A 10,000-word article sorting out the product strategy of TikTok social

On Douyin, you can watch short videos for entertainment, learn about current affairs through major news media accounts and trending search lists, see the lives shared by relatives and friends, buy things on the short video and live shopping channels, and there is even a recommended list of nearby food, drink and entertainment.

Yes, Tik Tok is becoming more and more diverse.

As a social product manager, I am very curious about how a content platform can be embedded in social media. Therefore, we systematically sorted out the specific product strategies of Douyin social network, and also listed some social product strategies that Douyin may try.

This article is organized as follows:

1. Why does Tik Tok want to be a social network?
2. What kind of social networking does Tik Tok want to do?
3. What kind of social networking does Tik Tok do now?
4. Perhaps there are other strategies that Tik Tok can try.

1. The social value of Tik Tok

When we heard that TikTok is doing social networking, the first thing that comes to mind is that a product will most likely want to do social networking after it becomes big, because the cost of migrating the relationship chain is high, the usage demand is high, and the user stickiness is good. Some also say that Douyin’s social networking is to resist the threats from WeChat Video Account, Kuaishou and Bilibili. These are actually all correct, but they don’t have enough depth.

When I understand the social value of Douyin, I mainly understand it from the perspective of Douyin's basic foundation, that is, the content.

Tik Tok is a social networking app, and social recommendations can serve as a supplement to algorithm recommendations, allowing the lives recorded by most ordinary people like me to be seen and paid attention to, thereby attracting more users, breaking through the growth bottleneck, and moving one step further towards the top of the national-level app.

Tik Tok’s social aspect was developed on the basis of entertainment.

From the user's perspective, Douyin has various short video contents such as comedy, parenting, workplace, psychology, news facts, etc. It is a window to look outward, through which one can understand the bigger world.

On the other hand, Tik Tok’s video shooting function is very powerful. After using it, you can see a different self, maybe what you would look like when you were three years old, maybe what you would look like in a red dress, or maybe what you would look like as another gender in a parallel universe. It’s magical, and I can’t help but post it to share with everyone.

As an ordinary person, I posted videos on TikTok hoping to be seen and recognized. If my video enters the public domain content pool, compared to those PGC contents that have been produced with a lot of thought, it will not be exciting, lack creativity, and be less interesting. After watching it, people will feel dull and fail to secrete dopamine. They may even wonder why they should spend time watching these things.

If there are many "me" contents in the public domain content pool, it may be considered as a lack of high-quality content, and users will gradually be lost.

As for me, my content is not liked by everyone, it doesn’t get any interaction, and I don’t feel seen. Then according to TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, my content will be seen by fewer and fewer people. In the long run, my enthusiasm for creation will decrease, and I will gradually stop submitting content.

What should I do then? Do semi-acquaintance social networking and use social relationships to enhance my content.

That is to say, I push my videos to my relatives and neighbors to watch. Although the content is not that exciting, it gets interactions and attention such as likes and comments because of the blessing of social relationships.

The social circle of Tik Tok is relatively open. Not only friends can interact. The distribution of content recommended by friends is much larger than that of friends, which can better meet the needs of being noticed by others. For example, my brother-in-law can get nearly 100 likes for a Tik Tok video he posts, which is much more than what I get for a WeChat Moments video.

From the perspective of product operation, the supply and demand chain of Douyin's content production and consumption is originally one: PGC produces high-quality content, and high-quality content is consumed in large quantities through algorithm recommendation, which in turn promotes the production of more high-quality PGC content. The threshold for creating videos that can be remembered and liked by people is gradually getting higher, and ordinary people cannot participate.

Now, a new content production and consumption supply and demand chain has emerged because of social networking: ordinary people record and share videos of their lives, which are consumed and followed by semi-acquaintances because of the blessing of social relationships, so that more people are willing to join in the creation and produce more consumable content.

At the same time, the accumulation of social relationships will attract more people around you to come to Douyin to follow the trend or have a conversation, and interact with friends in the relationship chain. In this way, relying on social interaction, we can drive the growth of the user base and increase activity, making the platform's development more sustainable.

