30 Things in 30 Years of the Internet | 20 Years of Short Video Industry, From Competition among Giants to National Entertainment
2024-08-07
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
Opening remarks
In April 1994, China fully accessed the Internet and became the 77th member of the international Internet family. This year marks the 30th anniversary of China's full access to the Internet, an important milestone.
In just 30 years of development, there are many things worth remembering, such as the turbulent tide and the turbulent wind. In these 30 years, China's Internet has grown from nothing to something, from small to large, and from large to strong, and many objects, applications or platforms have been born. The value of the above objects or applications is not only commercial, but also a kind of sentiment, which embodies the long-term memory of people's lives and emotions.
To this end, Beijing News Beike Finance and China Internet Development Foundation and China Positive Energy Network Communication Special Fund jointly launched the "Internet 30 Years 30 Things" special issue. It hopes to outline the evolution of China's Internet over the past 30 years and see where it will go in the future by telling the stories of objects, applications or platforms that have symbolic significance in the history of China's Internet development.
30 years ago, an Internet cable connected China to the world. Today, half a century after the Internet, China has not only developed the Internet, but also AI.
Art leader Andy Warhol once said, "Everyone can be famous for 15 minutes." However, in the era of short videos, it only takes 15 seconds for a person to become famous.
After nearly 20 years of development, the short video industry has evolved from the micro-film era to the mobile era and then to the universal era. The industry generally believes that more and more short video platforms will begin to diversify, taking into account a variety of content and forms of expression; industry players will also tend to be more concentrated, relying more on the support of giants, and realizing vertical and horizontal alliances through capital and resources. Short videos will also be increasingly integrated into various super applications as a form of content expression and distribution. At the same time, with the strengthening of supervision and the advancement of technology, the short video industry will also usher in a more compliant and broad development.
microfilm
In 2005, with the increase in Internet speed and bandwidth, as well as the popularization of personal computers (PCs) and video recorders, the Internet began to move from the era of pictures and texts to the era of videos. Tudou.com, Xunlei, VeryCD (eMule Download) and other companies were established one after another.
At the end of the same year, an animation sound engineer named Hu Ge edited clips from the movie The Promise into a short film called A Murder Caused by a Bun, which exploded on the Internet and even surpassed the original film The Promise in terms of downloads. This is considered to be the prototype of micro-movies. Micro-movies promoted the grassroots nature of short videos and inadvertently cultivated the awareness of netizens to use fragmented time to shoot, produce, upload and watch.
Founded in 2006, Six Room introduced Hu Ge and released his subsequent works, which brought huge traffic. As the atmosphere of video sharing gradually took shape, Six Room joined Tudou, Youku, Ku6.com and other domestic first-tier video sharing websites.
Initially, these video websites were positioned as platforms for uploading and publishing original videos, which is quite similar to the concept of today's short video platforms. However, user habits were still in the cultivation stage at that time, and the cost of filming equipment and uploading was expensive. In 2010, players such as iQiyi and Youku entered the market with copyrighted content and capital, and the mobile Internet trend hit. The popular PC video sharing websites at that time either closed down or changed hands, and Liujianfang gradually turned to the direction of live performances.
Watershed
2016 can be said to be a "watershed" for the short video industry, and the entry of ByteDance is a landmark event. Before ByteDance announced its "All-in short video" strategy, there were nearly 400 short video platforms, large and small. Kuaishou, Miaopai, Xigua Video, Meipai, Huoshan Video, Tudou and other platforms quickly emerged and entered the first camp. They either seized the first-mover advantage of niche segments and quickly accumulated a huge user base, or they relied on Internet traffic giants.
Han Kun, one of the founders of Ku6.com, and Zhang Hongyu, one of the founders of PPS, have been working in the short video field for a long time. After Ku6.com was acquired by Shanda Network, Han Kun founded Yixia Technology in 2012, the parent company of Miaopai, Xiaokaxiu and Yizhibo, to enter the mobile video sharing market. Zhang Hongyu joined iQiyi after PPS was acquired by iQiyi and became an early investor in Miaopai. Miaopai relies on strategic cooperation and investment relations with Weibo, and has many celebrity and opinion leader resources under Weibo, and most of the playback traffic is achieved on Weibo.
