Douyin VS Weishi competitive product analysis report!

Today is the era of short videos , which occupy a large part of people's entertainment time. Major platforms have also launched short video sections one after another, such as WeChat's video account. Moreover, short videos can not only entertain but also sell goods, which makes them even more popular in the industry.

1. Purpose of analysis

In order to quickly understand the short video market, this article selected three short video products, Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi, for comparative analysis; Douyin and Kuaishou are the two giants in the short video industry, and are also two core products that cannot be avoided for a deep understanding of the short video industry; as one of the BAT Big Three, Tencent, in addition to investing in Kuaishou, restarted Weishi and launched Video Account, demonstrating Tencent's determination to enter the short video industry; considering that Video Account was launched late and its product positioning is quite different from Douyin and Kuaishou, Weishi, which has a closer positioning to the two, was selected as the object of competitive product analysis in this report.

This article will compare and analyze the three products from five aspects: industry background, basic information, core functions, content production and distribution, and commercial monetization. Finally, it will summarize and put forward some suggestions for functional improvement.

2. Analytical Framework

3. Industry Background

1. Market analysis

In 2016, the short video industry emerged. In the following four years, the scale of short video users and the market size have grown steadily thanks to factors such as the rapid development of network infrastructure, changes in user habits, and the lowering of the threshold for short video production. It is estimated that in 2020, the scale of short video users will exceed 700 million, and the market size will reach 41 billion yuan.

In terms of user time, short videos are second only to instant messaging, and are more than 10 points ahead of the third-ranked comprehensive e-commerce, becoming a veritable "time black hole"; at the same time, it is worth noting that China's short video industry has entered a mature stage of development, the market has stabilized, and the growth rates of both user scale and market scale have slowed down.

The leading short video platforms have basically completed user accumulation, and the number of users is unlikely to experience explosive growth in the future. The commercial value of the platforms will adjust from the growth of traffic users to the deep value exploration of individual users.

Source: iiMedia Research "2020 China Short Video Market Competition Status Special Research Report"

At present, according to the data from Mob Tech 2020 China Short Video Industry Insight Report, my country's short video market has formed a pattern of two supers and many strongs.

Among the top 10 short video apps with the largest number of active users in 2020, ByteDance owns 5 and Kuaishou owns 2, and the two will be in a state of competition for supremacy for a long time.

In the third quarter of 2020, both Douyin and Kuaishou grew steadily in penetration and DAU; in the sinking market, the express version of short videos became the pioneer in the growth of active users, and the average DAU of Douyin and Kuaishou has increased several times compared with 2019.

At the same time, with the help of powerful traffic platforms, mid-level platforms such as Tencent's Weishi and Baidu's Haokan Video are still striving to catch up. These are the two "challengers" most likely to overturn the two-super pattern. From the third quarter, Tencent Weishi performed quite well, with its average DAU increasing by more than 140% year-on-year, leading the second echelon after "Douyin and Kuaishou".

In addition to investing in Kuaishou and launching Weishi, Tencent continues to increase its investment in the short video field. In 2020, relying on the high traffic of WeChat, Video Account started its "wild growth" in WeChat. In June, Zhang Xiaolong announced that the DAU of Video Account had reached 200 million, which is likely to surpass Kuaishou and Douyin. However, the future development of Video Account will be short-lived like Weibo Oasis, or it will overtake Douyin and Kuaishou. This will take time to test.

Source: Jiguang Data "2020 Q3 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report"

2. Development History

Since its inception in 2011, the domestic short video industry has gone through four stages: the embryonic stage, the growth stage, the explosive stage, and the mature stage.

• 2011-2013 was the embryonic stage. Domestic short video platforms were built from scratch. Although their influence was relatively limited, the soil for UGC had gradually been formed.
• 2014-2015 was the growth period, which coincided with the domestic 4G construction period. The penetration rate of mobile network video continued to rise, and short video products entered the development stage. Although it failed to form a huge craze or produce explosive products, the attention it received has gradually increased.
• 2016-2017 was a period of explosive growth, with the emergence of domestic short video platforms and active development of the short video industry. PGC, MCN and other industries entered the short video industry, the degree of content specialization increased, and the industry development moved towards formalization.
• From 2018 to the present, the short video industry has gradually taken shape, with Douyin and Kuaishou leading the way. Various Internet giants have formed their own short video matrices, the cooperation ecosystem between MCN and short video platforms has become increasingly mature, and the commercialization of short video platforms has accelerated.

4. Basic information of competing products

1. Basic information comparison

2. Logo Analysis

Color analysis: The main colors of Douyin's logo are dark purple and white, which are close to black, and are matched with fashionable color cast effects of green and red, highlighting the fashion and youthfulness of Douyin; to a certain extent, this color combination is not very friendly to middle-aged and elderly people; Kuaishou's main colors are orange and white, which is a very positive color combination. This color scheme is more down-to-earth and has no specific age bias; the color matching of Weishi's logo is closer to Douyin, and the combination of purple and red makes the overall color style more fashionable.

Analysis of graphic intention: The Douyin logo integrates the first letter "d" of the brand name with the musical note elements in the staff, and uses the technique of color dislocation to reflect the dynamic posture of "shaking"; Kuaishou is shaped like a video recorder, and the two circles above the logo spell out the symbol of positive infinity, representing the diverse world and infinite connections; the comparison between the two highlights that Kuaishou focuses more on recording and sharing, while Douyin emphasizes music and fashion; Weishi continues the graphic structure of Tencent Video, using geometric lines to form the play button, which easily makes people think that Weishi is Tencent Video in the short video field.

3. User portrait analysis

Differences in user portraits of competing products: When talking about the differences between Douyin and Kuaishou, we have to mention intuitive impressions such as "Kuaishou in the north, Douyin in the south", "Kuaishou’s old friends, Douyin’s trendsetters", "Kuaishou is outside the Fifth Ring Road, Douyin is inside the Fifth Ring Road", and these impressions also reflect the differences in their target users to a certain extent.

According to data from QusetMobile and Guosen Securities Economic Research Institute in October 2020:

• In terms of gender, Kuaishou users are relatively more male;
• In terms of age, Douyin has a higher proportion of users aged 19-30, while Kuaishou has a higher proportion of users aged 18 and below by 3 percentage points.
• In terms of geographical distribution, Kuaishou has a higher coverage rate in lower-tier cities, especially in Northeast China and Northwest China, where the proportion of fifth-tier and lower cities is significantly higher than that of Douyin.
• In terms of online consumption capacity, Douyin users have higher online consumption capacity, which is also consistent with regional differences.