So I think it makes sense for Tik Tok to be a social network targeting semi-acquaintances. By the way, I have seen some people think that Douyin should do stranger social networking. I myself do stranger social networking and I think Douyin is not suitable for stranger social networking.

Mainly because of the current user scale of Douyin, the user age distribution structure is dispersed, and a considerable number of users have no desire to establish relationships or interact and chat with strangers.

2. The social direction of Tik Tok

Some people say that it is difficult to engage in social networking on TikTok because "algorithm recommendations + high-quality content" cause people to focus on the video content. Even if they add friends, they don't have time to chat with each other.

Does socializing necessarily mean chatting? The relationships between people can be divided into different levels of depth: close relationship > good friend > light acquaintance > stranger. The corresponding social methods are also divided into light and heavy. Likes are lighter than comments, comments are lighter than private messages, and private chats are lighter than instant voice or video.

Is chatting necessary for socializing? Chatting is a must in stranger social networking, because continuous chat conversations can speed up mutual understanding and promote the upgrading of relationships between strangers. This is the user value of stranger social products.

However, if Tik Tok is used for semi-acquaintance social networking and uses social relationships to enhance content, then interactions based on likes, comments, and sharing of video dynamics are more important than chatting.

This does not mean that we will not chat. The improvement of chat tools can reduce the need for users to switch to WeChat, allowing users to complete the social loop on Douyin, which is very beneficial to increasing the length of time users stay.

Some people also say that it is difficult to use Douyin for social networking because the content of Douyin is too entertaining. People use Douyin for relaxation and entertainment. If they need to contact others, they are still used to using WeChat.

Can WeChat meet all communication needs? Communication needs are divided into different scenarios. Although everyone is used to using WeChat, office software such as DingTalk and Feishu have appeared after WeChat. This is because the initial communication path of WeChat's communication scenario is long (you have to add friends first), it is inconvenient to distinguish between close and distant contacts in the address book assets (you don't need to add some people as friends if you only have brief communication with them), and the content of multi-person collaboration cannot be accumulated, etc., which does not conform to the scenario of office communication software.

Similarly, Douyin is a social platform in an entertainment context. In addition to daily communication, you may want to share an interesting video with friends, make some achievements or encounter a scene that inspires you and want to share a video, introduce interesting products, stores, and places to friends, etc. These needs can be met in a closed loop in the Douyin social context, without the need to switch back and forth between multiple products.

Moreover, the threshold for making videos on Douyin is low, the special effects are interesting, the video publishing path is shorter, and there is no need for cumbersome two-way verification when adding friends.

In summary, Douyin’s social networking function is not intended to replace the communication function of WeChat, but rather it hopes to enhance the content value of ordinary people’s video updates through semi-acquaintance social interactions, so that ordinary people can also get attention. However, social communication in entertainment scenarios is in line with the content attributes of Douyin, and requires improved communication tools to complete the social closed loop.

Therefore, Douyin social networking has three major directions:

First, we need to start with discovery and attention, forming a relationship chain of acquaintances and semi-acquaintances, making social recommendations more accurate and social interactions more frequent because of the relationship chain.

Second, it is necessary to guide light interactions such as likes, comments, and sharing of videos among relationship chains.

Third, we need to improve communication tools to close the social loop, promote chat and dialogue, and consolidate users’ social assets.

3. Tik Tok’s Social Strategy

When developing stranger social products, one cannot avoid building social links within the product.

The core user value of stranger social networking is to build social relationships, but for two strangers to go from discovery to relationship building, a link needs to be guided: first discover his/her existence in a certain scene, then try to send social signals to him/her, if the other party responds to positive social signals, the two parties begin to exchange information, and day by day they get to know each other better, and the relationship is upgraded and developed into a deeper relationship than that of strangers.

However, if the other party responds to negative social signals, or disagreements arise during the information exchange process, there will be no subsequent relationship development.

