The author | lemon
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On December 8, the official microblog of the Fire rescue bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management", "China Fire Protection", named Classmate Zhang: "Hello, Classmate Zhang! You're breaking the law! ”
"Shouted" is the recently popular rural video creator Zhang Kai, who took Zhang Classmate as his nickname and released a series of short videos recording rural life, magic music and fast-paced plots that make people popular, quickly became popular on the Douyin platform, and even appeared on Weibo hot search, praised by the official media.
It is not difficult to find that in the past two years, rural theme videos have received a lot of attention, from the pastoral pastoral songs created by Li Ziqi and West Yunnan Brothers, to the rural life shared by Huanong Brothers, Zhang Classmates and others, such rural-themed videos have sprung up, and many creators have also been praised by the official media, but when digging deep into the platform behind these "rural top streams", they will find that the fast hand that should have "home field advantage" does not seem to seize the outlet of "rural life" and does not appear phenomenon-level "rural top stream".
For a long time, the image of Kuaishou has been closely associated with the "earthy taste". The very beginning of the "old iron" culture seems to have laid the label of Kuaishou's "grounding gas", and the latest "out of the circle" may be a self-made "earthy short drama" by Kuaishou users, with exquisite pictures and embarrassing plots, which stimulates endless desire to spit out, but it is so magical that the audience can't stop.
Kuaishou said in its third quarter 2021 financial report that the daily active users of the short drama reached 230 million. In the same period, the average daily active users of the Kuaishou app were only 320 million, which means that these short dramas provide more than 70% of the daily active users for Kuaishou. With the sinking market starting out fast hands hit the bottleneck in user growth, "earthy" content is difficult to retain users outside of low-tier cities for a long time.
However, the rural top streams developed from low-tier cities have not received attention for a long time on the Kuaishou platform where users gather in low-tier cities, but have quickly become popular on other platforms. Behind it may reflect the embarrassing situation of the solidification of the Kuaishou user group, "Old Iron" once built a wall for Kuaishou, and now this wall has become a cage for fast hands.
Overseas business contraction, user growth slowed down, losses continued to expand, today's Kuaishou, ushered in its own key moments.
01 "Earthy" short video becomes a traffic password?
Recently, open the short video APP, "Zhang classmates study" can be seen everywhere.
On October 4, Mr. Zhang released the first video, and by December 13, a total of 46 videos were sent, with a total of 16.122 million fans.
In his video, the rapid switching of the lens and the way of moving the mirror let many netizens call out professionals, under such a sense of rhythm, with seven or eight minutes of time to record the next day's life of a rural youth. The content of the video is rough and up- and up-to-head, and the officials feel the taste of the "new countryside" in the complicated life fragments, and the rural youth Zhang who quickly became popular was named by the official media, praising him for using professional techniques to shoot a different rural life, and calling on more "Zhang Students" to record the real China.
Before Zhang, the last "rural top stream" known to the whole network was probably Li Ziqi.
Her videos have been posted on Platforms such as Weibo, Station B, and Douyin, with more than 100 million fans worldwide, and almost every update will be on Weibo's hot search. In the garden of flowers, peach forest in the mountains, in the video, Li Ziqi seems to live in Tao Yuanming's poems, the video content is also closely related to traditional crafts, from traditional carpentry to human farming, from self-made four treasures of the study room to learn ancient craftsmanship, exquisite pictures show a peaceful and idyllic pastoral life, compared to "countryside", she is afraid that she is more in line with the label of "traditional culture".
In 2018, Li Ziqi's original video won the Silver Creator Medal of YouTube after only three months of operation on overseas platforms, and the traditional elements in the video attracted the amazement of foreign netizens and achieved "cultural output". In 2019, CCTV News said, "Not a word praises China well, but she tells Chinese culture well and tells Chinese stories well." The People's Daily has also repeatedly praised Li Ziqi's contributions in the dissemination of traditional culture.
After Li Ziqi, many similar rural food bloggers have also risen on Weibo, B station, Douyin and other platforms, such as West Yunnan Brother, a post-90s police flower living in Yunnan, different from Li Ziqi's "fairy qi", her video has more fireworks, a yunnan cuisine presented in the camera, in 2019, she was awarded the title of public welfare ambassador by the Yunnan Youth Entrepreneurship Association, in 2020, on the front page of the overseas page of people's daily.