In terms of Weishi’s user portrait, according to the latest Baidu Index data, the age and gender structure of Weishi users is closer to that of Douyin.

• Target users are becoming more consistent: With the rapid development of the short video industry, in order to meet the needs of more users, the differences in user attributes of Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi are becoming increasingly blurred, and short video app users are becoming more consistent overall.
• In terms of gender, the male-female ratio of users is relatively balanced, similar to the male-female ratio of Chinese netizens, with slightly more males.
• In terms of age, users are mainly between 19 and 35 years old, especially those aged 25-35, who account for more than 40%. This is to some extent related to the fact that users in this age group are more receptive to new things and have a certain economic foundation.
• In terms of regional distribution, users in third-tier and lower cities are the main group. Users in these areas tend to have a slower work pace, a stable income structure, and more cultural and entertainment options. They pursue a stable life and have plenty of entertainment and leisure time.
• In terms of usage time, users mainly use short video apps to kill time during fragmented time periods such as lunch and before bed.

Source: Guosen Securities "Kuaishou's Original Intention and Ambition"

Source: The 46th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development (September 2020)

4. Functional Framework

1) TikTok functional framework

2) Kuaishou functional framework

3) Weishi functional framework

5. Core Function Analysis

It is not difficult to see from the functional framework of the previous chapter that the three products of Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi mainly include four major functional modules: content browsing module (short video, live broadcast), content creation module, message interaction module and e-commerce module; at the same time, on this basis, each App has launched games, WeChat red envelopes, nearby friends and other functions according to its own product characteristics and strategies.

This chapter will compare and analyze the core functional modules of the three apps.

1. Content browsing

1) Short video module

Short video page layout:

At present, Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi all use a single-column immersive design for the homepage [Recommendations]/[Featured] content display, and the page layout is almost the same; especially for Kuaishou, the double-column waterfall-style [Discover] was used as the homepage; after the 8.0 version was launched in September 2020, Kuaishou added a single-column immersive [Featured] for the first time and used it as the homepage.

Both designs have their pros and cons. The advantage of the single-column immersive design is that the interaction is simple, users can directly consume the value of the content, and it is easy to become "addicted". It is a continuous, uninterrupted immersive viewing experience.

The disadvantage is that it has high requirements on content quality and recommendation algorithm, otherwise it will easily make users feel disgusted; the advantage of the double-column waterfall design is that it can display more content, and users can filter the content they are interested in by themselves, and it has a higher fault tolerance rate. Its disadvantage is that although it gives users a certain degree of choice, manual selection will increase the user's usage cost; at the same time, while this design reduces the impact of low-quality content on users, it will also increase the probability of missing high-quality content.

Interface layout analysis:

[Recommendation]: Considering that the quality of short video content on the homepage [Recommendation] is generally high, the three apps all adopt a single-column immersive experience design, which can allow users to focus more on high-quality short video content; compared to Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi, as rising stars in the immersive display of short videos, have respectively launched a large-screen mode and a full-screen mode for highlights, hoping to overtake others in content experience; especially Kuaishou, in addition to the large-screen mode, when users browse short videos, they can hide information such as the author ID, text, and music by clicking on the screen, making the immersive experience more thorough; but from the actual effect, adding a large-screen/full-screen mode may increase the user experience to a certain extent, but the more core factor that determines how long users can be "immersed" is the recommendation algorithm and high-quality content supply of each app.

[Same City]: The three apps also use a double-column waterfall flow design, which is related to the uneven quality of [Same City] short videos. This solution requires users to make manual selections based on their preferences, thereby increasing users' tolerance for low-quality short videos. In addition, there are differences in the [Same City] entrances of the three. The same city entrances of Douyin and Kuaishou are located in the top and bottom navigation bars respectively, and the position is conspicuous, while the same city entrance of Weishi is placed in the submenu of the channel, with a deep path and easy to be overlooked by users. It is not difficult to see from the differences in the [Same City] entrances that as newcomers in the social field, ByteDance and Kuaishou hope to challenge the social giant Tencent in the same city social field.

【Attention】: The three apps all use different display solutions. Douyin's single-column immersive style allows users to focus more on the video content they are interested in, Kuaishou's double-column waterfall style allows users to browse the content they are most interested in in the shortest time, and Weishi's single-column waterfall style has an effect between Douyin and Kuaishou.

In addition, the basic elements of the short video content display pages of the three apps are relatively consistent, including author information (avatar, ID, location, etc.), video content, copy, music link, and interaction (likes, comments, and reposts); compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, Weishi has added a highlight collection. Weishi aggregates the selected collection through intelligent algorithms to ensure that users can see more short videos that suit their interests.

Short video interaction:

Interaction Analysis:

Like: All three apps can like by double-clicking or pressing “❤”, but the effects triggered are slightly different. Tik Tok and Weishi trigger a gradient effect and hearts of different colors respectively, while Kuaishou uses more earthy patterns such as corn and pumpkin, reflecting that Kuaishou is more down-to-earth and pays more attention to the user experience of the sinking market.

Comments: Kuaishou and Douyin's comments both support GIF emoticons and the @ function. Although Weishi does not support GIF emoticons and the @ function, it has the author flip and god comment tag functions. This difference reflects that Kuaishou and Douyin pay more attention to the fun and interactivity of the comment area, while Weishi focuses on the guiding role of high-quality comments on users.

Forwarding: Both Douyin and Kuaishou support forwarding within the platform. As for forwarding outside the platform, based on Kuaishou’s investment relationship with Tencent and its cooperative relationship with Weibo, Kuaishou’s short videos can be forwarded directly to WeChat and Weibo. Douyin needs to forward by downloading or using a password. This increases the user’s usage cost on the one hand, but on the other hand it also encourages users to develop the habit of socializing within the platform and increase the social attributes of the App. Currently, both Kuaishou and Douyin hope to achieve the socialization of short videos through their own products. On the contrary, although Weishi can be forwarded directly to WeChat and Weibo, it cannot be forwarded with one click within the platform, but rather through copying the link + private message. It can be seen that at least for now, Tencent’s positioning of Weishi is more in its media attributes and tool attributes, and it does not have much intention to build a social platform around Weishi.

