Looking back at the past 2023, the technology and Internet industries have experienced another extraordinary year: the ups and downs of leading manufacturers, Pinduoduo’s market value has surpassed Alibaba, and ByteDance’s revenue is close to Tencent’s. Dynasty changes are taking place; how many Trends have come and gone, the Metaverse and new consumption have stalled, semiconductors have slowly rebounded from cycle lows, and large AI models have soared...
What new technologies/products have been born in the past year that are worth remembering? Which companies and industries are undergoing the most exciting changes? In order to answer these questions and comprehensively sort out the changes in the industry, the Value Institute has launched the "2023 Please Answer" series of year-end reviews, inviting you to review the losses and hopes of the technology and Internet industries this year, and explore the future direction.
As the last traffic highland of the mobile Internet, short videos will usher in their own inflection point in 2023.
According to a report from the MOD Research Institute, as of the end of 2023, the number of domestic short video users was approximately 1.012 billion, accounting for 94.8% of the total number of netizens. Among them, nearly one-third of short video fans are "intensive users", and the average daily usage time per person is close to 3 hours.
However, after several years of running wildly, the incremental users of short videos are about to face the problem of depletion. This is a fate that no track can avoid. Looking back, the growth rate of short video users has dropped to single digits at the end of 2022. Although the statistics for 2023 have not yet been released, the results are not difficult to predict. The impact of the decline in the growth rate of
on the industry may be more profound and comprehensive than imagined: the battle for traffic between platforms, creators and mcn institutions will become more intense, and may even lead to chaos; the peak of traffic growth forces Practitioners face the problem of commercialization, and it is still unknown how far new models such as payment can go... The
short video industry has been booming this year, but it also has "mixed joys and sorrows." Led by leading platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, a new round of competition is taking place and is becoming increasingly fierce.
(Pictures taken by the Value Research Institute)
The pattern of regeneration changes: Douyin and Kuaishou confront each other, and the rise of video accounts
Almost from the day it was born, the domestic short video industry has been in a situation where Douyin and Kuaishou are competing for hegemony. For many years The future has not changed. analyzes various dimensions such as active users, market share, revenue, etc., and both Douyin and Kuaishou firmly occupy the first echelon of the domestic short video industry, and there is not a big gap between them.
As of the first half of 2023, Kuaishou DAU has reached 673 million, and daily activity has also increased by 8.7% year-on-year to 376 million. The cumulative number of mutually related users has exceeded 311 pairs, a year-on-year increase of 50%, which also demonstrates the platform's ultra-high user stickiness and community. Activity. Douyin, which has not yet been listed, has not disclosed user information to the outside world, but according to research reports from various independent institutions, its MAU is still ahead of Kuaishou.
The two heroes of shaking and fast fight in close combat, which can be called the point of contact.
For example, with the rise of general knowledge content, Kuaishou just announced on August 23 that it would upgrade the "New Knowledge Creator" program to provide traffic tilt and monetization support for high-quality experts. Douyin launched a knowledge open class content support plan on August 29 , recruiting high-quality creators and course content from universities across the country.
Another example is the application of AI large model technology. Kuaishou launched "ai Xiaokuai" to provide functions such as short video interaction, copywriting modification and image generation. Douyin has launched "ai search", which also provides intelligent question and answer, Intelligent search and other services.
Dou and Kuai have been fighting each other for many years, neither giving in to the other nor obeying the other. Judging from the latest performance data of , the two giants have also achieved good results in the past year, and the battle will continue.
In the third quarter of this year, Kuaishou’s total revenue reached 27.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.8%; its adjusted net profit reached 3.17 billion yuan, far exceeding market expectations of 2.66 billion yuan, and it achieved full-scale profits for two consecutive quarters. Advertising revenue, mainly driven by short video business, recorded 14.69 billion, a year-on-year increase of 26.7%. The growth rate was higher than that of live broadcast and e-commerce businesses, and its core position was further strengthened.
ByteDance has not announced its financial results for 2023, but there are reports that its total revenue in the first half of the year reached a staggering US$54 billion, which has exceeded Tencent's revenue in the same period.From the perspective of revenue structure, advertising is still Byte's number one cash cow, while Douyin contributes most of the revenue, and its ability to attract money instantly surpasses that of its peers.
But the real enemy often rises out of sight. The "underachievers" of short videos are undoubtedly relying on WeChat video accounts. Backed by WeChat, the largest traffic pool in the Chinese Internet world, video accounts naturally have no shortage of users. In the past year, video accounts have gained momentum. The mid-year development report of video accounts released by
’s new list shows that as of the end of June last year, the number of comments and reposts on video accounts had increased by 70.1% and 68.1% respectively year-on-year, and the average monthly content published by leading creators also increased by 55.6%. The number of creators with thousands of followers has more than tripled.
