This article is from WeChat official account:Shenzhen Tencent News (ID: qqshenwang) , author: Wen Shijun, editor: Ye Zhen, head Figure from: vision China
The “roller coaster” of Hong Kong stocks, Kuaishou shareholders should be mentally prepared.
On February 5, 2021, Kuaishou Technology (Kuaishou Technology) was IPO in Hong Kong with the code 1024.HK. The offer price is 115 Hong Kong dollars, and the closing day is 300 Hong Kong dollars. Subsequently, Kuaishou’s share price began to rise, and the share price reached a peak of HK$415 on February 17. On that day, the total market value of Kuaishou exceeded HK$1.73 trillion(1.46 trillion RMB), ranking 6th on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, equivalent to 0.8 industrial and commercial companies bank.
On February 23, Kuaishou entered the Hang Seng Composite Index, the State-owned Enterprise Index (referring to “Chinese enterprises”) and the technology index through a fast mechanism. But this failed to change the trend of Kuaishou’s stock price rising and falling, and entered an ups and downs callback range-on March 25, the stock price dropped to a low value of 248.2 Hong Kong dollars.
On February 17, 2021, the top 10 listed companies in Hong Kong stock market capitalization (unit: RMB trillion) Source: Wind data, drawn by the author
Kaishou’s trillion market capitalization allows the market toI am more imaginative about Douyin.
On March 17, CNBC released a comment on TikTok(TikTok overseas version) former chief executive officer and former chief operating officer of Bytedance Official Kevin Mayer (Kevin Mayer) interview.
When asked about the listing of TikTok and its parent company, Bytedance, the former executive who had served for less than three months sent an extremely unclear message: He “does not know how to go public and when to go public.” , “I’m not sure if ByteDance is listed as a whole or TikTok is listed separately…maybe listed on several exchanges at the same time. (also)< /span>May be only in the U.S. (listed), or Shanghai, or only in Hong Kong.”
The more accurate news comes from a report by Reuters on March 31. The report quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Bytedance is considering listing Douyin (the original text is Douyin, not Tiktok) separately in New York or Hong Kong. . Previously, on March 24, Zhou Shouzi, the former CFO who was deeply involved in Xiaomi’s IPO, resigned and became the CFO of ByteDance, which is considered to be a more direct evidence of the accelerated listing of ByteDance.
Kevin Mayer, who briefly served as TikTok’s CEO and ByteDance’s COO, said that because of TikTok’s US sale Leaving by storm Source: livenewstime.com
At this point in time, China’s Internet has long since shed all its idealistic shells, and has evolved a logic-to verify the success of the product is the flow, to verify the success of the business is to monetize, and to verify the success itself, yes capital market.
The labelled definitions of “Lao Tie”‘s Kuaishou and Miss Sister’s “Tik Ton” have long been outdated. In the face of financing, IPO, stock price, and market value, “personal design” is no longer important. Financial statements, user data, e-commerce space, online celebrity competition, advertising PK… this is the midfield battle of short video.
1. Enclosure, convergence and evolution
Bringing on the wind, the short video industry is “younger and promising.” Kuaishou is less than 10 years old, and Douyin is less than 5 years old, and the integration of TikTok and musical.ly is only a matter of 2018.
In 2016, an article titled “Cruel Bottom Story: A Video Software in Rural China”, “Sweeping the Screen”, this article pushed Kuaishou to the eyes of more people, but Kuaishou did not like the outside world. Shen’s positioning. In the face of this “crisis”, Kuaishou put forward the concept of “social average person” to respond- Kuaishou was eager to prove that it is not the “low-level” nor “cruel”, but the “average person” of the masses.
Of course, we can now see more clearly that Kuaishou has won on the starting line of the short video track with the help of more public power; now that Kuaishou wants to run into the midfield, what Kuaishou wants is not an “average person.” It’s everyone.
The birth of Douyin is very “byte beating”-on a relatively mature track, multi-APP layout (the so-called ” Hatching”), the winner is the one who runs out.