Expression of attitude: The expression of attitude function is a new function launched in Weishi version 8.0.0 in 2020. It is similar to the expression of attitude function in Weibo. This function allows users to express their own unique attitudes in various ways. They can also see other users’ attitudes towards the same short video content, and feel whether they have unique opinions or have the same opinions as other users; these are more direct and impactful than text, and can resonate with others.

Short video interaction:

Interaction analysis:

The interactive functions of swiping up, swiping down and pulling down for [Recommendations]/[Featured] of the three apps are relatively consistent, all of which embody the advantage of immersive "lazy operation"; but when browsing videos on personal homepages, Douyin and Weishi can switch adjacent videos by swiping up and down, while Kuaishou needs to exit a single video and reopen a new video each time, which is more cumbersome.

In terms of swiping right, Douyin and Weishi are similar, while Kuaishou has an additional option to switch from the follow page to the function bar page on the left.

In terms of swiping left, Kuaishou is significantly different from Douyin and Weishi. Douyin and Weishi both allow users to directly enter the author's personal homepage by swiping left from the recommendation page, while Kuaishou's left swipe enters the adjacent work matrix, and only after swiping left again can users enter the personal homepage. In my opinion, Kuaishou's design is superior to that of Douyin and Weishi. Considering that the main need of users to enter the homepage is to browse other videos of the author, both entering the personal homepage and browsing the adjacent video matrix can meet their needs. In special cases, especially for collections with continuous plots, Kuaishou's design can find related works in the shortest time. Although Douyin also has a similar collection function, there are two shortcomings - the proportion of coherent works in collections is still very small, and when the collection is opened, the collection page blocks most of the short video pages, resulting in poor user experience.

2) Live broadcast

Live Analysis:

Entrance: The live streaming entrances of Douyin and Weishi are very shallow, which reflects the importance that Douyin and Weishi attach to live streaming. Douyin, in particular, hopes to realize traffic monetization through live streaming rewards and live streaming e-commerce while having an advantage in traffic. Kuaishou’s live streaming traffic and live streaming monetization capabilities have always had an advantage among the three apps. However, why does Kuaishou use a deeper live streaming entrance? Personal analysis is to free up some "space" on the homepage to optimize the short video experience, and hope to show users that we are a platform mainly based on short videos.

Page layout: The page layouts of Douyin, Kuaishou and Weishi live broadcasts are similar, including anchor ID, hourly rankings, audience list, barrage, gifts, etc.

Live streaming content: Douyin and Kuaishou mainly focus on live streaming to sell goods or chat interactions, while Weishi has high-quality game resources such as League of Legends, Peace Elite, and Honor of Kings on the Tencent platform, and its live streaming is often entertainment live streaming content mainly based on game live streaming; in addition, although Weishi also has the function of directing users to the product purchase page through live streaming, the number and quality of related live streaming are obviously inferior to Kuaishou and Douyin.

Interactive functions: The interactive functions of Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcasts are more complete. Compared with Weishi, they have additional functions such as local rankings, sales rankings, backpacks and props, etc., which are more playable than Weishi. The 1-coin gift function of Douyin and Kuaishou is placed in the conspicuous bottom-level navigation bar. On the one hand, it can promote the reward behavior of low-consumption viewers. On the other hand, continuous rewards can trigger special effects, thereby increasing the user's presence in the live broadcast room, enhancing the intimacy between users and anchors, and enhancing the user's sense of belonging. Compared with Kuaishou and Douyin, Weishi has a unique noble membership function, with six levels from knight to emperor. The higher the level, the higher the monthly fee and the greater the privileges. This is similar to the value-added service strategy of other Tencent products. The purpose is to meet users' needs for a sense of presence, superiority and belonging.

2. Content Creation

The core of the scale war among short video apps is still content supply, which is also the starting point for content distribution and commercialization. The creative functions that are simple to operate, interesting and diverse, and meet the personalized needs of the shooter can have a direct driving effect on the user's creative enthusiasm. Content creation can be divided into three core modules according to the process: shooting, editing and publishing.

1) Video shooting

Video shooting analysis:

In general, all three apps have functions such as taking photos, shooting videos, and live streaming. In addition, they also provide special effects including fast and slow speed, beauty, filters, etc., which greatly meet the personalized needs of creators; for novice users or users with weak personalized needs, video templates only require users to import corresponding materials to generate attractive works, which reduces the user's creation cost and threshold and improves the user's creation experience.

Kuaishou’s shooting function is the most playable. Compared with Weishi and Douyin, Kuaishou has unique functions such as photo quick shooting, shooting ratio, and ultra-wide angle. In addition, Kuaishou’s karaoke function is also not available in the other two apps. Kuaishou integrates karaoke, games, and short videos to fully meet users’ needs to kill time.

Douyin’s functions are simple and practical. Although Douyin’s shooting functions are less than those of Kuaishou and Weishi, they are all very practical, with obvious locations, and user operations are smooth.

Compared with Kuaishou and Douyin, Weishi has a unique video red envelope function. Users can make video red envelopes and share them directly with WeChat/QQ friends, but the red envelopes cannot be shared within Weishi. This aspect also shows that Tencent's positioning of Weishi is limited to tools and media attributes, and the layout of short video social networking may be more done in Weishi's video account; at the same time, Weishi's live broadcast function is relatively weak. First of all, Weishi's live broadcast function was launched late, especially in the early stage, it was only open to internet celebrities or KOLs with a certain influence, but not to ordinary users; at present, although Weishi's live broadcast is open to all users who have passed real-name authentication, Weishi live broadcast only has video live broadcast. Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou's voice live broadcast, chat room, screen recording live broadcast, etc., Weishi still has a lot of room for improvement in the diversity of live broadcast.

2) Video Editing

Video editing analysis:

On the short video editing page, all three apps provide basic functions such as music, text, stickers, and special effects.

Douyin does not have a beauty function during the video editing stage. Douyin's beauty function is only limited to the shooting stage. This will prevent users from dynamically adjusting the beauty settings to browse the presented effects during the video editing process. This is not very friendly to video authors who focus on appearance, and they need to make up for it through Jianying or other third-party apps. In addition, Douyin's daily life (visible for 1 day) is also worthy of attention. This dynamic setting, similar to QQ Space/Friends Circle, can not only record life but also protect privacy. This also shows that Douyin has taken another step towards the socialization of short videos.

