Good is value.
On August 24th, Vibrato held a creator conference in Shanghai. Zhang Nan, president of Vibrato, said in a speech that the development of short video is beyond imagination. It is estimated that by 2020, the total number of daily active users in the short video industry will reach 1 billion.
At the scene, Zhang Nan explained the product positioning of the “good” vibrato and the social value of the short video.
Zhang Nan believes that in the past year, many people misunderstood the beauty of the vibrato, and they oppose the good and the truth, but in fact, the two do not conflict. The former is the value judgment, and the latter is the factual judgment. The vibrato sounds beautiful because the vibrato represents an optimistic value proposition. Zhang Nan also responded to some controversy surrounding the vibrato and short video.
When referring to the value of short videos, Zhang Nan said that vibrato is a tool to help users to transmit information. Short video and vibrato bring a significant reduction in video creation and distribution thresholds, and a faster flow of information. And connection, is the value of information and inclusiveness, “Every video left by each user on the vibrato will be the foundation of history, and eventually become the ‘video encyclopedia’ of human civilization.”
The following is the full text of Zhang Nan:
Hello everyone, I am Zhang Nan. Today, I saw so many creators, media teachers and experts coming to the scene. I am very grateful to everyone and very excited. I am familiar with my friends. Everyone knows that I am a product manager, so I am not very good at speaking, and I am not very good at this occasion.
But today I saw so many people, especially today, it’s the first time that Vibrato has held a creator’s conference, so I really want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the vibrato, short video in the industry. Some discussions and even controversy.
At the beginning, everyone thought about short videos.
Everyone knows that bytebeat is a technology company that distributes information. We are very concerned about the development of technology. From the arrival of the mobile era and the popularity of large-screen mobile phones, our company has been paying close attention to the direction of short video. We feel that mobile video should be a very big opportunity and may bring about a big change in information dissemination.
Very big, but how big? Looking back now, everyone, including ourselves, may have greatly underestimated the possibility of short videos. I remember that in 2014, the company met to discuss that we would do short videos. At that time, the entire Zhichun Road subway was full of micro-visions.Reported that the product launched by Weibo at that time was called a second shot. We were a little hesitant in the heart. Do we still do it? But by the end of the year, there were already hundreds of thousands of DAUs in the US. At that time, we felt that we might have missed this opportunity.
In 2015, Yiming took our entire team to the Okinawa Open Annual Meeting. After the annual meeting, more than a dozen people came to the Izakaya and chatted about the short video. I am particularly impressed, why? Because we have more than a dozen people, we ordered two plates of sushi. At that time, we sat around the table to discuss, short video, especially UGC short video, or should it be done? At that time, the mobile phone I used was an iPhone6plus, which was the first time Apple introduced a 5-inch large-screen mobile phone. Everyone still has a feeling that this market space should still be very large, but for various reasons, we have not started a short video project at that time.
Until the beginning of the 16th year, we revisited the short video and felt that we still couldn’t give up. This may be an opportunity to bring a lot of changes to the world, we should try. Later, everyone knows that there is a product that vibrates.
After 17 months of vibrato on the line, DAU broke through 100 million. This should be the fastest growing product of China Mobile Internet after WeChat. Just last month, we also announced the latest user data of the vibrato – DAU more than 320 million, and we found in the background that this data is still growing, there is no slowdown.
So I personally think, boldly guess, maybe by 2020, including vibrato, fast, and other short video products, maybe in China alone, the entire short video will reach 1 billion DAU. What is the concept of 1 billion DAU? It is almost equal to the daily users of WeChat today.
In fact, I believe that even without mentioning these figures, everyone can feel the changes that short video brings to the world.
Before we went out to travel, everyone would say to take a photo, now everyone will say a short video, take a vibrate. When I went abroad, I found that many museums and scenic spots can sweep through the cultural relics information of short videos. In some places, you can even use the short video of your mobile phone to browse the entire collection of museums.
If you use Taobao or Meituan reviews in China, you will also find that short videos have become the basic form of merchandise and food display. I remember that Taobao once thought that “in the future, 90% of the content on Taobao will be presented in the form of video.” Even WeChat, the most important communication tool of all of us, has already released restrictions on fast hands and micro-visions this year, even in the public number, take a look, including friends, especially for short video.
It can be said that all walks of life are evolving in the direction of short video. To our delight, the vibrato has been loved by many users and sometimes even synonymous with short videos. Many people will now say “coming and coming”Let’s take a vibrate.”