In short, discovery, ice-breaking, interaction, relationship sedimentation, and relationship expansion form a complete social chain. After sorting out, it was found that Douyin’s semi-acquaintance social interaction can also be analyzed according to this social chain. To clarify, this review is based on the iOS TikTok version 19.2.0.

1. Discovery

Douyin’s social discovery methods include friend recommendations, shaking, third-party sharing, QR code scanning, and face-to-face and social interactive message discovery. Among them, friend recommendation method has the most penetration and will be highlighted here. Scanning QR codes and face-to-face communication are mainly for the convenience of adding friends offline. They are quite common and I won’t elaborate on them.

(1) Recommendation by friends

The basic logic of Douyin's friend recommendation is to recommend people you may know based on your address book, likes and comments interaction behavior, profile page information, geographic location, fans, following and other information.

The friend recommendation entrance mainly covers short video scenarios and personal homepages, including: adding a friend's recommendation list on the main profile page, social recommendations in short videos recommended on the homepage, social cards in friends' video dynamics, and "You may be interested" recommendations after clicking to follow the guest homepage.

① Add a friend recommendation list to the main profile page

Users will see a list of "Friend Recommendations" when they enter from the "Add Friends" entrance on their homepage. The content of the recommendation list mainly displays the recommended person's avatar, nickname and connection with you. For example, he and you have two common follows, namely, someone else and someone else, and he and you have two common contacts, namely, xx and xx.

At the same time, the entrance to this recommendation list will also be placed in other relevant places. For example, there is a "Discover Friends" entrance at the bottom of the fan list, and when you enter it, you will see the friend recommendation list.

There is a detail in the contact with you. If the other party has opened a private account (only fans can view the works, and following requires an application) or the other party's follow and fan list settings are private, then the recommended list will not show who your common related contacts are with him. Instead, it will be replaced by a vague message "Have 2 common followers" or "Have 2 common contacts", which represents respect for user privacy.

② Social recommendations in short videos recommended on the homepage

Open TikTok and go to the short video stream in the recommended tab on the homepage. While watching short videos, you can also see the text description associated with you and the creator, as well as a button to "follow" the creator with one click. For many people, Tik Tok is a form of entertainment. Their attention is more focused on the short video streams, and they rarely even switch to other bottom tabs.

Integrate friend recommendations into short videos, and push friend recommendations to short video users without disrupting the user's short video viewing experience.

③ Social cards in friends’ video feeds

When switching videos in the Friends tab, friend recommendations on social cards will appear. In order to make every person recommended visible, only one person is displayed at a time, highlighting this person's profile picture, nickname, connection with you, his or her recent works, as well as personal information such as gender, age, region, school, etc., to increase recognition and attractiveness.

For social cards, you can "follow" and "change". You can also click the "x" in the upper right corner to call up a feedback pop-up window, in which you can give feedback to the algorithm such as "not interested" or "reduce recommendations". You can also see a text explanation of "why you see the recommendation".

Compared with Kuaishou's limited "Follow" and "Change Batch" operations, it can be seen that Douyin attaches great importance to user experience and is worried that users will be disturbed. By swiping up and down, you can switch back to the original short video from the social card and easily return to the main scene of the short video.

④ Recommendations after clicking on the guest page

After clicking "Follow" on the Ketai homepage, a friend recommendation module of "You may be interested" will immediately appear. Swipe left or right to view more. This type of attention guidance focuses on the timing of recommendation. When the user has actively triggered the desire to follow, the recommendation is natural and less intrusive.

(2) Shake to find out

Shake is similar to WeChat's Shake function, which is full of "randomness" to find people who do the same simple action as you at the same time. Judging from the action results, the usage rate of Shake may not be as high as that of Shake, and there are many cases where no person is matched after 30 seconds.

I guess it’s because WeChat is a communication tool, and there isn’t always someone to chat with you when you open WeChat, so you look for strangers nearby to chat with. But Tik Tok has super strong content attributes, with short videos one after another, you will not feel like you have any free time or need to find someone to chat with.