Compared with Tik Tok and Kuaishou, Weishi not only has smart templates for shooting, but also has a one-click film-producing function for video editing. This function, together with the smart module, aims to reduce the cost of film production as much as possible; especially for novice users, users without personalized needs, and users in the sinking market, such a function can greatly enhance the user experience.

The short video community and editing tools are mutually supportive. An active community can stimulate users' desire to create, and easy-to-use editing tools are the prerequisite for content production. It is worth noting that unlike Douyin which has Jianying and Kuaishou which has Kuaishou, Weishi does not have a corresponding content editing app. Although Miaojian, launched by Tencent in early October 2020, is a short video editing app, it supports WeChat Video Account rather than Weishi; in other words, Weishi and Miaojian are both "cutting and recording" for the WeChat short video ecosystem, and their tool attributes are always higher than their social attributes.

3) Video Release

Video Release Analysis:

All three apps provide basic functions such as adding topics, @friends, location, etc. Even functions that are not available in this module can be found in other modules. For example, Kuaishou’s cover is in the video editing module, and Douyin’s download permissions are set in the Creator Service Center module, etc.

Compared with the other two products, Douyin has the function of adding short video mini-programs, which is no less significant than WeChat or Alipay mini-programs. The entrance to the mini-program after adding is obvious, which is in line with the user's operating habits, and undoubtedly increases the exposure of the short video mounted mini-program, facilitating the popularization and fission of the Douyin mini-program. It can be imagined that the addition of short video mini-programs will play an important role in short video e-commerce, short video marketing, knowledge payment and other scenarios.

In terms of external sharing on the platform, the sharing function is basically the same as when browsing short videos. Whether sharing Douyin short videos to QQ/WeChat friends or Moments, video downloading and local uploading are required; Kuaishou can share to QQ friends and WeChat friends in the form of links and mini-programs respectively, and sharing to Moments also requires video downloading and local uploading operations; only Weishi takes advantage of its own platform and can directly synchronize videos to Moments in the form of videos when publishing.

In terms of content visibility settings, the related functions of Weishi are much simpler than those of Douyin and Kuaishou, and are far behind the dynamic visibility settings of Moments or QQ Space. This once again reflects that Tencent does not pay enough attention to the exploration of Weishi's social attributes.

5. Message Module

Message module analysis:

Messages are one of the important modules for interaction in short video apps. The functional elements of the message interfaces of the three apps are basically the same, including private messages, interactive messages, system notifications, etc.

Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, Weishi did not create a group chat function, but placed the notification permission setting in the same position. Although this allows users to modify the notification permissions at the first time, the click frequency of notification permissions is low, or even one-time. Therefore, replacing the creation of group chat with notification permission settings is more harmful than beneficial.

Kuaishou users can learn about the interactive dynamics of their friends in real time, including likes, following, etc., which is not available on Douyin and Weishi. This function is similar to the "Friends Reading" function of WeChat Books, which can satisfy users' curiosity and enhance the "social interaction among acquaintances" attribute. At the same time, this function also needs to be further optimized, because users may not necessarily follow acquaintances but Internet celebrities. In fact, users do not have much demand for what Internet celebrities follow or who they like, and even such "useless" news dynamics "disturb" users to a certain extent. Therefore, it is recommended to change the premise of dynamic notifications from unilateral following to mutual following, and increase relevant personal privacy settings.

4. E-commerce module

Bringing goods has become one of the cores of short video commercialization. Currently, there are two main ways to bring goods:

• The short video content is related to the product, and users can enter the product details page through the product link attached to the short video;
• Live streaming sales, the real-time interaction between merchants and buyers during live streaming can make the products appear more intuitive and real, reduce the trust cost, and enhance users' willingness to buy.

1) Product purchase

Product purchase analysis:

The purchasing process of the three apps is basically the same: click on the short video product link/live shopping cart → self-built shopping platform product details page/jump to the third-party shopping platform product details page → select the product model → submit the order → pay → shopping is completed.

Compared to Douyin, Kuaishou does not have the collection and shopping cart functions, which makes it impossible for users to accurately search for products that they were interested in but did not directly purchase, which can easily affect consumers' purchasing experience; but considering that the browsing history function has a similar effect to a certain extent, its negative impact can be alleviated.

In terms of my orders, Weishi is very different from Douyin and Kuaishou. The reason is that Weishi's order page can only display order information from the WeChat mini program Penguin Store, and there are no order classification, browsing history, and guess what you like functions on Weishi's order page. If users want to query more detailed order information, they need to jump to the WeChat mini program to query.

2) Self-built stores and third-party e-commerce

Analysis of self-built stores and third-party e-commerce:

In terms of self-built stores, Douyin has Douyin Store and Kuaishou has Kuaishou Store. Although Weishi does not have its own stores on the platform, it is supported by Tencent's Penguin Store. Penguin Store is embedded in the WeChat Mini Program. Users need to jump from Weishi to the WeChat Mini Program when purchasing goods. Therefore, the smooth experience is not as good as Douyin and Kuaishou. Douyin Store enables users to complete transactions within the App, reducing the steps for users to purchase goods and increasing the transaction rate of goods. At the same time, Douyin Store is a "four-end and one store", that is, after merchants open Douyin Stores, they can be managed in a unified manner on ByteDance's four platforms: Toutiao, Douyin, Volcano, and Xigua. These four "ByteDance" platforms all have the function of live streaming with goods. As for Kuaishou, Kuaishou stores are divided into store center and store homepage. The store homepage is similar to the Douyin store homepage, while the store center is similar to the Taobao homepage, with multiple advertising column product tags and full-platform product search function; although Douyin can also conduct full-platform keyword search through product tags on the search page, the product tags are arranged too far back and are not easy to be found, and the diversion effect is worse than Kuaishou.

In terms of third-party e-commerce platforms, starting from October 2020, the shopping cart in Douyin's live broadcast room no longer supports products from third-party platforms, but short videos can still carry third-party linked products. Douyin's "e-commerce closed-loop ambition" has since become clearer; and Kuaishou supports third-party e-commerce platforms for both live broadcasts and short videos. Since Douyin's live broadcasts do not support third parties, Kuaishou has become the choice of more merchants; Weishi's live broadcasts and short videos also support third-party e-commerce platforms, but all transactions are completed by jumping to WeChat's mini-programs. This form is in line with Tencent's overall interests.

