 Competitive Product Market Size

2.2.3.1 Scale of active users in the new information industry

Starting from March 2020, with the improvement of the epidemic situation, the new information industry as a whole showed a receding effect, and the scale of active users fell back to a relatively normal level; from June to July, perhaps affected by the "graduation season", users' demand for college entrance examinations, university application, recruitment and other related information content increased, and the industry's active users showed a relatively obvious growth. The MAU in July was close to 700 million, an increase of about 15 million from April in Q2, but then fell back.

2.2.3.2 User Activity

The mobile Internet market has fully entered the inventory era, and the user structure has become stable. The MAU in the news and information field reached 600 million, with Toutiao, Tencent News, and Sina News standing out as the top three, with more than 70% of new users going to these three companies.

Comparing the MAU and year-on-year changes in the news information market in 2020 and Q1 2021, Sina News has grown strongly, with a year-on-year increase of 60% in 2020. In 2021, it will still maintain a relatively high level of growth in the industry, rising from third place in the industry to surpass Tencent News to become second in the industry; Sohu News ranked first in the industry in year-on-year growth; Kandian Express and Qutoutiao's MAU continued to decline.

2.2.3.3 User usage time

From 2016 to 2019, the monthly usage of mobile devices showed an upward trend, but the usage time decreased significantly. In the first quarter of 2021, Toutiao, Sina News, and Qutoutiao all exceeded 40 minutes, while the lower-ranked Kandian Express, NetEase News, and Tencent News were within 20 minutes; the year-on-year growth rates of the top-ranked Sina News and the lower-ranked Tencent News and NetEase News were higher, while the user usage time of Qutoutiao and Sohu News was shortened.

2.2.3.4 Number of downloads

2.2.3.5 Platform penetration

Among the major new information platforms, Baidu APP is in an absolute leading position in terms of user scale, with a penetration rate of 42.7% in Q3 2020, an increase of 2 percentage points year-on-year. Information platforms such as Toutiao and Sina News did not see a significant increase in penetration rate in Q3, and most platforms even experienced negative growth year-on-year.

2.2.3.6 Average number of new users per day

In Q2 and Q3 of 2020, the average daily number of new users of Baidu APP was about 1.5 million, which is the platform with the largest number of new users among major information platforms. In Q3, the number of new users increased by 400,000 compared with the same period last year. Sina News added 103,000 new users in Q3 compared with the same period last year, while the number of new users of Toutiao and other platforms decreased significantly year-on-year.

3. Competitive product positioning and user analysis

3.1 Product Positioning

3.2 Gender ratio of users

Sina News:

Today’s headlines:

Data source: iResearch

As can be seen from the above picture, whether it is Toutiao or Sina News, there are slightly more male users.

3.3 Age ratio of users

Sina News:

Today’s headlines:

Data source: iResearch

It is not difficult to find from the above figure that among users over 31 years old, the proportion decreases with age, indicating that fewer and fewer people are accustomed to using mobile phones to obtain news and information as they age. The difference in the age structure of the two populations is mainly reflected in the users under 35 years old. The largest user group of Sina News is under 24 years old, while the largest user group of Toutiao is 25-30 years old. The user structure of Sina News is younger and gradually decreases with age. Toutiao has a larger share of users over 25 years old than Sina News. It can be seen that the content and usage of Sina News push may be more popular among young people.

3.4 Proportion of usage areas

Sina News:

Today’s headlines:

Data source: iResearch

Analysis and suggestions: Both have significant characteristics. Most of their user groups are concentrated in coastal areas or economically developed areas. This shows that people in economically better-off areas have a greater demand for news and information and are more accustomed to using news apps. Sina News can strengthen its expansion into the mainland market and seize the market first.

