Chinese social powerhouse Tencent has unveiled a cross-platform news feed service called Tencent Kandian, the company announced Monday, raising up the rivalry with other competitors offering news feed on their applications such as Tiktok owner ByteDance and search engine Baidu.
Tencent Kandian combines content from previous platforms QQ Kandian, Tiantian Kuaibao, and QQ Browser’s news feed.
After the overhaul, Tencent Kandian now provides its users with a mix of content including articles, pictures, videos, live streaming, and columns from Tencent’s ecosystem of apps and platforms. Tencent Kandian is currently available on WeChat, messaging tool QQ and QQ Browser.
Moreover, Tencent has also launched two standalone apps, news aggregator Kandian Kuaibao, and Kandian Video, in addition to a mini program for WeChat dubbed Kandian Livestreaming.
With the move, Tencent expects to develop its news feed service provider Kandian to retain and provide information to over 1 billion Tencent’s users.
Tencent says that after the integration and launch of Tencent Kandian, the platform already has 185 million daily active users (DAUs). In contrast, ByteDance’s AI-powered news aggregator Jinri Toutiao has around 120 million DAUs, while Baidu’s mobile app, which provides news feed and online search function, hit 189 million DAUs as of September.
Behind the hot competitive news feed sector, Tencent and its competitors are trying to monetize the huge user pool they own.
Revenues from online advertising have become the new cash cow for Tencent. Social and other advertising revenues in the third quarter were RMB 14.7 million, posting a 32% year-on-year increase, driven by WeChat Moments ads and mobile ads. In contrast, media advertising revenues slumped at double digits, down 28% year-on-year, under a macroeconomy slowdown.
Therefore, Tencent bets bigger on in-feed ads which are more flexible and user-tailored. Ads on Kandian are classified as social ads, according to local business news outlet Yicai, citing an insider familiar with the situation.
Yang Zhida, the head of news feed department at Tencent Platform and Content Group (PCG), said that Kaidian’s revenue would grow by 300% in the coming year.