The A.me period of Douyin Source: downcc.com
In 2016, when Douyin (earlier called A.me) appeared on the stage, it initially aimed at music socialization and talent socialization< span class="text-remarks" label="Remarks">(The name TikTok has the meaning of music). This strategy of making short videos a content social platform for accurate crowds is actually consistent with Kuaishou’s thinking. However, Kuaishou started in the sinking market, and Douyin started in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
“The early development strategy of the Douyin platform was to go deep into art schools across the country. The Douyin platform persuaded a group of high-value young people to produce content for it and helped them gain fans,” a founder of an MCN agency told “Deep Web”, “It is these seed users, youthful and fashionable temperament, that give Douyin the cool label.”
At the 2019 iQiyi Conference, the vice president of iQiyi mentioned in his speech that he met ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming in 2017. At that time, Douyin users were much lower than Kuaishou, so he asked how Douyin followed Kuaishou competition: “He told me that although Douyin has only 20 million users, but in first- and second-tier cities, it will develop faster from high-end to low-end.”
Kaishou Douyin user coincidence changes from January 2018 to May 2019 Source: Quoted from Inni Networks
The vibrato has to sink to find increments; Kuaishou naturally moves up. In January 2018, the overlap between Douyin and Kuaishou users was only 10.3%, and by May 2019, it had reached 46.5%. This period of time was a critical time for them to expand into each other’s territory, and the two short videos also began to speed up the race.
Like every vent in the past, the window period is fleeting, and only the head can survive. The top two players must run very fast. For a time, short videos came all over the sky with red envelope subsidies, and TV variety shows and even the Spring Festival Gala became the stage for Kuaishou Douyin to “pull new”.
The results are remarkable: in January 2018, Douyin’s daily livelihood was 30 million; January 2019 was 250 million; January 2020 was 400 million. As of August 2020, including Douyin Volcano version, Douyin has more than 600 million daily livelihoods. Correspondingly, the daily life of Kuaishou was about 100 million in early 2018; it exceeded 200 million in May 2019; and it was 300 million in early 2020.
It’s just that the two used to be so different, but in the arena, they have to look like each other once hated each other.
Therefore, when Kuaishou and Douyin are looking for increments, they are both trying to tear off their former labels. Whether it is Kuaishou’s “original ecology”-eating live snakes, chilling heads, masochistic drinking, or vibrato’s coolness, youth, and fashion, all have become constraints.
This picture represents many people’s perceptions or “prejudices” about the content positioning of Kuaishou and Douyin. In fact, it is now inaccurate. Both Infiltrating each other Source: sekkeistudio.com
In evolutionary biology, there is the concept of “convergent evolution”, which refers to organisms that are closely related to each other. Because they live in similar environments, they evolve into similar shapes or structures. Today, Kuaishou has no shortage of beauties with exquisite makeup. “Lao Tie 666” is also a lingua franca on Douyin.
Ma Hongbin, senior vice president of Kuaishou, disclosed in public that 70 of the top 100 big Vs of Kuaishou are Douyin users, and 50 of the top 100 big Vs of Kuaishou are Kuaishou users.
two or three monetization modes: live broadcast, advertising, e-commerce
Looking back is not a long (but very exciting) mobile Internet short video history, not only Kuaishou and Douyin smell the short video breath.
The nature of the information carrier of the Internet itself, the dissemination and entertainment of the video itself, let all Internet players know its importance. Whether it’s Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, which was founded just over a year ago in 2006, 4 years later, Baidu’s layout of iQiyi(originally called “Qiyi.com”)< /span>, or the video website and live broadcast platform that became turbulent later, “short” videos are not uncommon.
But this “short” video is not another “short video”. When we analyze the sudden emergence of Kuaishou and Douyin, of course, we can’t ignore the operation and operation capabilities of these two platforms, and we can’t ignore the fact that everyone has this small screen in the mobile wave era.
In other words, the era of Kuaishou and Douyin is essentially an era of sinking content discourse power. In the earlier Internet, the pan-elite class grasped the right to speak in the content community, and did not leave a voice channel for the majority of the population. Kuaishou and Douyin occupied this part of the market space and created A community that belongs to the general public with more extensive participation, and with this, is moving towards the road of national APP.