Compared with Kuaishou, Douyin has a mini-program ecosystem within the platform; currently, many e-commerce companies such as Xiaomi Mall and Suning.com have settled in. This mini-program e-commerce model, together with Douyin stores and third-party e-commerce traffic, has built Douyin's three-in-one e-commerce development; as the pioneer of mini-programs, Tencent also supports the e-commerce development of Weishi through WeChat mini-programs; Kuaishou is a short video platform that currently does not have a mini-program ecosystem, but according to the latest news, Kuaishou's mini-program has started internal testing in October 2020, and it is believed that it will be officially launched soon.

6. Content Production and Distribution

1. Content Production

In the short video industry chain, the upstream of the industry is content creators, which is the core of the entire industry chain.

According to different production methods, short video content production can be divided into three modes: the UGC mode created by ordinary users, the PUGC mode created by professional users, and the PGC mode produced by specialized institutions.

Source: FORWARD "2019 China Short Video Industry Research Report"

Douyin and Kuaishou are typical short video communities based on UGC, with stronger social attributes; while Weishi is a typical short video community based on PGC, with stronger media attributes.

At present, Douyin and Kuaishou have effectively integrated UGC, PUGC and PGC content on the basis of UGC, which can not only provide rich traffic through PGC content, but also provide a soil for community growth through UGC content.

Weishi pays more attention to PGC content and brand building, attracting a certain number of users through red envelope rewards, variety shows, and popular celebrities; however, PGC content is less replicable and filmable, and lacks consideration of incentives for UGC content production. This situation can easily lead to an unstable "foundation" for Weishi.

UGC is the foundation of the short video community and is indispensable, but compared to UGC, PGC has higher content quality, greater traffic, and stronger monetization capabilities. It is also one of the main focuses of competition among short video platforms.

At present, MCN has become the most important producer of high-quality content on short video platforms. MCN that connects multiple parties will promote the refinement of short video content and promote marketing innovation. According to data from 2019, the number of Douyin MCNs leads the short video market.

Source: Fastdata "2019 China Short Video Industry Development Trend Report"

2. Content Distribution

1) “Centralized” TikTok

After the works posted by creators on Douyin are reviewed by machines and humans, they will be assigned to an initial traffic pool. The platform will determine whether to promote the works to a larger traffic pool based on the user feedback data of the initial traffic pool; and so on, as long as the feedback data of the work is good, the platform will continue to increase the exposure of the work.

Therefore, the videos that finally enter the recommended popular traffic pool must be high-quality videos with a small number and high user experience. These top-quality videos occupy most of the platform's traffic, and the head effect is obvious. The advantage of this mechanism is that the quality of Douyin's [recommended] content is generally high, and popular videos can be produced frequently.

It is worth noting that the remaining mid- and long-tail content has very little exposure, which will to a certain extent aggravate the "rich-poor gap" in the content ecology, is not very friendly to ordinary users, and is not conducive to the development of short video social networking; at the 2020 Douyin Creator Conference, CEO Zhang Nan stated that Douyin's functions and services, content and algorithms should be "people-centered." It can be seen that Douyin has also begun to try to explore private domain traffic centered on "people" on the basis of centralized public domain traffic, which is quite meaningful to move closer to Kuaishou.

Source: Orient Securities "Products and Algorithms: The Ecological Causes of Douyin and Kuaishou"

2) “Decentralized” Kuaishou

Kuaishou's values ​​are "universal fairness", and its "decentralized" traffic distribution feature pays more attention to the fairness of traffic distribution; although a video with good user interaction feedback will be recommended to a larger traffic pool one by one, and finally appear in [Discover] or [Featured], but unlike Douyin, Kuaishou will introduce "Gini coefficient regulation" to control the gap between the rich and the poor in content exposure on the platform within a certain range; therefore, when the popularity of a video reaches a certain threshold, its exposure opportunity will continue to decrease, and the situation where a few top-quality content on Douyin occupy most of the platform's traffic will not occur.

According to Kuaishou's official report, only 30% of Kuaishou's traffic is allocated to top popular content, and the remaining 70% of traffic is allocated to mid- and long-tail content. Such a content ecology gives many mid- and long-tail users an opportunity to express themselves; Kuaishou's social relationship weight in traffic distribution is higher than the content quality weight, which is also reflected in the ranking of user behavior importance. Kuaishou pays more attention to the comment rate, while Douyin pays more attention to the like rate.

The advantage of a decentralized traffic distribution mechanism is that it can significantly increase the participation enthusiasm of ordinary users and strengthen the connection between creators and fans. Its social and inclusive traffic continues to promote the development of short video social platforms for semi-strangers and semi-acquaintances.

The disadvantage of decentralization is that personal image is more important than content, forming a content community with high barriers and not conducive to commercial monetization. In the past two years, Kuaishou has been gradually moving closer to Douyin, both in terms of products and operations, and the proportion of public domain traffic with centralized characteristics has continued to increase.

The most typical case is the 8.0 version updated by Kuaishou in September 2020. One of the three tags on the homepage was given a single-column immersive [Featured], and a bottom navigation bar was added; [Featured] is very close to Douyin's [Recommendation] in terms of content distribution mechanism and page design.

Source: Orient Securities "Products and Algorithms: The Ecological Causes of Douyin and Kuaishou"

3) Micro-videos between Douyin and Kuaishou

As a defensive product of Tencent facing the rise of Douyin and Kuaishou, Weishi's content distribution has never had a clear positioning, or it can be said that it is more like a combination of Douyin and Kuaishou; however, just as Douyin and Kuaishou are gradually getting closer to each other, as the boundaries between user portraits become increasingly blurred, and as the product grows bigger and will want to meet the needs of more users, both decentralized and centralized traffic distribution mechanisms may be reflected in one App.

Compared with the relatively closed short video communities of Douyin and Kuaishou, Tencent has natural social platform traffic support. Tencent has successively used QQ Space and Moments to attract traffic to Weishi, especially in June 2019, when it opened up 30-second video permissions for Moments, which to a great extent promoted users to create content on Weishi and share their works to Moments; therefore, in addition to providing short video content access channels for users on the platform, Weishi will also provide short video access channels for WeChat friends; this also shows that Tencent does not want to make a single Weishi into a short video social platform, but wants to make Weishi + WeChat a Tencent ecosystem with social as the core and short video empowerment.

7. Commercial Monetization

For products, the degree of commercialization is an important indicator for judging the sustainable development prospects of a product, and a good profit prospect is also a necessary prerequisite for obtaining capital support; for content producers, content creation on the platform can obtain exciting business returns, thereby helping the creator ecology become better.