There are many misunderstandings about the beauty of vibrato.
When short videos are getting more and more into the lives of ordinary people, the public and the media are beginning to care about the value orientation of short videos. In fact, for vibrato, we always have a very clear value orientation for products and content, which is “beautiful.”
At the end of 2017, the vibrato grew rapidly, from a niche, trend-popping product to a platform for ordinary people to record their lives. We found that many people recorded their happy, simple life moments on the vibrato. I think that this is actually a “recording a good life”, and this sentence is particularly in line with our original intention, so it became our 2018 slogan, which is our expression of the platform value.
But then, we found out that many people misunderstood the meaning of “beautiful”, or they were deliberately misled.
Last year, some people mentioned that life itself is actually not good. Most of the products are just using various filters to trick users and deceive users. Some people ask, the truth of the defect and the beauty of the false, which one do you choose? In fact, these statements, I think, are the opposite of good and true deliberate.
I don’t recognize this statement, I think this is a routine. In my opinion, in fact, good and true do not conflict, truth is factual judgment, and good is value judgment, it is a value proposition. I remember that I once brushed a video on the vibrato. A 69-year-old disabled old man is trying to climb Everest. His legs are prosthetics, but when I watched the video, I felt it myself. It is a sense of power that comes to the forefront. I think this is good.
I have always felt that good things must be pluralistic. Naturally, Tiancheng is beautiful, flawed reality is also beautiful, and positive progress is good, and life in good times is also beautiful. Of course, I also admit that life is not always good, but sometimes life is difficult, it is more beautiful and precious.
Life is a prism with a thousand facets. We hope that everyone can see the face that shines with courage and optimism from the vibrato. Pessimism has its unique value in aesthetics, but as a platform that affects hundreds of millions of users, Vibrato chooses optimism.
Not everything is worth and should be seen by everyone
In addition to “beautiful”, I would like to say a few more words about the “reality” of the factual level.
In mid-2017, a group of underage mothers began to appear on some short video platforms. The vibrato is also very concerned. At the time, we felt that although this was an objective phenomenon, it was inappropriate to rely on the identity of the underage mother to attract traffic and trigger other minors to imitate. So at the time we unified the standard and restricted the uploading of such content to vibrato.
Of course, not only underage Baoma, but also a lot of similar content, such as fortune telling, watching feng shui and so on. Although these phenomena are objective and the content is very eye-catching, the vibrato has been strictly restricted. In general, I really don’t think that everything is worth or should be seen by everyone. The pursuit of truth is of course valuable, but it should not be an excuse for the platform to evade content management.
The pursuit of value for users, creators, society, and human civilization
After finishing the good, today I want to talk to you about my own thoughts on the value of short videos and the value of vibrato. The outbreak of short videos is actually a matter of the past year. There are some controversies and voices in the society around short videos and vibrato. Such as fragmentation, meaningless, addictive, underage, and so on.
I think there is a misunderstanding here. Just as real and good are not contradictory, short content is not equal to no value and meaningless. The length is just a form, and there is no value depending on what is carried in this video. In fact, short content is the most important part of human culture.
Compared with the Book of Songs, the five-character quatrain is short; compared to “Dream of Red Mansions”, “Liao Zhai” is short content; compared to the symphony, Jay Chou and Lin Xi are short content. Therefore, from the perspective of information dissemination and knowledge dissemination, it has long value and short and short benefits. Think of short content as fragmented, meaningless content. I think this is misunderstanding and prejudice.
Of course, some of the concerns in society are really justified, and we are also exploring improvements. Last year, we were the first to introduce a minor protection system in the industry, and the vibrato is still open for 1 to 15 minutes of video rights to help people better express. Of course, it is not enough, and there is still a lot of work to be done.
On the other hand, short video is really a new thing, we are also thinking, what is the value of short video? I don’t know if you know that the video is in English “Video”. This word is derived from Latin. Its Latin etymology is equivalent to the meaning of “I see”.
This Latin etymology is a good summary of my own thoughts about vibrato and short videos. Vibrato is actually a tool, a tool that helps users pass information. Short video and vibrato bring about a drastic reduction in video creation and distribution thresholds, a faster flow and connection of information, and a value for information.
Based on this, vibrato will better improve the product in the future. I hope that the vibrato will eventually reflect its value in four dimensions:
First of all, of course the user dimension, because users are always our first pursuit. For the user, short video is first of all the value of recording and expression. Video content spans time and space, connecting people together.
Secondly, users can also get valuable information by vibrating. More and more now