At the World Internet Conference held today in Wuzhen, China, ByteDance, the maker behind one of China’s most famous short video apps, Douyin (known as Tik Tok outside China), claims that Douyin has clocked over 400 million monthly active users (MAU) and north of 200 million daily active users (DAU) in its domestic China market, a new height over the short span of the past 5 months.
Specifically, since June, Douyin has seen its daily active users increase by approximately 33% from 150 million to today’s 200 million.
Outside China, Tik Tok is also making a phenomenal progress.
App Annie, an app analytics firm, revealed that Tik Tok is top ranked in app marketplaces in almost 40 of the countries and regions it has a presence.
This growing phenomenon both in China and beyond has set Toutiao on a growth trajectory that is looking to threaten Tencent’s dominance in China’s social media space. The short-video app continues to attract users and is reportedly able to consumer 9% of China’s users’ time.
Burgeoning online traffic has also paved the way for Douyin to explore ways to monetize the huge trove of its user base. One way has been to tap into Alibaba platforms, by allowing shoppers to enjoy short videos while they shop online.
This social commerce trend is likely to grow following such tie-ups, reflecting the complementary relationships that e-commerce and social media share. Social media, by default, is sticky and has the ability to attract users and keep them onboard, but this is not possible for e-commerce platforms where people tend to only go online when they need to purchase goods. This conundrum will be the key driver for China’s social commerce as it is a win-win for both social media and e-commerce players.
As such, Tencent has been trying hard to stem the rise of Douyin. One example will be the slew of short video apps like Intoo, Sukan, Shanka, in addition to Weishi, Tencent has launched in the past. However, there seems to be little change to the market dynamics and this reveals the stickiness advantage top short video apps have over other entrants.
Editor: Ben Jiang