3.5 Main usage scenarios of users

With the popularity of mobile Internet, users cannot do without the Internet in all aspects. At the same time, people's dependence on mobile news clients is gradually increasing. The specific usage scenarios are roughly analyzed as follows:

• Usage scenario 1: When a white-collar worker wakes up in the morning, he wants to see the morning headlines as soon as possible, so he opens his mobile phone and uses the news client to read the news.
• Usage scenario 2: After lunch, during the lunch break, this white-collar worker takes out his mobile phone to see if there is any interesting and entertaining leisure news to pass the time.
• Usage scenario three: When you go home from get off work and take the subway, sit down and look for news about topics that interest you.

3.6 User preferences for information content format

Users' preferences for the form of information content have changed, with a clear trend towards video

In recent years, users' preference for information content in the form of pictures and texts has decreased, and more attention has shifted to short videos, long videos and live broadcasts. Among them, short videos have quickly gained popularity in the entire content industry due to their "short and powerful" characteristics, while live broadcasts have the characteristics of full-time, instant, and interactive, which greatly enriches the user experience of obtaining information, and also provides great opportunities for the commercial realization of the platform. In the future, with the development of 5G technology, the experience of Internet live broadcasts will be greatly improved, and the form of information + live broadcast may grab more attention from users.

Data source: Aurora Data

Analysis: With the increasing variety of content carriers, users' preference for short information videos has increased significantly, and the live broadcast of information, which has just started, has great development potential. Toutiao has also attracted a large number of users by increasing its efforts to develop various types of videos. However, there is no need for Sina to follow the development path of Toutiao and improve and optimize the video column while doing a good job in its own news and information functions.

4. Product Structure

Today's headlines:

Structural analysis:

It is not difficult to see that the current version consists of four major sections (Toutiao, Xigua Video, Cinema, and Mine). Let’s take a look at the homepage section first. In fact, as the core user scenario of an App, the simple structure of the homepage is definitely a factor that users value very much. You can see that the homepage of Toutiao is actually very simple. It is composed of channel labels (including) as well as editing and search. It is concise but can highlight the key points. Next is the Xigua Video section, which is similar to the homepage, but the granularity of the classification is much greater than that of the homepage. Compared with the previous version, Toutiao has cancelled the micro headlines at the bottom and replaced it with a screening room for playing long videos.

The simplification of the first three parts allows Toutiao to stack more functions in "My", which also makes Toutiao look a bit like an entertainment video app. Although adding too many and complex functions will cause the product to deviate from its original product positioning, these contents also show Toutiao's new attempts and business expansion direction. However, as a user, we still hope that the product is simple, convenient and easy to use. Fortunately, the added functions are not obvious, which makes it easier for users to accept them.

Sina News:

Structural analysis:

The bottom of Sina News consists of Home Page, Video, Discovery, and Me. Similar to Toutiao, the homepage looks very simple, with compact news of all kinds, followed by a video page with larger classification granularity. What is different from Toutiao is that the third column of Sina News is the discovery column. When you click it, the first thing displayed is the real-time hot spots, which makes it easier for people to quickly understand the hottest news, and the classification of the discovery page is also clearer. The option to publish updates is on this page, and the position of the bottom bar is the same as that of WeChat Moments, making it easier for people to get used to the software faster. My options bar is more complicated, with more functions gathered here and more executable operations. Compared with Toutiao, Sina pays more attention to news and information related content, while Toutiao puts part of its focus on various types of videos.

5. Core Functions

5.1 Product Replacement

Sina News:

• Operation: Special reports on the college entrance examination and a volunteer guide were launched online. A large number of query tools were launched online during the epidemic, and DAU increased sharply. In finance, it is the source of information for other platforms. It has advantages in entertainment activities. "Weibo Night" is exclusive and has a celebrity ranking function online.
• Functions: The discovery page includes selected functions, popular streams, and topic posts, as well as newly added short video barrage, hot spots, hot review list, voice waves, audiobooks, and "pin" functions on the desktop. The hot list and news functions were launched earlier, and celebrity rankings and hot-selling comments are their special features.

Today’s headlines:

• From the version information, we can see that Toutiao was improving its product functions in its early days, encouraging users to follow influencers and friends, promoting user interaction, adding dislike and help-to-headline functions, and optimizing the recommendation system. In 2016, it supported live video chat and launched hot searches and hot lists. The current hot lists include headline hot list, today’s focus, and local hot list (suspected to be offline).
• In 2020, a special area and screening room for the epidemic were launched, and a thousand new books were added to the novel channel.