At present, both Douyin and Kuaishou have completed the accumulation of traffic in the early stage and have begun to accelerate the process of commercial monetization; while Weishi is still in the stage of attracting new and promoting vitality, with various red envelope subsidy incentive activities emerging one after another, and there is still a certain distance from Douyin and Kuaishou in terms of traffic monetization. Therefore, this chapter does not analyze Weishi's commercial monetization.

Summarize the current commercial monetization methods in the short video industry, mainly including advertising monetization, e-commerce monetization, live streaming monetization and expansion monetization.

1. Income structure

Due to the different product values, traffic distribution mechanisms and operation methods, Douyin and Kuaishou have different focuss on commercialization models; Douyin, which is characterized by "centralization and heavy operation", pays more attention to marketing and promotion, and has now formed a relatively mature advertising monetization system. According to the report data of Founder Securities, about 80% of Douyin's revenue in 2019 comes from advertising.

On the contrary, although Kuaishou, which has the characteristics of "decentralization and light operation", its advertising monetization capabilities are not as good as Douyin, relying on strong community and private domain traffic, Kuaishou's live broadcast has developed rapidly, and its DAU has exceeded 100 million mark. About 60% of its revenue in 2019 comes from live monetization, including live rewards and live streaming sales.

However, it is worth noting that the difference in revenue structure between Douyin and Kuaishou is narrowing. The current traffic distribution mechanism and operations of both are in rapid changes, and the monetization capabilities under different models are also undergoing major changes; for example, Byte established an e-commerce department as a first-level department, and Douyin's live broadcast rewards and sales GMV in 2020 grew rapidly, with the GMV of the 11.11 Fan Festival alone reaching 18.7 billion yuan; while Kuaishou's advertising revenue in the first half of 2020 was about 7.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 222.5%. It can be seen that Kuaishou has also made efforts in the advertising monetization model.

Source: Founder Securities "DikTok vs. Kuaishou In-depth Review and Preview"

2. Advertising monetization

Douyin advertising is mainly divided into two categories: brand advertising and effect advertising, and according to the specific form of advertising, it can be divided into five business types, including open-screen advertising, information flow advertising, challenge competition, enterprise certification and DOU+; among which information flow advertising is currently the mainstream advertising form of Douyin. According to the research report data of Founder Securities, information flow advertising revenue accounts for about 87% of Douyin's advertising revenue; in addition, Juliang Engine has launched Juliang Star Map to help advertisers connect with experts from platforms such as Douyin and Xigua.

Source: Douyin Commercial Product Manual 2020

Kuaishou launched information flow advertising and quick order reception in 2017, slightly earlier than Douyin, but did not use advertising as an important monetization method; it has accelerated the layout of marketing promotion business since 2018, and launched the Kuaishou marketing platform in October, and was fully upgraded to a magnetic engine a year later.

At present, Kuaishou mainly includes three advertising types. First, it is information flow advertising, topic tag pages, paid promotion and other advertising marketing services based on public domain traffic; secondly, it is private domain traffic advertising services centered on experts, including super fast order reception, creator incentive plans, etc., which can reach users through content + business combination; finally, Kuaishou merchant business, which serves merchants, provides merchants with a foundation for growth and monetization through brand accounts/merchant accounts, helping merchants accumulate private domain traffic.

Source: Magnetic Engine

In addition, in terms of advertising placement, compared with Douyin and Weishi, the most obvious difference between Kuaishou is that there is no open-screen advertisement. The reason may be that considering that open-screen advertisements have a great harm to the user experience; in addition to the traditional advertising monetization for brands or top KOLs, Kuaishou and Weishi have launched DOU+ and Kuaishou vermicelli marketing and promotion functions to content creators respectively to meet the content creators' marketing needs naturally generated by the ecosystem.

3. Live broadcast monetization

In terms of live broadcast, Kuaishou Live was launched in April 2016. As a more realistic and real-time interactive form, live broadcast has natural advantages in Kuaishou platform with strong social interaction; Kuaishou Live reached 170 million in June 2020, and the average number of viewers per live broadcast in the first half of the year was stable at more than 400 people.

In recent years, Kuaishou Live has always implemented a light operation strategy, but with the rapid development of Douyin Live, Kuaishou has also consolidated its business advantages recently by opening guilds, lowering the threshold for guild entry, adjusting the share share ratio, and live streaming traffic subsidies. Especially in terms of live streaming, Douyin still has a big gap with Kuaishou; Douyin Live was launched in October 2017 and started late, and is still in the stage of cultivating user habits. In the first half of 2020, the average number of online users has remained below 100 after reaching its peak during the Spring Festival. In addition to the impact of the Spring Festival and epidemic factors, it is also related to the increase in the number of Douyin live broadcast anchors and the number of live broadcasts since February.

With the increase in the number of anchors and episodes, the gift income of Douyin anchors is also increasing, far away from Kuaishou.

Source: Mangchao Technology's "2020 Live E-commerce Data Report-TikTok VS Kuaishou"

Judging from the proportion of live streaming streaming in August 2020, the sharing regulations of the two platforms are relatively similar, and the platform's share is about 30%-50%.

Since the second quarter of 2020, as competition in the live broadcast industry becomes increasingly fierce, Douyin and Kuaishou have successively increased the share of new recruitment tasks, promoting the continuous increase in the number of anchors and live broadcast sessions, thereby achieving sustainable live broadcast monetization.

Source: 36Kr

4. E-commerce monetization

Unlike the monetization method of advertising and live broadcast services, which uses traffic + user retention as the core logic, the e-commerce monetization model includes many complex areas such as supply, supply chain, and financial payment. It can be said that it is more difficult to develop the e-commerce model of short video platforms than the advertising and live broadcast reward model, and there is also the risk that the three e-commerce giants want to get a piece of the pie; even so, Douyin and Kuaishou are constantly increasing their investment in e-commerce, and both have made breakthrough progress in publicity.

Douyin's live course at e-commerce university said that from January to August 2020, the Douyin e-commerce GMV increased by 6.5 times, of which Douyin store GMV increased by 36.1 times, and the number of Douyin store openings increased by 16.3 times; Kuaishou said that in August 2020, e-commerce orders exceeded 500 million, and the cumulative order volume in the past year was second only to Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, becoming the fourth largest e-commerce industry in the e-commerce industry.