(3) Sharing findings with third parties

After WeChat blocked TikTok, to share personal homepages and videos with WeChat friends, you need to copy the password and share it. The recipient then copies the password and opens TikTok, and you will see a pop-up window that can jump. Click it to see the corresponding video and personal homepage.

Compared with directly sharing homepage or video links, this sharing development method has a longer sharing path and will reduce the recipient's willingness to open it, but this is a helpless move.

(4) Social interaction message discovery

In the message list of the Message tab, there are several message entries related to social interactions. The "Interactive Message" entrance will display a list of message notifications, including message notifications of interactions such as likes, comments, and homepage visitors. The "Fans" entry shows the people who have followed you recently.

The "Request Update" entrance is a list of messages from people on your homepage urging you to update your work. These social-related messages display the interacting person’s avatar, name, and interaction description, making it easier to follow and respond.

The discovery of these interaction lists is equivalent to someone taking the lead in throwing out social signals to you during the social process, and you reciprocate by responding to his interaction. As the two sides interact more often, their intimacy gradually increases, and the possibility of a solid relationship gradually increases.

However, Douyin’s interactive messages are a secondary entrance, requiring users to click three times before they can respond. In the social discovery method, responding to other people's interactions is very likely to form a two-way relationship, so you can consider strengthening it.

The above social discovery methods of Douyin include the onlineization of offline relationships (adding friends face to face, scanning QR codes), the migration of existing relationships (third-party sharing, address book authorization), social push of interactive lists, and Douyin's powerful recommendation algorithm, which meet the needs of establishing social relationship networks of acquaintances and semi-acquaintances in different scenarios.

2. Add friends to convert

There are two types of relationships on Tik Tok: followers/fans and friends. Following/Fans is a one-way relationship. The need for following is to follow dynamics or track content. It is mostly used in user relationship chains of community content, live broadcasts, social media and other product forms. Friendship is a two-way relationship that requires two-way recognition. Adding friends is for direct communication, which is the focus of the relationship chain guided by social products.

Generally, one-way relationships in social products can gradually be upgraded to two-way relationships, which means that people who follow each other become friends. The friend relationship on Douyin not only follows mutual following, but also clicks on following from the "Add Friends" entrance. Although it is a one-way following, it also makes you friends. It is speculated that this may be to reduce the difficulty of adding friends and enrich the dynamics of the "Friends" tab.

The following mainly discusses the product strategies that Tik Tok has adopted to promote the achievement of attention/puns.

(1) Increase the number of entries to follow

Each social discovery method we have sorted out earlier, whether it is recommendations in personal homepages and short videos, discoveries from interactive lists, or discoveries through Shake, all belong to the entry point for increasing "attention". In addition, there are 2 follow-up guides in the private message pages.

The first one: When sharing a personal profile in a private message, no matter whether you are the sharer or the recipient, if the person you are sharing with is not a follower/fan of you, the "Follow/Follow Back" button will be displayed. Second: If you are not friends with the other party on the private message page, a follow-up guide will appear at the bottom of the interface, and you must click to respond before it disappears.

(2) Emphasize the “Follow/Follow Each Other” button at the UI level

Interaction guidance at the UI level generally emphasizes spatial position, color, dynamics, etc. The “Follow/Follow Back” buttons on all TikTok pages are highlighted in red, and the “Follow/Follow Back” buttons are enlarged. Such as the "Follow/Reply" button on the guest's personal profile page, visitor list, fan list, short video, social card and other pages.

(3) Add a red dot to the "Add Friend" entry

Red dots and bubbles are common entry reminder strategies. The "Add Friends" entrance on Douyin's own homepage uses a red dot strategy. It is speculated that when a new user is added to the recommendation list, or when an existing recommended user has a change of "following you", the red dot will be triggered. The red dot will disappear only when you click in to check the message.

