Short video app Kuaishou is about to become much more visible.
The app — with Tencent among its backers, and an overseas version called Kwai, the second highest earning video and photo app in the world in the second quarter of this year—will see its content appear on WeChat’s Kanyikan (“have a look”) feed, which is filled with recommended content from each user’s contact list.
Kanyikan is populated with articles and videos that a user’s friends mark by tapping the “zaikan” (“reading”) button, a design feature similar to Facebook’s “Like” button for the web.
The development follows Tencent’s decision in June to open its Moments feed to host Kuaishou video links, allowing the short video app to tap WeChat’s 1.1 billion monthly active users and compete with ByteDance’s Douyin.
At the moment, Douyin has 3.2 billion daily active users (DAUs), making it the most popular app of its kind in China. Kuaishou is aiming to hit 3 billion DAUs before Chinese New Year in 2020, which falls on Jan 25 next year. Tencent’s own short video app, known as Huoguo (“hotpot”) has failed to gain noticeable traction.
WeChat still blocks links to videos hosted on Douyin.
To draw eyeballs to its app, Douyin has rolled out a group chat function so that users can communicate with each other on its platform, giving the video app a social messaging feature that was previously absent.