(Picture from Xinbang Research Institute)
In a short period of time, the video account has not been able to challenge the dominance of Douyin and Kuaishou, but it has shown dark horse potential. Since Ma Huateng called short videos "the hope of the whole audience" in his internal speech, Tencent will definitely invest more resources in supporting video accounts in the future. In 2023, Tencent's strategic search will cut off many unnecessary marginal businesses. In 2024, it will focus more on growing core businesses such as video accounts. With great efforts, there may be miracles. Short videos may soon show a "three-legged" pattern. New pattern.
In addition to the three giants of Douyin and Kuaishou video accounts, more and more platforms are using short videos as basic component layouts. For example, Alipay launched a short video entrance on the homepage in April last year, and announced in November that it will fully open the UGC creation entrance for life accounts to encourage Users publish more short video content; the peak DAU of Pinduoduo’s short video business “Duoduo Video” exceeded 150 million at the beginning of last year, close to one-third of Kuaishou; Meituan app also launched a short video platform in the second half of last year level entrance, and increase recruitment efforts for relevant positions. The short videos made by these players are more of a core service business and are not in the same competitive dimension as Douyin, Kuaishou and video accounts.
As the pursuers press forward step by step, the competition in the next stage of short video is far more fierce than imagined.
Internet celebrities are anxious: the traffic dividend is gradually decreasing, has overturning become the norm?
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the growth of short video users has slowed down, which is a warning sign for various short video platforms - it means the decline of traffic dividends.
You must know that the user overlap rate of several top short video platforms is extremely high, and it is not easy to retain users. Once incremental users dry up and it becomes difficult to attract new users, competition for existing products will become extremely cruel. Statistics from questmobile show that only 25% of users use only one short video application, and more than half of users use 2 or 3 applications at the same time. Among them, Douyin and Kuaishou have the highest overlap rate, reaching 65.4%.
In this context, not only will the platform be nervous, but short video creators and mcn organizations will also be busy with traffic. In order to retain fans and generate revenue quickly, the industry has seen a trend of vicious competition. Some creators have embarked on crooked ways, and the industry has seen situations such as false marketing, vulgarity and even marginalization.
Short videos are popular every year, but they seem to come more frequently in 2023, and the time between becoming popular and overturning has become shorter.
Douyin’s October limited top streamer “Yu Wenliang” has set a series of crazy data such as a million followers in 7 days and a rise of 3 million followers in a single month. Because on the eve of Double 11, he held 10 consecutive live broadcasts with wheat, and in Another Internet celebrity "Tao Yuanming" said that "the live broadcast is just to make (money)" and responded "I said what is in my heart" and was wildly criticized by fans. After those 10 live broadcasts, Yu Wenliang lost millions of followers within a few days and was knocked back to his original form overnight.
also collapsed after the live broadcast of PK, as well as the two top "Xiucai" and "Allure with a Smile" who have gained countless silver-haired fans born in the 50s and 60s.
In August last year, "A Smile Allure" with 19 million+ fans on Douyin and "Xiucai" with 12 million+ fans staged a "showdown of the century". Lianmai PK attracted more than 20 million netizens to watch. However, shortly after the live broadcast ended, the account of "Xiucai" was officially banned by Douyin. The official reason for the ban is ambiguous, but according to fans’ revelations, it is closely related to behaviors such as inducing rewards by “talents”.The ban of
"Xiucai" also played a role in shaking the mountain. "A Smile Allure" took the initiative to stop updating for two months, and did not quietly resume updating until November 4. "Xiucai", "Allure with a Smile", and "Yu Wenliang" are just the tip of the iceberg. We can add many familiar names to the list of top-rated short videos in the past year.
has an iron-clad platform, a well-established Internet celebrity, and Schrödinger’s algorithm. Who can stay popular and who will be popular next, no one knows. But it is not difficult to see that Internet celebrities are really anxious, anxious to increase their fans, eager to divert traffic, and eager to cash out. It has long been a consensus in the industry that the number of fans of short video Internet celebrities lacks gold content. Under the algorithm recommendation mechanism, the platform always controls the distribution of traffic. Although small celebrities rely on praise and big celebrities rely on fate, the factor of luck is too elusive after all. Seizing the window of popularity and using the traffic provided by the platform to find ways to monetize is the only choice for most Internet celebrities.