(4) Guide users to add personal information tags

In stranger social networking, it is common to ask users to add photos, gender, birthday, city, school or occupation, and authorized geographic location, because this information represents the user's basic social portrait, is the first impression when you first meet, and will directly affect whether you are interested in getting to know this person.

Douyin also allows users to add personal information tags such as gender, birthday, location, and school to their personal homepages, and will use them as one of the content modules displayed for the other party when making social recommendations. It hopes to enrich the social portrait of the recommender through these personal information tags and increase the possibility of following/returning.

(5) Emphasize fan messages to guide followers to return the favor <br />The interactive message list on Douyin includes a variety of interactive information such as others’ likes and comments on you, others’ visits to your homepage, and others’ replies to your comments. However, the “others’ attention to you” is separated into a separate “fans” entry in order to highlight your fans and guide you to return the favor.

Relatively speaking, guiding the formation of a two-way relationship on the basis of an already formed one-way relationship shortens the path and increases the possibilities.

(6) Improving the accuracy of recommendations

Strengthening the recommendation algorithm and making friend recommendations more accurate is a product strategy that is not directly visible to users on the front end, but is very helpful in improving the conversion rate of adding friends.

When I was talking to my cousin about TikTok social networking, she mentioned, "I don't know him, why should I follow him?", so it is helpful to recommend acquaintances or semi-acquaintances as much as possible to establish relationships.

Of course, Douyin has a "Remove" button in all friend recommendations. Once clicked, the user will not be recommended to you. In addition to reducing interruptions, it can also be regarded as optimizing the algorithm strategy for friend recommendations.

3. Interaction

The interactions mentioned in this section mainly include light interactions such as liking, commenting and sharing. As for chat conversations, they will be sorted out in the next section. The strategy of Douyin’s light interactive product can be sorted out from three aspects: guidance on likes, comments and sharing, interactive message notifications, and notification permission guidance.

(1) Like, comment and share guidance

Douyin’s likes, comments, and sharing interactions are mainly based on short videos, and the likes, comments, and sharing guidance strategies are all in the short video scenarios.

Like: New users may encounter a small bubble in the short video scene with the guidance of "Double-click to try to like". Then double-click anywhere on the screen to click "like" and a red heart will appear. Clicking "like" repeatedly will also cause many small red hearts to appear. In order to remind users not to forget to like the video while watching it, the like icon on the right side of the screen will breathe, dynamically attracting attention.

Comments: Similar to the content square, a comment guide will strategically appear at the bottom of your friend’s short video. In addition to the input box, your own avatar and quick expressions will be displayed here to attract attention while guiding you to comment quickly and conveniently. At the same time, if the number of comments on a short video reaches a certain proportion, the comment icon will become a dynamic icon representing popularity to attract attention.

Sharing: In order to guide users to share short videos with others, the original sharing icon will be strategically changed to a WeChat icon or a friend's avatar and will shrink and enlarge. At the same time, long pressing the short video will bring up a long sharing list, listing the users you have interacted with recently, allowing one-click sharing.

(2) Interactive message notification

After guiding users to interact with you by liking, commenting, and sharing, you need to find a way to ensure that the other party receives your messages as soon as possible. This way, you can exchange more information and build and consolidate relationships. Therefore, interactive message notifications are also a very important product strategy in the social interaction link.

Tik Tok has generated interactive message notifications, which are implemented through push bars, unread message digital bubbles, and notification lists.

The push bar includes internal push and external push. The internal push bar is usually the message bar at the top of the interface, notifying you that you have received attention, comments, and other interactions from your friends. Click to jump to the corresponding message scene to respond.

The digital bubbles of unread messages will also include internal and external ones. The outermost layer of the internal unread message digital bubbles appears on the message tab. Click to enter the message list. There is an exclusive interactive message entrance in the message list. You can see notification messages such as friends' likes, homepage visitors, etc., and click to respond quickly.

In addition to message notifications of interactions that have occurred, the product will also guide behaviors at certain times to actively trigger interaction notifications. For example, when you post a short video to support @someone, after uploading the video, a floating window will appear to guide you to share it with friends.