"This bamboo rat has suffered from heat stroke, I took it to the river for treatment", "This bamboo rat ate too much, this can't go down", these reasons for not being careful have become the hypnotic of the bamboo rat, and have also become the "classic scene" in the mouth of the audience of Station B. The Huanong brothers, who started from the watermelon video, are far from the plum ziqi, and the picture without filters frankly shows the clutter of rural life, with a hint of thickness in simplicity, and even a little rough in simplicity.
The two people who do bamboo rat breeding took bamboo rats as the "protagonists" to shoot a series of videos, but they did not cause too much waves in the watermelon video, but quickly became popular on the B station with the topic of "one hundred ways to eat bamboo rats", and repeatedly appeared on Weibo hot search.
In 2018, Huanong Brothers was invited to the live broadcast room of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League as a youth representative to share the experience of new online media communication formats. In 2019, when the epidemic struck, the "protagonist" bamboo rat of Huanong Brothers video was listed as a forbidden breed, so their video content became agricultural products in their hometown, honey from the brothers in the same village, and navel oranges in the next town, continuing to contribute to the cause of helping farmers.
These "out of the circle" of the "rural top stream", in Weibo, Douyin, B station and other platforms can see their figures, and these platforms are precisely the most common urban young people "mixed" area, these "rural top stream" videos and these platforms exquisite, trendy style seems to be somewhat incompatible.
On the other hand, Kuaishou, which has been labeled as "earthy", has a large number of users in low-tier cities and rural areas, according to the data of the "Kuaishou Sannong Ecological Report", as of December 2020, there are more than 200 million interested users in Kuaishou Sannong, but none of the rural top streams can "support the scene".
02 Kuaishou "Old Iron" are busy?
Zhang, who has more than 10 million fans on Douyin, even after a week of popularity, only has 1.065 million fans in Kuaishou, while another rural anchor Northeast Fat Boy, who has millions of fans on the Kuaishou platform, the video themes are rural life, similar to Zhang, but the style is very different.
(Zhang's fans on the douyin and kuaishou platforms and video playback data)
Exaggerated expressions coupled with slightly obscene actions, deliberately arranged plot is matched with a magical and harsh laughter BGM, compared with Zhang's video, there are more long shots, the rhythm is obviously slower, the willingness to be funny is too strong, so that the whole video seems extremely embarrassing, and it can be clearly felt that the author is a video shot for funny. However, from his homepage, you can see that the number of hits on videos that share life normally will be slightly lower.
Kuaishou is the world of "old iron". According to the statistics of the third-party platform, as of 2019, 90% of Kuaishou users are from second-tier cities and below, more than 40% are from fourth-tier cities and below, and only 30% of users have a bachelor's degree or above.
Maybe Kuaishou does not have a "rural top stream", the reason is that the "old iron" is not good at this mouth. The "old irons" concentrated in lower-tier cities prefer to watch funny, eye-catching videos, and there is little interest in content with connotations, which can be seen from Kuaishou's "history of making a family".
The early Kuaishou was a software that made GIFs, and in 2013, Suhua joined before upgrading it to a short video social platform and determining the product positioning of "focusing on ordinary people". This kind of "close" to the ordinary people's product positioning helps Kuaishou quickly occupy the sinking market, "old iron" has become the "moat" of Kuaishou, taking the lead in achieving rapid development in the short video market, but today's "old iron" seems to have become a constraint for Kuaishou to "break the circle".
There is no "rural top stream", and it is inseparable from Kuaishou's traffic distribution mechanism. Kuaishou's decentralized traffic distribution mechanism is determined by users, and Kuaishou's user base determines that it rarely contains deeper meanings such as promoting traditional culture and helping farmers, and the quality of video content is not enough to "impress" users of other platforms.
User groups plus traffic distribution mechanism, directly lead to Kuaishou is difficult to appear "circle-breaking" content, and the current proportion of users gradually rising, the competition in the entire market has changed from incremental to stock, Kuaishou is eager to break the boundaries of its own "sinking market", expand user groups, and enter first- and second-tier cities. However, in the process of "breaking the circle", Kuaishou mistakenly chose to follow the footsteps of Douyin, but lost its own advantages.
Once Kuaishou did a good job in private domain traffic, the fan size and stickiness of several "family" head anchors are very impressive, and the effect of bringing goods is also very good, and now Kuaishou has broken the advantage of private domain after "defamilialization".
Although "learning" Douyin did bring some growth to Kuaishou, especially in advertising revenue, according to the third quarter of 2021 financial report data, the revenue of online marketing service business increased by 76.5% year-on-year to 10.9 billion yuan. However, this model is precisely in conflict with Kuaishou's private domain advantages, live broadcast revenue has declined, and the scale of live broadcast paid users has dropped from 60 million in 2020 to about 45 million at present, and the number of reward users has been significantly lost.