The core model of Douyin and Kuaishou lies in the operation of content, social interaction, and transaction in one system to connect people. The short video platform is essentially a lightweight content system platform driven by social ecology.
Just as Wang Wei defined the slogan for Tudou.com back then, “Everyone is the director of life”, which is so appropriate for today’s Kuaishou and Douyin. Of course, if you open Tudou.com today, the slogan has become “Summon the World’s Outstanding Short Video Officials”-but this outlet has nothing to do with it.
Looking at the prospectus when Kuaishou went public in January 2021, the position of Kuaishou is also very clear: Kuaishou is a “content community and social platform”, “a prosperous ecosystem that allows users and businesses to be rich and diversified in our Interaction is based on content.” Kuaishou did not mention the short video here, but emphasized the “interaction” of “users and businesses”-to be more straightforward, it just emphasizes the flowmarks” label=”remarks”>(user) and realization of (merchant).
Kuaishou depicts an official “ecosystem” diagram in the prospectus. In fact, this represents a model common to all content communities. Source: Kuaishou prospectus
On March 23, Kuaishou announced its 2020 performance for the first time after its listing. At the stock price level, the market has not responded enthusiastically, and even the valuation continues to pull back. But through this financial report of Kuaishou, it is undoubtedly very clear to show what business the current short video industry is doing and what it is relying on to realize:
——Currently verified, there are nothing more than three: one is the revenue equal to the share of rewards brought by live broadcast, and the other is advertising including image advertising and drainage advertising (Many lead to e-commerce and games), the third is value-added services based on e-commerce. Kuaishou also put the small-scale game revenue in the third item. In essence, games, whether they are self-operated or channel, are essentially advertising-like traffic monetization.
2017-2020 Kuaishou revenue and the contribution of each business segment to revenue Source: Data from Kuaishou prospectus and 2020-year performance announcement, drawn by the author
From a broad perspective, in fact, the commercial realization of all Internet platforms in the pan-content field basically cannot go out of these three modes. Kaishou is like this, Douyin is like this, even the B station of the pan-video community is like this, but the proportions of the three are different.
3. Kuaishou “reward”, Douyin “advertising”
“Those who know me mean I am worried, those who don’t know me mean what I want.” Whether it is the Kuaishou that has been on the market or the vibrato that is on the line: They are the “entry scenes” in the mobile Internet era, There is no shortage of traffic or even the creation of traffic.
But no matter how they update their “strategy” or keep throwing new business “concepts” to the market , the only thing they do, worry about, and ask for is to constantly find and consolidate massive traffic The avenue of realization.
Although it is a convergent evolution, the genes of Kuaishou and Douyin are still different. For a long time, there is a certain difference in the monetization mode of the two.
Early operation model and promotion focus caused the difference in the way of traffic distribution between the two: Kai Shou limited the head content to ensure that the “subject” of the newly released video also has a certain amount of Exposure level. This is because the early Kuaishou relied on “earth-flavored” videos, and relied on the “old irons” to gradually break the circle and grow up. The diverse and unexpected content complemented this traffic distribution model.
Douyin uses a centralized traffic distribution mechanism, focusing on the completion rate and the like rate. This is also derived from Douyin’s early attention to music and the new generation. The earliest users came from fashionable youths born in the 90s and 95s, and “beauty” has long been the key word of Douyin, so more Professional and exquisite content is naturally the focus of its push.
The early Kuaishou (GIF Kuaishou, above picture) and the early Tik Tok (below) positioning have obvious differences. Source: GIF Kuaishou, Early Douyin Poster
Logically, In the era of mobile small screens, what the APP pushes to users is far greater than what users choose, which has a greater impact on traffic.
However, in actual operation, the situation has deviated from the original intention: Kaishou’s “Puhui” traffic model, the interaction between fans and content producers is deeper and the relationship is closer, but it has caused some heads. Internet celebrities (and the so-called “family” of internet celebrities) have too much power to speak. In other words, Kuaishou temporarily transfers part of its power to the top content producers, and at the same time shares the “reward” income with them-this is the “private domain traffic” defined by Kuaishou’s own high-profile definition.