5.2 Functional Differences

Although information products are highly homogeneous, functional analysis shows that:

• Sina News: It has comprehensive news functions, backed by Weibo resources, and has unique advantages in entertainment.
• Toutiao: There are questions and answers in the recommendation flow; the tag at the bottom has a screening room function (only those with strong financial resources can afford the copyright); Xigua Video (medium and long) and short videos are displayed separately, with rich content.

5.2.1 P/UGC

In addition to user comments, although Sina News can publish UGC content, it is almost only exposed in topics and is more of a PGC platform.

Toutiao can publish UGC content and supports live broadcasts and Q&A, while other products only support pictures, texts and videos. Toutiao will also synchronize the content posted by users on Douyin, preferring the PUGC platform.

5.2.2 Featured Channels

In addition to rich video resources, Toutiao has no special channels. Sina has Weitianxia, ​​[Sound Wave] hot reviews, and the Star Wave circle which covers all kinds of celebrity news and gossip. [Voice Wave] The hot comments function will display users' hot comments on the corresponding information page, strengthen the interaction between users and products, encourage users to participate in news information comments and discussions, and increase user stickiness.

5.2.3 Hot List

Toutiao’s hot list includes event details, related content, etc. There is currently no vertical hot list. Sina News has made good use of Weibo resources, making the hot lists richer and the classifications more detailed and clear.

5.2.4 Screening Room

Toutiao has a screening room function and owns the copyrights of many movies, TV series, animations and other columns. It is free and has no advertisements. This is also an important reason why Toutiao has a high penetration rate.

5.2.5 Push

Push is an important business of content platforms, accounting for a considerable proportion of DAU of each company. The operating systems of manufacturers such as Oppo and Vivo have limits on the number of push notifications, and users have turned off system notification permissions by default, while models of Huawei, Apple and other manufacturers have no restrictions. The push notifications of various competing products include full, personalized, and local push notifications, all of which aim to increase user activity.

Toutiao has rich copyrights and exclusive content. Some of its content will be received long after push notifications from other competitors, and may be pushed by machines. Sina News is faster and has higher quality content.

Data source: iResearch

6. Interaction Design

Below, the author will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the two in terms of various functional and process interface designs from the perspective of interaction and design, such as the login page, my interface, search interface, etc.

6.1 Loading Page

Sina: Today's headlines:

Both of them can reflect their own styles on the loading page. In comparison, Toutiao uses a pure white background that is simple and comfortable, and the slogan in red font is square and very modern.

As for the loading page, Sina News seems to have done a better job (personal subjective), using white and light gray landscape paintings as the background, and the black calligraphy slogan in the middle of "Big Waves Chasing Newness" looks elegant and extremely eye-catching. It incorporates Chinese cultural elements and can leave a deep impression on users the first time.

6.2 Login Page

• It can be clearly seen that the login page of Toutiao is more concise. Due to the huge user base of Douyin app, the one-click login option of Douyin is set as a long red button in the center, which is very eye-catching; and the mobile phone login is placed at the bottom, and WeChat and QQ logins are placed in the hidden bar; this also shows ByteDance’s confidence in its own account system. This way, login does not require other unnecessary operations, giving users a smooth experience.
• Sina News prioritizes mobile phone verification login, requiring users to manually enter their mobile phone numbers and obtain a verification code to log in. The other options are listed below. Put the slogan "Log in and earn coins" at the top to induce users to log in. Overall, the information layout of the login page is denser than that of Toutiao.