This chapter will compare and analyze the e-commerce monetization model of Douyin and Kuaishou from four aspects: product form, supply chain and infrastructure, user and anchor ecology, and monetization.

1) Product form: First of all, it is the e-commerce entrance. In the early stages of e-commerce development, the product entrances of Douyin and Kuaishou were both mounted through short video links or live shopping carts. Now, Douyin has added product tags to search, which can directly query the price of the product and browse short videos that match the browsing. However, the classification and sorting of product tags is too low, and the general public will ignore it.

Kuaishou concentrates the core functions of the product in Kuaishou Store, and provides product search functions on the entire platform in Kuaishou Store, which looks like the homepage of the Kuaishou version of Taobao; in terms of operation, the two have greatly stimulated user consumption by creating different shopping exclusive activities, including Douyin 11.11 Fan Festival, Kuaishou JD 10 billion subsidies, etc.

2) Supply chain and infrastructure: Whether the e-commerce supply chain is perfect has a huge impact on the quality of the product and user service experience. Therefore, both Douyin and Kuaishou are constantly strengthening the supply chain. From the perspective of the organizational structure of the supply chain, Kuaishou completed the independence of the e-commerce department in 2019, and Douyin established a first-level e-commerce department in 2020, summarizing the scattered commercialized middle-end e-commerce departments, and establishing an independent quality control team in September.

In terms of external cooperation, Kuaishou has established cooperative relationships with JD.com, Youzan, Taobao, etc. Third-party products support e-commerce traffic diversion, especially JD.com can directly complete transactions within Kuaishou; Douyin has reached cooperation with Taobao, JD.com, etc., and Douyin has launched a mini program, and e-commerce such as Xiaomi Mall, Suning.com, Ctrip Travel has settled in, and users can directly complete transactions within the Douyin mini program; but on the basis of cooperation, there will also be competition. Douyin has accelerated the closed-loop process of e-commerce, and live shopping carts no longer support third-party e-commerce, which is a big threat to e-commerce such as Taobao or JD.com.

In addition, the top KOLs of both parties are also important maintainers of the supply chain. For example, Simba of Kuaishou and Luo Yonghao of Douyin have the ability to build their own supply chains; in terms of infrastructure construction, in order to get rid of payment lags and network delays caused by insufficient payment, network and cloud computing, Douyin and Kuaishou have added the construction of infrastructure such as data centers; and in the second half of the year, Douyin also obtained a payment license, which will be an important part of Douyin's creation of closed-loop e-commerce.

3) User and anchor ecology: Judging from the official user portraits, the difference in user consumption capacity between Douyin and Kuaishou is gradually narrowing, which means more competition will focus on user experience improvement, personalized purchase demand satisfaction and repurchase rate; in terms of anchors, Douyin pays more attention to the overall marketing of the platform, with a relatively average traffic flow, focusing on the ranks of 1-5 million fans; while Kuaishou's family advantages are more obvious. For example, family-style anchors represented by Simba firmly grasp the amount of goods sold at the top. The Simba family alone had 13.3 billion in annual sales in 2019. It can be seen that the growth of Kuaishou's e-commerce GMV comes from the family line to a large extent.

4) Monetization: Judging from the monetization methods of Douyin and Kuaishou, the two self-built stores are generally consistent. If the ordinary orders on Douyin are non-selected alliance orders, a technical service fee of 2% or 5% (1% of newcomers joining) will be charged. The selected alliance orders will have an additional selected alliance fee based on the technical service fee; the orders of Kuaishou store will have a technical service fee of 2% or 5%, and newcomers will have a certain service fee reduction plan, but there are certain differences in the method of third-party supply.

In August 2020, Douyin first announced that it would charge a 20% service fee for live streaming external links, and then directly cut off the entrance of the live shopping cart of third-party e-commerce; in terms of third-party e-commerce traffic on Kuaishou platform, for products that do not include promotion commissions, such as products of Youzan, Pinduoduo, and Magic Chop Star Select, 5% of the actual transaction volume is charged as a technical service fee; if products containing promotion commissions, such as products of Taobao Alliance, Youzan and JD.com, about 50% of the technical service fee (the specific proportion depends on the platform) will be collected from the promotion commission of no less than 10%.

It can be seen that compared with third-party e-commerce platforms, self-built Kuaishou stores will bring great benefits to both sales experts and platforms, and can obtain more income for sales experts; for platforms, the closed-loop system of e-commerce + short videos can realize the traffic cycle of its own system, so that it is not controlled by others, and obtain more diverse and more stable income.

5. Expand and monetize

1) Game

As we all know, games have a strong ability to attract money, so games are also a key area for short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou; Kuaishou’s layout in games mainly includes self-developed casual games, agency distribution of moderate and heavy games, game advertising promotion and game live broadcast, etc.; Kuaishou users can reach game content from short videos or live broadcasts, especially live broadcasts have specially opened up game vertical tags; in addition, users can also directly contact [Game] and [Game TV] in the function bar on the left side of Kuaishou.

In the process of accelerating the game layout, Kuaishou also received strong support from Tencent; according to data observations from Qimai Research Institute, the Tencent system (including self-developed, agents, and Aurora plans) embedded in Kuaishou accounted for half of the game center. At the same time, without the restrictions on game copyright, Kuaishou can also broadcast live broadcasts of popular games such as Honor of Kings, Peace Elite, etc.

In terms of Douyin, Douyin game live broadcast and game advertising promotion are similar to Kuaishou, while the entrance of Douyin mini game center is relatively hidden. In addition to the video stream mount game link entry, you need to enter Douyin mini game through the search page or the mini program center. This design is not conducive to the traffic of mini games to a certain extent. This design only considers the scene where users swipe relevant game videos and enter, and lacks consideration for the scene where users actively want to play casual mini games.

2) Knowledge payment

Knowledge payment has become one of the important monetization methods for video content ecosystems such as B station, and short videos are no exception. Douyin and Kuaishou are accelerating the monetization exploration of the knowledge payment track.

In Kuaishou, knowledge payment started early and developed maturely. Kuaishou Classroom ranked first among the top 30 knowledge payment platforms released by Internet Weekly in 2020; in terms of functional layout, Kuaishou has a paid content square and Kuaishou Classroom (also known as learning at home) in the left function bar, and a question-and-answer area in the square, as well as recording and live content such as courses, games, education, and vocational education. Users can choose courses that suit them according to their grades in Kuaishou Classroom. According to Kuaishou official data, in the first half of 2020, Kuaishou Education Ecological Teachers exceeded 55,000, covering more than 16.09 million students, and the cumulative study time of Kuaishou paid courses exceeded 3.39 million.

