Why doesn’t Tik Tok have “rewards”?

I have been addicted to TikTok recently and cannot extricate myself. I have to watch it every night before going to bed.

One time when I was scrolling through TikTok, an idea suddenly occurred to me: why doesn’t TikTok have a reward function?

With the reward function, whenever I see a short video I like, I can use rewards to express my love for the work. Authors will also be motivated to create more high-quality works, and as a platform, Douyin can also take a commission from it and increase platform revenue.

In this way, users, authors and platforms all benefit, and there seems to be no reason to reject such a demand.

Let’s take a look at other products. Rewards are almost standard for all content platforms.

WeChat public accounts, Weibo, Zhihu, and Jianshu all have reward functions, and rewards are of great significance to these creators.

This is because rewards are an important means for them to monetize their content, and some top creators can earn tens of thousands in rewards with just one article.

There is no doubt that Douyin is also a content platform, and Douyin's creators also have a strong demand for monetization, so why doesn't Douyin launch a reward function?

If this is an interview question, how should you answer it to demonstrate your good thinking depth and professionalism, and win the favor of the interviewer?

1. The underlying logic of rewarding

First of all, we need to think about a question from the perspective of an ordinary user: Under what circumstances will users give rewards to others?

You may think that if users like a work, they will naturally give rewards.

But things may not be that simple.

It is true that user rewards certainly show their recognition and love for the work, but the view that if users like a work, they will naturally reward it is a bit too self-evident and cannot stand up to scrutiny.

We have all seen many interesting short videos on Douyin. There is no doubt that we like these short videos, but do we have the urge to reward them? I believe that the vast majority of people do not have the urge to give rewards.

Because if we just like a short video, we can click the "Like" button, collect it, forward it, and comment on it, as shown in the picture below.

In terms of product functions, these buttons are enough for us to fully express our love for the work, and there is no need to spend money on rewards.

So under what circumstances will users give rewards?

I think there are actually two user scenarios for rewarding: one is rewarding people, and the other is rewarding content.

Take the live broadcast we are most familiar with as an example. Live broadcast rewards are already very common and everyone is familiar with them. A slightly famous anchor can earn several thousand yuan in one night by relying on rewards.

But I don’t know if you have noticed that the amount of rewards users give to the anchor depends largely on the anchor’s fame and aura.

As long as a host is famous enough and is an IP, he will receive a lot of tips from fans even if he doesn’t say anything valuable during the live broadcast.

In this case, the user's reward is actually to the anchor himself, or more precisely, to the personal IP created by the anchor.

For example, the first live broadcast of top internet celebrity Luo Yonghao to sell goods received more than 30 million tips from users, totaling more than 3 million RMB.

When fans give rewards to the anchor, they will receive real-time thanks from the anchor. Compared with those fans who do not give rewards, they will gain an extra sense of honor and superiority. This is the fundamental logic of rewarding IP.

In addition to live broadcast rewards, you can also give rewards on content platforms such as WeChat public accounts and Zhihu. If you are not good-looking enough and don’t have any talent that can appear on camera, then just focus on creating good content.

Whether it is a video or an article, as long as your content is good enough and can arouse readers' emotions, or the content is rich in information and readers can gain something after reading it, users will also give rewards out of recognition of the content.

In this case, what users reward is the content.

Of course, in actual scenarios, "people" and "content" do not exist in isolation, but are integrated with each other.

If a person can continuously output high-quality content, he will gradually develop his own IP. Similarly, if a host can only chat with users and does not have any outstanding talents to support him, his IP will disappear sooner or later.

But in the final analysis, the moment a user presses the “reward” button, he is either paying for your IP or your content.

This is the user scenario for the reward function.

2. Why is there no reward on Douyin?

Back to the question at the beginning of the article, why is there no reward on Douyin?

From the above analysis, we can know two scenarios of user rewards - "rewarding for people" and "rewarding for content". The reason why Douyin does not have rewards is very simple, that is, these two scenarios cannot be found on the Douyin product.

First of all, from the IP perspective, short video platforms are different from live broadcasts. Live broadcast platforms are dominated by anchors, and most of the users who watch live broadcasts are attracted by the anchors and are considered fans of the anchors.

It doesn't seem strange for the anchor to ask for tips from fans. Short video platforms are content-based, and the purpose of users opening Douyin is very simple, which is to browse various fun and interesting short videos to kill time.

In this case, it is difficult for users to be called fans of a short video creator.

Therefore, if the creator asks for appreciation from users through short videos in this situation, this is likely to arouse user disgust, and in the end not only will he not be rewarded, he may even be complained by users.

In addition, Douyin’s powerful recommendation algorithm is also restricting the IPization of creators.

As we all know, Douyin's content distribution relies heavily on recommendation algorithms rather than social relationship distribution.

This means that Douyin is constantly recommending new content and new creators to users, while IP-based rewards are generally based on long-term attention or understanding of a certain creator.

Therefore, based on the above points, it is difficult for most creators to build their own fan relationships on Douyin, and the user scenario of "rewarding others" does not work on Douyin.

The Douyin ecosystem has actually formed a complete traffic operation logic.

For creators on Douyin, short videos are just a means of attracting traffic. After the traffic is attracted, they can realize traffic sedimentation and monetization through advertisements, Douyin live broadcasts or product showcases.

Therefore, from the perspective of product functional positioning, there is no need to add rewards to the short video segment. After all, short videos are just a way to attract traffic for creators. As for the subsequent monetization of traffic, there are already quite mature means.

Finally, from the perspective of content, most of the short videos on Douyin are entertaining and funny content, and users watch Douyin to kill time. It is naturally difficult for entertaining content to arouse users' willingness to reward.

In addition, the short videos on Douyin are also short, with most of them being less than one minute in length.

The short video length means that Douyin can only bring sensory stimulation to users, but cannot convey more valuable information to users like the long videos on Bilibili. Therefore, the user scenario of rewarding content does not exist in Douyin.

at last

In fact, as early as 2017, ByteDance's short video app Huoshan Video briefly launched a reward function. Through this function, users can reward their favorite short videos with "flames", and the "flames" can be exchanged for cash.

Just over a month later, this feature was hastily taken offline. To this day, although rewarding is a standard feature on other content platforms, it has not become popular in the short video field.

I personally think that the root cause is that short video apps like Tik Tok do not provide the soil for "rewards".

Even if a reward function is launched, due to the strong recommendation algorithm of short videos, the low user stickiness and the entertaining nature of the content, it will be difficult to achieve good results like live streaming or other content platforms.

Author: Su Tanbin

Source: Su Tanbin