(3) Enable notification permission guidance

In order to increase the frequency of active users, Douyin has launched strategies to guide users to open notification permissions in various scenarios. These guidance strategies can be divided based on the triggering timing and implementation method.

The main implementation method is pop-up windows, which appear in the bottom half of the screen or in the middle, as well as floating layers in chat scenes.

The triggering timing and accompanying copy are: when viewing interactive messages, turn on notifications to be the first to see friends' likes and comments; when posting videos, turn on notifications to be the first to see friends' likes, comments and attention messages; when posting videos, turn on notifications to be the first to see videos posted by friends; when friends send private messages or comment on you, turn on notifications to receive notifications; when chatting, turn on notifications to be the first to know that friends have sent you messages.

4. Dialogue

Chatting is a more important way of interaction than likes and comments. Although Douyin’s social function is not intended to replace WeChat’s communication function, the chat function allows users to complete a social loop in Douyin. Below we will try to sort out the chat function of Douyin, the chat entry guidance, the main scene IM function and other aspects.

(1) Chat function

Tik Tok’s chat functions are relatively complete, including sending text messages and voice messages, photos, camera shooting, emoticons, voice or video calls, sharing my favorite videos, red envelopes, sending geographic location, etc. There are a few details to explain:

Instant conversation: Douyin directly displays voice calls and video calls in the chat window. It is speculated that this is to highlight that Douyin can also serve as an instant conversation communication function.

Quick greeting guidance: When you open the chat window, you will see the quick greeting emoticons and guiding words pushed by Douyin. This is a commonly used function for stranger social interaction. The quick opening remarks and quick emoticons make the first sentence of the conversation faster.

Emoticons: Emoticons are an essential part of the chat function. They not only add fun to the chat, but also can express emotions better than words. In addition to theme emoticons and GIF emoticons, Tik Tok's emoticon package also adds DIY selfie emoticons and full-screen emoticons, making the emoticon package function even cooler.

More ways to interact: Douyin has also added two-person interaction methods in chat scenes, such as watching videos and singing together.

(2) Chat Guidance

As the chat function gradually improves, we need to consider how to guide relevant users to the chat scene. For the chat window, Douyin has implemented many guiding strategies.

Message tab: First of all, the biggest change is that there is an independent message tab page. In this tab page, you can see the chat list of all friends. There is a row of friend avatars at the top of the page and their online status will be indicated. They are arranged according to the time of last contact. It supports left and right swiping, making it convenient to re-initiate a conversation with friends you have recently chatted with.

Internal push: The push bar will also be used in the chat guide. In the short video scene, if a friend sends you a private message or a friend comes online, you will immediately receive an internal push bar. Click it to jump to the chat window with the friend.

Chat icon in short video: A chat guidance strategy in the short video scene is based on the fact that you will want to share an interesting video with your friends after seeing it. Therefore, a private message entrance appears on the basis of the original sharing entrance, and the icon uses the avatar of a friend you have chatted with recently. Click to enter the chat state immediately. If you are watching a friend's short video, there will be a chat entrance on his/her avatar. Click to send a private message.

Private message reply in the interactive message list: In fact, there are chat guides based on interactive messages. In the interactive message list, if a friend likes your post, a "private message reply" chat guide will be added below the like notification.

(3) The main scene IM communication function is opened

Short videos are the main scene of Douyin. Chats in the main scene do not need to jump to the chat window, but the IM communication function is opened within the scene. In the friend's dynamics, there is a private message chat icon under the friend's avatar. After clicking it, the IM communication window for quick private message will appear, and then you will receive a notification of successful sending. Clicking the notification will bring up a half-screen IM window in the short video. Clicking the expansion icon in the upper left corner will pop up the short video scene and open the chat window.

The whole process maintains the original scene while chatting with friends.

The above is a summary of Douyin’s social product strategy from the aspects of discovery, adding friends, interaction, and chat in the social chain.

