In order to keep the basic disk of traffic, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu have begun to compete with dark pokes.
Produced by | Micro Jam (ID: wjam123456)
Author | Huang Xiaoman
Since the beginning of 2018, Douyin has stirred up the Internet with short videos, and even once shuffled the BAT pattern. By 2022, the short video jianghu seems to be ushering in an inflection point, and the story has begun to change again.
01# TikTok to the left, Kuaishou to the right
When short videos first entered the public eye, leisure and entertainment were its labels. When the time comes to today, short videos carry not only leisure and entertainment, but also knowledge and commercial attributes make them more and more complex. After all, Douyin, which "records a better life", has now added a suffix to the latest version of the app store - bargaining for good things.
This means that Douyin has completely shown off, transformed from a pure short video APP, and frantically marched towards commercialization. Echoing this, Douyin moved the "mall" to the top Tab bar on the recent internal test version, replacing the previous "sweep" position.
Image source "Ebang Power"
At the beginning of March, some users found that the four functional navigation bars in the bottom bar of the Douyin APP became "Home", "Mall", "News", "Me", and "Mall" replaced the previous "Friend" position.
The source of the picture on the left @ Muze
Looking further ahead, Douyin began to test and upgrade the "mall" entrance in November last year, upgrading it to the Tab column of the home page, juxtaposed with the attention page and the recommendation page.
Image source "Future Consumption"
From being folded into a personal homepage, to being mentioned to a personal homepage profile, to frequent internal testing on the homepage, Douyin is obviously looking for a best exposure entrance for the "mall", thus laying a good foundation for its own commercialization.
On the other hand, Kuaishou, who has been in love with Douyin and killed each other, these two have infiltrated each other for a period of time in the past and once lived into each other's appearance. However, when Douyin chose to sprint all-out for commercialization, Kuaishou returned to its own video content level.
In 2020, Kuaishou added the "Featured" function to the bottom navigation bar, and then promoted it to the top Tab bar, alongside "Follow" and "Discover". Two years later, in the latest version, Kuaishou set the "Featured" function back to the bottom navigation bar again, and the "Featured" page became the first display page for users to open Kuaishou, while the "Follow" and "Discovery" at the top were moved to the "Home" page.
On the left is the old version of Kuaishou, and on the right is the new version of Kuaishou
The "Featured" function returns to the bottom navigation bar and occupies a separate content page, which means that Kuaishou is accelerating the expansion of public domain traffic and feeding back more ordinary content creators with traffic. In the past, the emotional link between the anchor and the old iron allowed Kuaishou to build its own private domain traffic wall one step ahead of others. Now, when the familyization of anchors has become a problem, Kuaishou, who has a strong sense of "private domain", naturally also wants to seek new changes.
Kuaishou tries to use content to leverage "trust e-commerce", and Douyin goes all out to "interest e-commerce", and they all have a bright future.
02# Short video plus and retreat
Short videos are a piece of fragrant food, and everyone wants to taste one or two bites before the dividends disappear.
Before becoming a pan-lifestyle community, Xiaohongshu underwent a change in the content form from graphics to graphics + videos, and later added a live broadcast function. Xiaohongshu, which seems to have already entered the short video, has recently tried to operate a new product - Youqu Video. According to media reports, the main operating members of this new product have also worked for ByteDance.
In addition to "Little Red Book", Little Red Book has made a complete short video APP. Unlike Xiaohongshu, Youqu Video directly hits elderly users. Interestingly, at the same time as the "Youqu Video" was launched, Xiaohongshu also completed the trademark registration of "Old Red Book".
From the current version, the overall style of the APP is relatively concise, using the same "double column" display as the little red book, and set up 9 vertical interest circles such as "flower fun", "tea fun", "fishing", etc., and biased towards skill sharing, "useful" attributes have been more obvious in the "friendly fun video".
However, "Youqu Video" is still in the invitation test at this stage. The "narrowcast" test found that for users who are stationed in Xiaohongshu and Youqu Video at the same time, the comment messages between the two apps have supported synchronous communication. Although we still don't know what the future direction of "Youqu Video" will be, it is certain that the pan-youthful Little Red Book uses short videos to play the idea of middle-aged and elderly people.
On this side, the little red book hummed and added the short video. Over there, Zhihu changed from waving the flag and shouting into short videos to stopping the flag and focusing on the graphic field that he was good at. In the recently opened beta version, the "idea" that appears in the top Tab column replaces the previous "video" position. The "Ideas" page that returns to the home page adopts the two-column information flow mode of graphics and videos.
The left is the current version of Zhihu, the right is the internal beta version, the source of the picture @ Dragon Claw Locust Watcher
In June 2019, Zhihu "Ideas" disappeared from the bottom navigation bar, and the content was incorporated into the information flow of the following page. At that time, Zhihu was scolded by the user for a dog bloody head. In the internal test of the new version, although the "Ideas" function bar returned to the home page, the video was still interspersed on the "Ideas" page.
From this point of view, Zhihu obviously did not completely abandon short videos, but changed the radical strategic plan of the past. Whether it is to return to the "original intention" and let its core graphic value get a better growth soil, or try to boil frogs in warm water, let the time to educate users to get used to watching videos in Zhihu, Zhihu has become cautious about "video".
03# Content and commercialization trade-offs
To some extent, the revision of the APP carries the development will of the platform. Whether it is the frequent test mall location of Douyin on the home page, the "selection" of Kuaishou returning to the bottom navigation bar, or the small red book starting a new stove to add a short video, knowing that "lost and knowing" to re-embrace the graphics, all of them reflect the trade-off orientation of content and commercialization.
With the slowdown in the growth rate of Internet user scale and the advent of the era of user stock game, major platforms have to create more use scenarios to attract users to stay. Looking back at the Internet APP in these years, from the era of mutual non-interference to the era of mutual penetration, an APP has gathered e-commerce, social, search and other functions.
However, what users need is never a replica, and a product without differentiation cannot be neutral in the rolling torrent of the Internet for a long time. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why the major platforms have begun to look for a more suitable direction for their own development. It's just that some people choose to stick to the content, and some people choose to accelerate commercialization.
After a large-scale march into short videos and the slightly smaller effect of the commercial model reform, zhihu once again set its sights back on the Q&A community model that was once proud; Kuaishou "cut the domain", so it hoped to attract ordinary content creators with traffic in the video content in the "selected" page.
Douyin, which has had e-commerce ambitions since its birth, has naturally chosen to accelerate the commercialization process after sitting firmly in the first echelon of the short video platform. Recently, Douyin even launched a "one-point purchase" activity, users invite friends to "help slash a knife" can use a penny to get a variety of explosive goods such as food, television, digital products and so on. Although "helping to slash a knife" is an old-fashioned style, it does not hinder its effectiveness.
In contrast, in recent years, Xiaohongshu, which has been repeatedly hindered on the road of commercialization, was once trapped in the whirlpool of brand management and could not be withdrawn, and "Youqu Video" can be said to be a way for Xiaohongshu to try to curve itself. With the rapid increase in the proportion of elderly users among all netizens, the content sharing community formed by "Youqu Video" may be the antidote to Xiaohongshu.
But content and commercialization are like two ends of the scale, and how to achieve a stable balance is the key.