There is no time to regret the strategic mistakes, and today's Kuaishou has reached a critical moment.
03 Kuaishou ushered in the match point
This winter was particularly cold for Kuaishou, and when it was listed at the beginning of the year, it was full of vigor, and by the end of the year, the stock price had fallen by more than 70%. Kuaishou's third quarter 2021 financial report shows that the adjusted loss reached 4.8 billion, an increase of more than 400% compared with the same period last year.
In order to complete the "small goal" of 300 million DAU, in August 2019, Kuaishou launched a speed version of the douyin form, according to the Q1 financial report data, Kuaishou daily active is close to 300 million, of which more than 100 million are completed by the speed version. The rapid rise of the express version has no cheats, a little material return can attract a large number of users in the sinking market, the logic behind it is similar to Pinduoduo's new strategy.
In May 2020, Kuaishou launched an APP for TikTok "Zynn", attracting users to continue to pull new ones with high reward money, but once the reward money stopped, user growth stagnated, and in August 2021, "Zynn" was forced to announce the suspension of service.
In the third quarter of 2021, it can be more intuitively seen that the price of 300 million DAU is that Kuaishou's marketing expenses continue to rise, increasing by nearly 80% compared with the same period last year, accounting for more than 50% of the third quarter revenue. In the explanation given by Kuaishou, in addition to product promotion and brand marketing activities, business expansion in overseas markets is also one of the reasons.
The domestic Internet penetration rate has reached a certain height, the incremental market is limited, the cost of obtaining customers is higher, while the overseas market is waiting to be discovered, going to sea, and has become a new choice for domestic Internet manufacturers.
Douyin, which is also a short video platform, tested the water overseas as early as 2017 and launched an overseas version of Douyin TikTok. In September 2021, its chief operating officer, Vanessa Papas, said that the number of TikTok's monthly active users worldwide has exceeded the 1 billion mark. The overseas version of Kuaishou Kwai, which was launched at the same time as TikTok, did not cause much waves, according to the kuaishou financial report data disclosure, in June 2021, the monthly active users of Kuaishou's overseas market business only exceeded 180 million.
In the 2021 mid-year report, Kuaishou used a large space to describe its vision and determination for overseas business, and said that "overseas expansion has become one of our core strategies." In the third quarter financial report, there were only a few words left in the overseas business. By December 7, pulse netizens broke the news that Kuaishou International Business's plan to lay off 30% of its employees had begun.
However, Kuaishou has not given up its overseas business, according to Ebang Power, a Kuaishou industry insider said, "Kuaishou is ready to open e-commerce business in Latin America, and is already looking for a service provider." "In the domestic market, Kuaishou also relies heavily on e-commerce business.
According to statistics, the penetration rate of short video in China's market has been as high as 90%, the incremental market is extremely limited, Ai Media Consulting data also shows that the scale of China's short video users is expected to reach 809 million in 2021, and the year-on-year growth rate has slowed down significantly. In the short video track that has entered the stock market, it is not wise to find user increments, and in the next war, Kuaishou will probably be more inclined to e-commerce business.
However, limited by user groups, Kuaishou's e-commerce is similar to Pinduoduo, and low-cost products such as white-label goods and non-standard products are the favorites of "old iron", but for users in first- and second-tier cities, these products are not attractive.
It seems that in order to "please" users in first- and second-tier cities, Kuaishou has made changes to the e-commerce business, no longer supporting the head anchors of the "six major families", and even "blocking" it to a certain extent.
According to the financial report data, in the first three quarters of 2021, Kuaishou's other services mainly based on e-commerce were 1.2 billion yuan, 2 billion yuan and 1.9 billion yuan respectively, and the defamilyization strategy led to a substantial increase in e-commerce revenue, which proved the correctness of this strategy. Abandoning "familialization" and turning around to support the brand's kuaishou, living more and more like the old rival Douyin.
The user overlap of the two platforms is rising year by year, and the "rural top stream" has not appeared in Kuaishou, which may mean that the fan stickiness advantage brought by the "old iron" culture has become a thing of the past, replaced by the embarrassing situation that the Kuaishou user group is difficult to expand. In the content war, Douyin first next city, next, Kuaishou will continue to increase investment in e-commerce business without suspense, but whether it can win back a game with this, it will take time to tell us the answer.