These social product strategies are comprehensive, restrained and detail-oriented. The level of perfection of Douyin's chat function can compete with most social products, and many social interactions and conversation guidance can be integrated into short videos to reduce disturbance to the main scene, and require user authorization and initiative.

On the other hand, by sorting out and systematically looking at Douyin’s social strategy, we can have a more systematic understanding of the social functions of other non-social products in the future.

4. Other product strategies that Douyin social media can try

I agree with Tik Tok’s social product strategy, but from the perspective of a social product manager, I also have some suggestions and ideas.

1. Social Discovery

(1) Test the conversion of social cards in the homepage recommendation tab

Perhaps Douyin can try putting the frequently used social cards in the recommendation tab, because Douyin's content format of "full screen layout + sliding switch + recommendation algorithm" is too easy to immerse people, and they rarely switch to other tabs. Social cards are only placed in the updates of the friend tab, which may result in missing out on some traffic.

(2) Enhance interactive list discovery

A new "Interactive Message" page is added to the Message tab to directly display interactive messages such as others liking and commenting on me, following me, urging me to update, visiting my homepage, etc., to strengthen the interactive list information. In the tradition of "receive favors when they come", if I receive an interactive message from someone that they have expressed their interest in me, the possibility of me commenting on and visiting them will increase, and the probability of mutual attention and follow-up will increase.

2. Add friends to convert

(1) Emphasize follow-back and add the “Invite Follow-Back” function

Emphasize follow-back. When the number of fans of the homepage increases, a red dot will be placed on it. Click it to guide the followers to follow back in the fan list.

Added an “Invite to Follow Back” button to the guest profile page and private chat window. After clicking "Follow" on the guest's personal homepage, the button status will change to "Invite to Follow Back". After clicking, an interactive message notification will be sent to the other party. The recipient can directly click "Follow" in the interactive message notification list to follow back.

There are no restrictions on private chat on Douyin. As long as the user sets himself to receive private chats, people who follow you can initiate private chats with you. The current status of both friends is displayed at the top of the private chat window, and buttons for follow/follow back/invite to follow back are provided. Clicking them will push a system message (a small gray bar on the private chat page) to the other party on the private chat page of the two people. The recipient can directly click "Follow" in the small gray bar to follow back.

(2) Focus on optimizing the guide copy

After clicking the "Follow" button on the Ketai homepage, a list of friend recommendations will immediately appear, with the text saying "you may be interested in" these people. "You may be interested in" means that they are recommended to you by the system algorithm.

It is speculated that the recommendation here is based on the new follow, so the text can be changed to one that is relatively more interesting to users - "People who follow him also follow these people" or "He follows these people", highlighting that the recommendation list is related to the new person. Compared with algorithmic recommendations, it is more intimate and increases the motivation to check and follow.

3. Friends Interaction

(1) Strategically increase the interactive message list level by +1

It is speculated that there are some people on Tik Tok who seldom chat but often have light interactions such as liking, commenting and sharing. You can consider strategically increasing the level of the target user's interactive message list by +1 based on the chat frequency and interaction frequency.

The current interactive message list is a three-level page: message tab - message list page (interactive message entrance) - interactive message list. The current interactive message entrance is in a list mixed with chat messages, system messages, fan messages and many other messages. When entering the message list page, the user's attention to the interactive messages will be unconsciously distracted.

Add an "Interactive Message" page in the Message tab to directly display the interactive messages of target users and highlight the interactive list information to increase the interaction rate.

Later, you can even add a weekly statistics table of friend interactions on this page, which counts your interaction data with all other users this week on a weekly basis, quantifies the number of interactions for you, and reflects the degree of intimacy between you and certain people. You can even consider pushing you some secondary relationship interaction messages based on your friend relationships, such as "Your friend xxx follows xxx" "Videos watched by many friends", etc., to enhance the social relationship chain and content recommendations.