Looking at it now, Kaishou was once criticized by the entire network for the emergence of eyeball content such as out-of-position and hunting novels, which is also related to this traffic distribution model, because the uploader behind knows that such content can be obtained. Traffic distribution, which in turn brings income.
Correspondingly, Douyin itself has greater control over content. The actual result is that users pay more attention to content rather than relationships. To a certain extent, the platform has more control over internet celebrities. . The result is that the platform has greater control over the content, and even some media flavors in style-naturally attracting advertising.
The historical differences between the two are also evident in terms of revenue. The “old irons” rewarded the revenue to support Kuaishou, and the “good” Douyin was exchanged for advertising. Of course, the entire Bytedance series of products and its “APP factory” model itself are more important to the advertising business. For ease.
Four, offense is the best defense
But as the business of Kuaishou and Douyin grows, things are changing. “The two products are fundamentally different. They just ran into each other on the way to their respective destinations.” Su Hua once described the competition between Kuaishou and Douyin.
Kaishou’s live broadcast incomeThe proportion is declining, and advertising revenue is steadily increasing. Comprehensive data from the Kuaishou prospectus and performance announcements show that in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, Kuaishou’s revenue has risen sharply from 8.341 billion yuan to 58.776 billion yuan; at the same time, the percentages of live broadcast revenue to total revenue were respectively They are 95.3%, 91.7%, 80.4%, and 56.5%, which decrease year by year; in the same year, the corresponding advertising business (online marketing) revenue proportions were respectively They were 4.7%, 8.2%, 19.0%, and 37.2%.
In 2020, advertising has contributed 21.855 billion yuan to Kuaishou, nearly 40% of its revenue, an increase of 194.6% compared to 2019. With reference to Mango Media, a listed company in the domestic radio and television department, its advertising revenue in 2020 will only be 4.139 billion yuan.
Some advertising products of Douyin Source: oceanengine.com
Although Douyin has not yet been listed, there is no detailed revenue data like Kuaishou. But the main monetization channels of Douyin are still in these three models, but the order is different:
Many media reported that in 2020, Douyin’s advertising turnover will be 100~105 billion yuan; the live streaming turnover will be 45~50 billion, which is “a little lower than Kuaishou for the whole year”, and the goal is to “live streaming surpassing Kuaishou.” It is worth noting that the turnover here refers to turnover. In the e-commerce sector, the entire bytebeat of live broadcast e-commerce in 2020 is expected to achieve a scale of 100 to 120 billion, video e-commerce will reach about 30 billion, incubate 1.5 to 2 billion e-commerce experts, and 3 to 4 billion e-commerce commissions. income.
On the basis of maintaining the basic advertising, Douyin aims to surpass Kuaishou on live broadcasts and find increments; Kuaishou also regards offense as the best defense to greatly increase audiences and expand advertising revenue. Of course, e-commerce, the market closest to money, is the twoA strategic height that coincides with each other.
In the field of e-commerce, in fact, whether the two are in live e-commerce, online celebrities carrying goods, or so-called private domain traffic, the essence of “creating demand” is not much different-rather than directing traffic It’s better to sell goods on your own.
Even in order to protect this growing cash cow, Douyin has already banned external links from October 2020 and does not allow third-party products to enter the shopping cart of the Douyin Live Room.
The layout of the short video platform for e-commerce is undoubtedly its strategic focus for seeking growth. Source: kwaishop.com
Another set of data also shows the tension of the two attacks. The Kuaishou performance announcement on March 23 shows that the anchor’s revenue share and related taxes will reach 18.8 billion yuan from 2020. On March 25, the social responsibility report released by ByteDance also emphasized that 22 million creators on Douyin have earned more than 41.7 billion yuan in total. For content communities based on short videos, the competition is just the beginning.
It is reported that during the Spring Festival of 2021, the daily activity of the main website of Kuaishou will reach 280 million, and channels such as the speed version and small programs will add up to 200 million, and the three terminals will total 480 million. Also during the Spring Festival, the peak of the Douyin main station + speed version is about 650 million. If the volcano (has been changed to the Douyin volcano version) is calculated In addition, the daily activity is about 680 to 700 million. This kind of user mass is undoubtedly a further overlap of users.