6.3 Home Page

Sina News:

• Both use red and white as the main colors, place categories below the search bar, and allow users to edit their own channels at the far right of the categories. Click on the corresponding channel to get related content information, which is very convenient. The spacing between articles is appropriate, and it is easy to flip through and click on the news, giving people a sense of efficiency and simplicity. From the previous core function analysis, we can see that Toutiao’s publishing function is more comprehensive, so Toutiao places it to the right of the search bar. The obvious advantage of Sina News over Toutiao is its hot list function, so it is placed in a more prominent position. When users open the app, they can notice the hot list function next to the search bar, while the hot list in the homepage channel of Toutiao requires users to manually add and edit it.
• From the search interface, the history records of both apps, including the option to clear search history, are placed at the bottom of the search bar, which is in line with the user's habit of using the search function. However, Toutiao has added an option for incognito mode at the bottom. Users who do not want to keep search history can directly select the mode here without having to switch to another page to set it. In terms of layout, Toutiao is very simple. The white background gives people a fresh and refreshing feeling. The "Guess What You Want to Search" function is very conspicuous. It will display relevant content based on the user's usual search habits to attract users to click and browse. In addition, popular news topics will have a red "hot" mark on the side, and users can click on it to enter the topic and the hot headlines list. Sina News has placed its outstanding hot search list and its unique hot comment list here, occupying the main space. While searching, users can notice real-time hot information and various interesting hot comments, which attracts users to click on and enter related content.
• Sina News has added a listening function on its homepage, which is divided into listening to books and listening to news. And it will play automatically after clicking, saving users the time of thinking. And the layout of pictures and news headlines will increase users' interest in listening. This feature also increases the ways for users to learn about news and information. Users can listen to the news without manual operation, allowing users to use this feature to listen to and learn about information while they are busy with other things.

Suggestion: You can also add a hot list to the listening function so that users can also learn about various popular events through listening. Push relevant content based on personal preferences, cultivate users' habit of listening to news and information, and increase user stickiness.

6.4 Hot List

• Sina News Hot List has a dark background interface with a fresh and immersive feel. Today’s Headlines uses the color red, which symbolizes “hot”. The picture is domineering and simple. The red color creates a strong visual impact on users and leaves a deep impression on them.
• Because of its rich Weibo resources, we can see from the previous structure diagram that many pages of Sina News can actually enter the hot list and their positions are very eye-catching. Because of its rich Weibo resources, there are many categories of hot lists, and the first hot list has an accompanying picture, which allows you to understand the hottest information more intuitively. With vertical hot lists, users can learn more about hot topics in categories and related directions. Toutiao is relatively simple, with only the hot headlines list and local hot list, leaving users with few choices.

6.5 Video Recommendation Page

The overall layout of Sina News' video page is white and light gray, which looks very neat. There is a series of categories under the recommendation column for users to choose from. Although there are more categories, it gives people a bit of a dazzling feeling and is slightly repetitive with the upper categories. Toutiao uses a red-based top bar that runs through the homepage, video and screening room, allowing users to search on the page at any time.

Suggestion: Sina News has many video categories, and we can try to add a function to automatically sort the top categories according to users' video viewing preferences.

When Sina News slides to the corresponding position of the video, the video will play automatically, but without sound. In this mode, users can understand the beginning content of the video without clicking on it. In this way, some videos will attract users to click in to watch the full video. The secondary page is a bit similar to the playback mode of Tik Tok, which plays videos by sliding up and down. The advantage of this mode is that it can increase the user's viewing interest, because they don't know what the next video is, so they will want to slide to the next video to watch it. In addition to the corresponding recommended videos, there is also a hot list next to it, so you can learn about hot information in the form of short videos, and the popularity ranking will be marked at the bottom of the hot videos, which provides a good user experience.

The videos on Toutiao will not jump to the secondary page for playback. After clicking, you can slide to the corresponding position to play them automatically. This way of playing videos eliminates many steps and makes the operation easier and more convenient for users.

6.6 My Page

In terms of layout, Toutiao adopts a simple and fresh style, including icons, background colors, functional layout, etc., all of which give people a small and exquisite feeling. Sina News occupies the top space in red, which forms a visual contrast with the white background below. The two colors are clearly divided, giving people a feeling of sudden fault. The visual effect is not better than Toutiao.