In terms of Douyin, in February 2020, the Douyin window launched a paid column. After the creators upload the courses to the paid column, they can also post them to Toutiao, Xigua Video and other platforms to achieve multi-terminal monetization at the same time; from the entrance point of view, users can directly purchase paid knowledge products in the window of knowledge paid merchants and experience the course content in my orders; from the perspective of knowledge ecology, at the 2019 DOU Zhi Creator Conference, Douyin announced that it has become China's largest knowledge-inclusive platform. As of December 2019, the number of knowledge content creators with more than 10,000 fans has exceeded 74,000, and a total of 19.85 million high-quality knowledge short videos have been created.

8. Summary and Suggestions

1. Competitive product analysis summary

1) Product Values: At the beginning, the target users of Douyin and Weishi were both trendy and fashionable young groups. Whether it emphasized "beautiful" or "more interesting", Douyin and Weishi both had "trendy and cool" labels such as youth, music, and fashion, and this label also required more attention to "high-quality", and led to the "centralization" characteristic of traffic being heavily tilted towards high-quality content; especially in the early days of Weishi, it was a typical short video platform for PGC development model, and the UGC atmosphere was not as good as Douyin and Kuaishou.

Since its establishment, Kuaishou's product values ​​have always been "fair and universal", "valued everyone" and so on, so the products appear more "real", more down-to-earth", and more friendly to non-head creators; relatively speaking, Kuaishou pays more attention to the connection between people, while Weishi and Douyin pays more attention to the connection between content and people; therefore, in terms of social attributes, Kuaishou>Douyin>Weishi, and in terms of media attributes, Weishi>Douyin>Kuaishou.

2) Product design: Whether it is the functional framework or the UI interface, Douyin is the most concise and clean, making it easier for users to focus on the video content itself.

The functional framework of Kuaishou is complex, and some interactive experiences are not as good as those of Douyin and Weishi, but the functions are the widest and comprehensive of the three, which can meet the needs of different types of users in different scenarios.

Weishi is also very simple in the UI interface and functional framework, second only to Douyin. However, because Weishi is still in the stage of attracting new products to promote vitality, its commercial functions are much less than those of Douyin and Kuaishou.

3) Product operation: Douyin's rapid development is inseparable from its own heavy operation characteristics. It was recognized in the early days by sponsoring "China Has Hip-Hop" and "Happy Camp". It gained great popularity by sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala in 2019; in addition, Douyin accelerated the accumulation of Douyin's traffic by setting up special challenges, hot lists, etc.

Weishi also attaches great importance to operations in its own development. Tencent even used a large-scale traffic platform such as WeChat/QQ to attract traffic. However, in the early days, Weishi's PGC development model was not very friendly to UGC users, which led to the fact that the content ecosystem could not be established, and the role of operations could naturally not be reflected to the greatest extent.

Kuaishou was an "Buddhist" operation in the early stage, which had little interference to content consumers and content creators. However, as the platform expanded, competition with Douyin became increasingly fierce. Kuaishou also increased the platform's operation and the effect was obvious. For example, shortly after sponsoring the top IP of the 2020 Spring Festival Gala, Kuaishou successfully completed the K3 goal.

4) Commercialization: Douyin's "centralized" traffic distribution mechanism makes Douyin more suitable for platform-led monetization methods, such as advertising promotion; Kuaishou's "non-centralized" traffic distribution mechanism makes Kuaishou more suitable for expert-led monetization methods, such as live broadcast rewards and sales; as product homogeneity intensifies, the commercial monetization methods of the two are also diversifying. At present, Douyin's live broadcast reward revenue has exceeded Kuaishou, and Kuaishou's advertising revenue ratio has also grown rapidly.

Douyin and Kuaishou are constantly increasing their investment in e-commerce, and their own small stores reflect the intention of establishing closed-loop e-commerce to realize internal traffic circulation; in addition, both have also explored effective monetization methods in the fields of games, knowledge payment, etc. Although Weishi's monetization methods also include advertising, live broadcast rewards and e-commerce, the monetization scale is relatively small since its own traffic accumulation is far less than that of Kuaishou and Douyin.

5) Future Outlook: At present, whether it is Douyin downward or Kuaishou upward, users are becoming saturated. The leader in the short video industry will still be a showdown between Douyin and Kuaishou in the future. Both have completed the early traffic accumulation and laid out multiple tracks in commercialization; whether it is casual games, knowledge payment or closed-loop e-commerce, Douyin and Kuaishou have challenged the traditional Internet industry in different fields in a very short time.

On the one hand, such "wild growth" can bring diversified traffic and monetization opportunities to the product, and on the other hand, it may also bring many hidden dangers, including falling into a melee in multiple fields, a reduction in its own core competitiveness, and a policy impact. In addition, with the growth of domestic users, overseas fields have also become the focus of short video competition, but after experiencing the TikTok storm in 2020, the layout of the two overseas will be more cautious.

In terms of new technologies, with the popularization of 5G's business, problems such as network latency and high average traffic costs will be gradually overcome, and technologies such as AR and VR will further stimulate the development potential of short videos.

Weishi's future development will face dual external and internal pressures, which are caused by the suppression of Douyin and Kuaishou's top apps, as well as the competition among second-tier apps such as Haokan Video.

As Tencent’s strategic defensive product, Weishi often takes the path of imitating Douyin and Kuaishou and does not have its own differentiated competitiveness; therefore, although there is traffic from WeChat and QQ, once the user experience is not as good as Douyin and Kuaishou, it will soon lose users; internal pressure comes from WeChat’s video account, and Tencent’s usual horse racing mechanism is reflected in the short video field, which is to take out both Weishi and video account, and the winner takes all, and the loser leaves the game.

In June 2020, the DAU of Video Account exceeded 200 million, far higher than Weishi; compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, Video Account relies on WeChat's strong social attributes and has differentiated core competitiveness; therefore, Weishi lags behind Video Account in terms of competitiveness and the current DAU scale.

It can be foreseen that under the horse racing mechanism, once the video account becomes completely "popular", Weishi may be strategically abandoned again.

2. Functional improvement suggestions

Finally, based on this competitive product analysis report, some improvement suggestions are put forward for some functions of the three products.

Author: ~

Source: ~