It can already be seen very clearly, In the rapid Internet market, the short video track has changed from an emerging track to an inertial track, and the development focus has gradually transitioned from the user acquisition stage to the business realization stage; Incremental competition for enclosures has also shifted to competing stockscompetition. In the “close-to-hand combat” between the two, the differences are having to gradually weaken, and they continue to penetrate each other’s scenes and modes.
When the players on the track are filling in the opposing moat, it is already a flat river, and everyone has to start some “brute force” competitions-the byte beat system itself has alternate weeks. The “small and small week” tradition of single rest. Not long ago, Kuaishou also opened the large and small week on January 10, 2021. This is the industry involution.
V. The moat is not deep, station B is expected to be a battle
As long as human beings still use this small screen in their hands to obtain convenient information, cheap entertainment and make up for empty social interaction, the competition in this industry will not stop.
On March 29, B’s secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange reminded many people of Station A (AcFun). In fact, in June 2018, Station A was acquired by Kuaishou.
Today, Kuaishou and Station A, Kuaiying (video editing), Yitian Camera(Meitu) constitutes the product matrix of Kuaishou series. Although the byte beating system is slightly thin compared to the “APP factory”, it has also built its own industrial ecosystem.
When Kuaishou initially acquired Station A, this acquisition was considered to be an expansion of Kuaishou’s user base (the overlap between the two users was very low), and it was realized Complementary traffic and expand the strategic layout of content sources. Looking at today, it actually shows that Kuaishou and Douyin are trying to carry out the “Tianji Horse Racing” in terms of their competitive strategies, that is, the difference competition.
A certain UP owner uploads three styles of dancing videos of Kuaishou, Douyin, and Station B on station B, and the user “drag screen” comments show that many users I am familiar with these three platforms and are cross-platform users Source: bilibili.com
It is the interest of Kuaishou and Douyin in cinema movies that has received widespread attention. In 2020, “囧Mo” was launched on the Bytedance platform (including Douyin), and even triggered a collective resistance from the cinema community. Kuaishou also began to enter the game, and soon after participating in the release of the theater film “Empty Nest”. Although theaters are worried about the diversion of audiences; for content copyright owners, Kuaishou Douyin, which owns users and channels, has a clear channel for profit, which is as attractive as offline theaters.
I even open the web version of Kuaishou now, and I see it is a video website. Short videos and live broadcasts are listed alongside small theaters, movies, and AcFun. Of course, Douyin seems to be relatively restrained. This is only because Bytedance has laid out Watermelon Video on this track. Moreover, Watermelon Video, Douyin, and other Bytedance apps have their own good content to get through.
In fact, should these platforms make long videos? It’s not the key to the problem. The point is that they are all doing content communities. The length of the video is not the key issue. It’s the fate that can gather popularity and traffic.
As a result, we seem to see Kuaishou, Douyin, and Station B close to each other, video-based communities, regardless of whether the video is long or short. Kaishou, Douyin, B station, at least at the high-quality “up master”(content uploader)level , The war has been ignited.
Kaishou web version of the movie homepage Source: kuaishou.com
China’s demographic dividend, consumption dividend, and mobile dividend have nurtured a huge market, and this market is undergoing a brutal iteration of life and death. From group buying to live broadcasting, from online ride-hailing to bicycle sharing, the short video industry or content community also seems to have crossed the life-and-death leap from traffic to profit, and began to look for increments.
But the short video industry does not have such a deep moat.
Just like the rapid rise of Kuaishou and Douyin, users will not only belong to a certain platform. In the constant evolution and upgrading of competition, Kuaishou and Douyin are mediocre or diligent, centralized or grassroots, and how is the competition pattern in overseas markets(Overseas Kuaishou is Kwai And Zynn and TikTok’s PK are also staged wonderful stories), How is the success or failure of the battle after entering the e-commerce Red Sea, or whether there will be new technological changes, and whether there will be new players entering Field, the future is still very variable.
This article is from WeChat official account:Shenzhen Tencent News (ID: qqshenwang) , author: Wen Shijun