But when the traffic dividends of short videos diminish, Internet celebrities can only speed up the pace of monetization, which then breeds all kinds of chaos. In the final analysis, this is the inevitable result of the fierce competition for short video traffic. To eradicate these chaos, firstly, we must rely on strict control of platforms and supervision; secondly, we need to establish a healthier, more sustainable, and longer-lasting business ecosystem.
accelerates commercialization. What other trump cards does the short video platform have?
short video regulatory policies need to be tightened every once in a while, and a new round of strict control was ushered in at the end of last year. On December 12, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the launch of a month-long special campaign of "Clearness and Correction of Bad Information Content Guidance in Short Videos" to focus on three types of problems: the spread of false information, the display of inappropriate behavior, and the spread of misconceptions.
The difference is that in this round of strict policy control, leading platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Video Accounts are even more nervous and concerned than regulatory agencies. Maybe the platform also understands that the short video chaos has reached a time when it must be eradicated. Only in this way can it ensure long-term development in the future. In addition to investing a lot of manpower to remove illegal accounts,
has also continuously refined the platform’s regulatory rules, making the creative environment for short video experts more standardized. Take Douyin as an example. In November, it announced a crackdown on improper propaganda by "big and small accounts" and banned the organized and batch release of homogeneous and low-quality content. In addition, major platforms have also implemented the real-name system. Kuaishou accounts with more than one million fans and Douyin accounts with more than 500,000 fans need to display real-name authentication information.
As for the commercialization of short video platforms, it is not a new issue. The ways to generate revenue for several leading platforms are already very clear. E-commerce and local life are the best answers at this stage, and short dramas are a rising new outlet. The surge in popularity of
short dramas began in the second half of last year, and everything happened quite suddenly. Nowadays, all major platforms are taking the time to standardize their management systems and remove bad accounts, but they have not yet entered the stage of refined operations. In contrast, the pillars of e-commerce and local life have long been proven over time and are now becoming more reliable.
Douyin and Kuaishou invariably rely on e-commerce for commercial growth. Kuaishou CEO Cheng Yixiao said at last year’s Kuaishou E-commerce Attraction Conference that e-commerce is the “lifeblood” of Kuaishou’s commercialization and promised to invest 60 billion in traffic to support merchants.
However, for some experts who do not have the conditions for live streaming, who only know how to create but are not good at selling goods, or for vertical creators whose conversion rate is too low, the platform’s heavy investment in e-commerce business cannot solve their monetization problem. What's more, there are still many users who prefer content that does not involve carrying goods, and many users are not used to or even disgusted with live streaming shopping.
In view of this, returning to the short video creation scene, the platform also needs to provide creators with some more direct and lower-threshold monetization methods - the payment model of Douyin's trial water provides creators with new monetization methods. possible. The Douyin payment model was quietly launched without large-scale publicity. It was obviously to test the users' taste first. The pricing range of its paid short videos is 1-10 yuan/piece, and the platform charges 30% of the total technical service fee. At first glance It seems quite conscientious, but users’ attitudes are quite complicated, and it is still difficult to determine whether it can be promoted on a large scale.
Because Chinese users are accustomed to free Internet, content payment has not yet been fully implemented in China. Bilibili has also tested the self-made content payment model before, but the effect was not satisfactory, and then it was abandoned. Even Aiyouteng, which once wanted to solve content problems by relying on paid memberships, now has to strengthen commercial methods such as advertising. Because domestic users are still very cautious about paying for content, their acceptance of the payment model is far less than that of overseas users. As the leader in the short video industry, Douyin dared to take risks and be the first to try something new. It has to be said that it took great courage and brought new monetization possibilities to creators. In contrast,
built a comprehensive film and television marketing base and pushed the film producers to increase their investment budgets, which went more smoothly. Take theater movies as an example, from the Spring Festival release of "The River is Red" to the summer releases of "The Lost Girl" and "All or Nothing", to the New Year's Eve release of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle," which set a new pre-sale box office record. Short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are regarded as the main marketing positions, investing a large amount of materials and consuming a large amount of budget.
From exploring content payment to building a marketing position, the platform and creators have reached a consensus: in addition to bringing goods, monetization must rely on high-quality content.
Short video is the most eye-catching "splash" in the content wave. Proper use of algorithms and traffic is important, but the core competitiveness is still content. In 2024, we look forward to more truly high-quality content creators, and more A lot of truly high-quality content has emerged on the short video platform. It is also expected that the short video platform can form a positive cycle in the content ecology and achieve higher quality growth.