Kuaishou was founded in 2011 as a tool for making animated images. In 2012, it transformed into a short video community and quickly gained influence among residents in third- and fourth-tier cities. However, Kuaishou said: "Kuaishou is not about short videos or live broadcasts. It just hopes to use technology to give everyone the ability to record and share. This technology can also be used in other forms in the future. We hope that everyone can have equal opportunities to spread."
Meipai emphasizes beauty functions, with a feminine and vertical positioning, and its users are mostly women.
During the 2014 Spring Festival, hundreds of celebrities including Lee Min Ho, Fan Bingbing, and He Jiong gathered on Weishi to pay New Year’s greetings, which were broadcasted on TV. This brought a small climax to Weishi: this application, which was only launched in 2013, remained in the top five of the App Store for several consecutive days, with 45 million daily active users. From New Year’s Eve to the first day of the new year, millions of people posted and watched short videos of New Year’s greetings on Weishi, with a total playback volume of hundreds of millions of times. Ten months after its launch, Weishi was quickly established as an independent department.
The entry of ByteDance in the second half of 2016 became a "watershed" in the short video industry. In September 2016, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, announced his "all-in short video" strategy and launched three short video products: Xigua Video, Huoshan Video, and Douyin. It is reported that the three products have different positioning: Douyin is mainly a music short video for young people, Huoshan Video is a daily life sharing platform, and Xigua is a mobile short video platform that uses AI algorithms to push content to users.
With the strong entry of ByteDance, the short video industry has entered a new competitive landscape. Mainstream Internet companies have focused their attention on the short video field and are unwilling to miss out on the new trend.
Battle between giants
The "war" first burned over subsidies. In September 2016, Tencent and ByteDance almost simultaneously proposed short video subsidy plans of 1 billion yuan each; in the first half of 2017, Baidu and Alibaba followed suit, with Baidu announcing that it would share a total of 10 billion yuan with content producers, while Alibaba proposed to use 2 billion yuan in subsidies to support content creation; in November 2017, Tencent used 10 billion yuan in subsidies and resources to increase its content open platform at its partner conference, focusing on supporting short video startups, and even opening up its own copyrighted content for producers to use; Xigua Video, a subsidiary of ByteDance, also announced that it would take out 2 billion yuan as prepayment for creators' production fees.
The platform was built at the same time as the subsidies. At first, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) did not set up a separate short video aggregation platform, but chose to add short video functions to their original super applications, and encouraged content providers to enter various "accounts" to achieve "one account entry" and multi-platform distribution. Tencent's "Penguin Account" is responsible for this function, and Alibaba's "Big Fish Account" is responsible for this function. Baidu, NetEase, and Sohu have also followed suit and opened various distribution accounts.
Under the temptation of short video's strong playback volume and playback time, in the second half of 2017, major Internet companies also launched their own short video platforms. In November 2017 alone, the short video industry welcomed four new products directly incubated by Internet companies, namely 360's "Quick Video", Baidu's "Haokan Video", Tencent's restarted "Weishi", and Weibo's "KuRan". In the first half of 2017, Alibaba upgraded the Tudou.com it acquired into a short video platform. Tencent emphasizes social relationships, Alibaba focuses on e-commerce traffic, and ByteDance seeks information distribution. Internet giants are focusing on short videos in their respective areas of expertise.
In the short video field, capital layout has already begun. The first to be acquired by the giant was Miaopai. In July 2013, September 2014, November 2015, and November 2016, Sina Weibo Fund invested in Miaopai's parent company Yixia Technology in four consecutive rounds, and was the lead investor in at least two rounds. At a critical moment, Weibo used Miaopai as its exclusive short video platform to help Miaopai win the battle against Meipai, Xiaoying and other platforms.