Sina has added a sign-in function and a welfare task function at the bottom end, which can increase the user's fun of using the application, encourage users to use Toutiao every day, and increase user stickiness. Sina News also divides the commonly used functions into three pages, and it can be seen that it has obviously more functions than Toutiao. But at the same time, it will also make the page layout more dignified and dense.

7. Product advantages and disadvantages

Based on the above analysis, the two apps will be analyzed as a whole based on the SWOT model .

8. Conclusion

From the SWOT model, we can clearly understand the advantages and disadvantages of the two apps. At present, the aggregated information flow platform products have entered the second half and the era of existing users. After that, product iterations should gradually slow down. Each competing product will exert its strength in every hot event and accelerate the layout of other tracks.

In my opinion, the basic capabilities of a product include cold start, recommendation algorithms, the chain from content output to display, push strategies, advertising adaptability, promoting interaction, etc. Toutiao is good at algorithms and has a high cold start accuracy rate. Sina has high push quality and quick operational response.

The major news media clients have already perfected their products, at least in terms of core functions, both in terms of functionality and user experience. Based on their respective positioning, their user groups are also different. Therefore, it is important to maintain their own characteristics in this regard. The current obstacle restricting the development of news information is the serious homogeneity of content, so the key is to continue to increase high-quality content and maintain the advantages of combining big data with high-quality algorithms. Content differentiation is extremely important. Excellent creators and IP assets will become the focus for leading new information platforms to build content ecological barriers. It is hard to say now as to who will stand out and ultimately become the industry leader.

Now the entire industry is moving towards fragmentation, mobility, and verticalization. The scope of media is constantly expanding, and small but refined media information has become a demand of users. With the development of hardware, including the development of smart wearable devices, the channels for users to receive information have further increased. Whether Sina News can make the right changes in response to these changes is also a test for the entire team.

Future content ecology trends:

① Video

Users prefer video information content. Leading information platforms continue to increase their investment in short videos and live broadcasts to attract user attention. At the same time, they build their own content ecological barriers by supporting and incubating content creators and creating core IPs. The development of technologies such as 5G, point cloud and wearable devices may bring innovations to the news industry from editing and distribution. The live broadcast experience will be greatly improved, and information + live broadcast will grab more user attention.

② New and hot content

Hot topics are content that can attract users from two or more fields. Currently, Sina News has done a better job on the hot list than other competitors. Sina's hot list is also the reason for the 26.9% increase in MAU in Q1 2021. In the future, Toutiao may prepare personalized interest hot lists to better meet the needs of users in vertical fields such as technology, finance, and sports.

③ In-depth content

For users who obtain in-depth information, their immersive behavior is relatively stable. According to the Toutiao crowd insight report from Bytedance, this group of users prefer entertainment and sports content. They use the platform relatively low in frequency, but have relatively high stickiness and usage time. Meeting the needs of these people may have a positive impact on the platform's retention, brand and tone.

The author has several suggestions for improving and optimizing Sina News:

• According to users' usage time preferences, Sina platform should focus on improving the quality of news during peak usage hours and increase the frequency of news push during peak usage hours to attract users. News should not be pushed too frequently during low-frequency usage periods, when most people are busy with their own affairs and have less free time to browse news. Pushing news at this time may cause users to turn off mobile app notification permissions.
• Attract more high-quality media to settle in, let self-media writers sign exclusive agreements with their own platforms, launch activities similar to Toutiao's "Creator Plan", vigorously encourage creation, create more exclusive content for Sina News, and work hard to provide high-quality content.
• Strengthen the review of news push. According to the feedback from users who gave negative reviews on the App Store, "clickbait" and "poor article content quality" appear frequently. We can add a negative review function similar to "dislike" to articles, and decide the order of pushing media articles based on the quality of historical articles published by the media and the rate of positive reviews.

The above is the author’s complete competitive analysis of Sina News and Toutiao! I spent a lot of energy and thought a lot during this period. The results were hard-won, but there are still many problems that I cannot realize myself. I hope everyone can make more comments so that product novice can do better and better on this road!

Author: -_Maybe🥑

Source: -_Maybe🥑