(2) Combining mutual likes with public welfare

Using the number of likes between users as the energy unit for donating to charity adds practical charity significance to entertainment interaction, which not only enhances users' perception of the value of likes, but also enables the platform to fulfill its social responsibility and increase the warmth of the platform. In the future, we can consider adding donation certificates, etc.

4. Chat Conversation

(1) Enhanced group chat entrance and interactive functions

It is recommended to add a "Start Group Chat" entrance in the upper right corner of the address book list, and at the same time improve the interactive scenarios of group chats to make it easier for users to discover and use group chats.

Many people watch Douyin every day, but they don’t know that Douyin has group chats. After trying it out, I found that the entrance to initiate Douyin’s group chat is hidden.

First, there is a "+Multi-person chat" entrance on the chat setting page between you and your (mutually following) friends. Click it and select the mutually following friends to create a group.

The second is to join a group face to face. There are two entrances to join a group face to face. The first one is on the DouYiDou page, and the second one is on the “+” sign in the message tab. In products with social functions, the entrance to initiate a group chat is usually placed in the "+ sign - pop-up window" in the upper left or upper right corner of the address book. Compared with this, the entrance to initiate a group chat on Douyin is very hidden.

Since the purpose is to socialize among acquaintances and semi-acquaintances, it should be a common scenario for these people to create a group, share videos, send red envelopes, and chat with each other. At the same time, you can also add group interaction scenes, such as interesting group red envelopes (red envelope rain within the group), dynamic aggregation of group members, multi-person groups, etc., to create a group social scene atmosphere.

(2) Remove the read items from the message list and adjust the layout

In today's chat message list, the content of private messages looks very crowded. Not only does it include the delivered/read status description, but it also squeezes the status description, chat content, and sending time together. This is not in line with the social chat list habits that users have been trained to have.

First of all, let’s talk about the delivered/read status description. This is usually a setting found in office communication software, and it is used to allow the sender to confirm that the information of both parties is symmetrical. However, this setting is rarely seen in other communication software because relationships in life are more complicated than those involving information synchronization and collaboration in the workplace, and the "read" status setting will increase social burden.

Secondly, the status description, chat content, and sending time are all squeezed together and are the same color, without highlighting the chat content. It is speculated that the product manager of TikTok made such a setting because he wanted to highlight the number bubble of unread messages on the right. However, this layout of separating the unread message reminder number from the user's avatar does not take into account that after receiving the message, the first thing users want to see is: who it is from, what it says, and when it was sent.

So perhaps TikTok can try to remove the "delivered/read" status display and put the time list of sent and received messages on the right side to highlight the chat content of both parties. Instantly, you must emphasize the number bubbles of unread messages on the right. You can also try to arrange the number bubbles and the time of sending and receiving messages above and below each other so as not to interfere with the chat messages.

(3) Others

Collect platform messages: Douyin can consider collecting platform message entrances to reduce interference with chat messages.

Remove "Friends are playing": On the friend list page in the "Message" tab of Douyin, there is a large area at the top about "Friends are playing" a certain prop. I guess it is intended to guide users to create submissions, but the guidance on the use of props does not need to be put together with friends. After all, the current association does not allow me to know which friend is playing it, and I did not interact with my friends when I took a photo of the same prop.

Fun chat: In the chat function module, perhaps Douyin can also try such as poking, chat bubbles, etc. to increase the fun or dress up of the chat conversation.

push chat: In addition, all messages can be pushed. If the user does not trigger the message on his own initiative, he may try to push him to trigger the chat. For example, place a floating window resource position in the lower right corner of the chat message list, click on the pop-up window list to trigger chat with specific friends with one click in an easy way like "Brown, pop up".

The above is all the review and suggestions on TikTok social networking from the social link level. The review of specific product strategies may be omitted due to different versions, the author does not trigger the strategy or ignores details, or may be interpreted incorrectly due to the author's lack of professional ability. Peers are welcome to communicate and correct them, and I also hope to have more communication with peers on social interaction.

Author: He Xiaomeng

Source: He Xiaomeng