Kuaishou followed closely behind. In March 2017, Kuaishou received $350 million in financing, led by Tencent. In March 2016, Baidu's investment department was involved in its tens of millions of dollars in financing. Meipai, a veteran player, is affiliated with Meitu, a Hong Kong-listed company. Xigua Video, Huoshan Video, and Douyin are all backed by ByteDance.
Chinese Internet giants completed the gathering of forces in the short video sector in early 2018. From the perspective of capital, various short video platforms have embraced the giants and used resources and capital to "achieve each other". From the perspective of application attributes, there may be very few independent short video platforms in the future, and most of them will be integrated into super applications as tools to attract traffic and distribute content.
Adjusting and moving forward
By the end of 2019, short video traffic had been basically divided. QuestMobile data shows that as of June 2019, the short video industry had nearly 100 million newly installed users, and the total monthly active users were close to 821 million, basically covering all netizens in my country at that time. Among them, ByteDance (TikTok, Xigua and Huoshan) ranked first with nearly 600 million monthly active users after deduplication, while Kuaishou ranked second with nearly 350 million monthly active users, followed by Tencent (Weishi, Hotpot) and Baidu (Haokan, Quanmin) with huge traffic entrances.
Many commercial actions were carried out almost simultaneously by various companies. Advertising, e-commerce, live broadcasting, corporate accounts, and short video monetization methods were almost all opened to content producers this year. Many content entrepreneurs said frankly that it was precisely because of the "attack" of Tencent Weishi and Baidu Haokan Video that Douyin and Kuaishou were willing to open all these e-commerce, advertising and other channels that were originally used by the platform to content entrepreneurs, so that they could get more share in the ecosystem.
It can be said that short videos have become the biggest outlet in the 4G era, and no giant wants to be absent. Although Tencent and Baidu lagged behind Kuaishou and ByteDance at the time, they all hope to stay at the table and wait for the next outlet in the 5G era. Just one year later, the "lucky" Tencent waited for WeChat Video Account, while Baidu "hastily" announced at the end of 2020 that it would acquire YY Live, a subsidiary of Joyy Group, for more than 3 billion yuan.
As the short video industry is booming, industry supervision is becoming increasingly strict. In 2018, short video platforms such as Kuaishou, Huoshan Video, Meipai, and Douyin were summoned by relevant departments and ordered to make rectifications. That year, Douyin launched an initiative on the platform for all sectors of society to jointly formulate the "Douyin Community Convention" to strengthen self-discipline; in early 2019, the China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association issued the "Online Short Video Platform Management Specifications" and "Online Short Video Content Review Standards and Detailed Rules" to guide the standardized development of the industry; in 2020, Xiaokaxiu and Pear Video were successively removed from the shelves; 2021 coincides with the start of the "14th Five-Year Plan", and the short video industry has ushered in the "strongest supervision in history". The China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association issued the "Online Short Video Content Review Standards and Detailed Rules", which has made more detailed regulations and restrictions on short video content.
The latest data shows that in 2023, there were 112.9187 million hours of new Internet video programs, including 547.4626 million hours of short videos. The average Internet citizen watched Internet audio-visual programs (including short videos) for about 3 hours a day, and the number of users uploading short videos exceeded 750 million.
The industry generally believes that more and more short video platforms will begin to diversify, taking into account a variety of content and forms of expression; industry players will also tend to be more concentrated, relying more on the support of giants, and realizing alliances through capital and resources. Short videos will also be increasingly integrated into various super applications as a form of content expression and distribution. At the same time, with the strengthening of supervision and the advancement of technology, the short video industry will also usher in a more compliant and broad development.
This event is funded by the China Internet Development Foundation's China Positive Energy Internet Communication Special Fund.
Beijing News Chief Reporter Bai Jinlei Editor Yue Caizhou Proofreader Liu Baoqing
