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at the end of august, there was a wave of shock among the xigua video creators.

the reason is that since september, the "mid-video partner program" that has been running for more than three years has been removed from the shelves and replaced by douyin's "creator partner program". after the adjustment, the revenue of xigua and douyin will be distributed uniformly on douyin. some creators mentioned that after the update, the revenue of the partner program dropped sharply.

in 2020, xigua video and bilibili launched a round of poaching wars. on the surface, the focus of the competition was on the top creators, but in fact, the competition also occurred between mid-level and even bottom creators, and the method of competition was revenue sharing. the following year, toutiao, xigua video, and douyin jointly launched the "mid-level video partner program."

as short videos have gained an absolute advantage in the video field, in the organizational structure adjustment in 2021, xigua and toutiao and other businesses were incorporated into the douyin business segment.the removal of the mid-length video partner program marks another decline in xigua video’s presence in the douyin ecosystem.

at the beginning of this year, there were rumors that bytedance was undergoing internal adjustments and xigua video would be merged into douyin and would no longer operate xigua video separately. the relevant person in charge of douyin later said that the relevant information was untrue and the company would continue to invest in serving the authors and users of xigua video in the long term.

what is certain is that xigua video is not the only product that carries long video content in the douyin ecosystem. in march last year, douyin launched the qingtao app, which mainly contains medium and long videos. this is a product that is said to be a benchmark for bilibili and has since been renamed douyin selected edition. the douyin app also has a long video content channel called selected.

the presence of xigua video has decreased, but long videos are a track that douyin will not give up.

recently, @米三汉 posted a 7.5-hour long video on douyin, which has become a new cultural phenomenon on douyin. in addition, there are many other long video contents on the platform, such as "226 minutes to interpret "the three-body problem"" and "240 minutes to interpret "white deer plain", which are close to iqiyi, youku and tencent video in length. the above content is exactly the new content benchmark supported by douyin this year.

but obviously, douyin’s attack is not aimed at iqiyi, youku, or tencent video, but still at bilibili.

if you click on the douyin featured channel, you can find that the length of the videos in the channel is mostly concentrated between 1 minute and 10 minutes, and the page settings are also more similar to bilibili.

in the middle of this year, douyin launched an activity focusing on literary classics and social science content to interpret social hot spots, among which the key content was the "read all in one breath..." series of knowledge videos. some b station up pages switched to douyin or released exclusive content on douyin to participate in the series of activities.

as we all know, in 2021, bilibili became popular with knowledge videos. previously, xigua video had also started a round of content competition with bilibili. in this round, the one who competed with bilibili for the throne of knowledge videos became douyin.

the earliest product in the douyin ecosystem used to compete with bilibili was xigua video, which was derived from toutiao video.

however, since xigua video started out with rural content, in 2019, xigua video began to work hard to "return home", benchmarking the collection of great dramas in the tv drama area of ​​bilibili, and launched a batch of classic old dramas, including "bright sword", "little soldier zhang ga", "serious crime unit 1-4", etc.

at the same time, xigua video also started a war to recruit talents. a bilibili up-host told zip list that in 2019, he felt that the competition between the two platforms had intensified, and xigua video had been constantly poaching many bilibili up-hosts, "and it was a large-scale poaching."

as bytedance began to trim fat and increase leanness in 2021 and merge similar businesses, the promotion of xigua video has been significantly reduced. at the same time, douyin tested a long video area in the app and gave it a first-level entrance position on the homepage.

last year, douyin also developed an independent app qingtao for its medium and long video business, which seemed to indicate that it was trying again to enter the medium and long video market. however, a few months later, douyin merged similar businesses again, and qingtao was renamed douyin selected, and its data was also fully interconnected with the douyin main site.

in addition to the name change, almost all creator interaction data, likes, and comments in douyin selection are interoperable with the data of douyin’s main site.

in the battlefield of medium and long videos, douyin has thought about "dividing". xigua video and qingtao are both products of this strategy. however, in the context of the times, using douyin to concentrate on content will achieve the greatest results.

independent apps can indeed bring some advertising revenue to the platform. according to a research report by oriental fortune securities, during the 618 period in 2024, among taobao's advertising expenditures, kuaishou accounted for 27.4%, bilibili accounted for 16.4%, weibo accounted for 14.7%, and douyin accounted for 3.8%. xigua video also grabbed a 2.2% share.

however, douyin accounted for 58.0% of pinduoduo's advertising expenditure, and xigua video failed to make it into the top 10 list.

with the end of the mid-length video plan, xigua video and douyin have become more deeply integrated. after the adjustment, creators can only earn income from videos posted on douyin, and xigua video's position has been further weakened. at the end of august, a xigua video creator found that after upgrading the partner plan, his income dropped sharply, "plummeting by 80% to 90%, and i don't want to update anymore", while another creator suggested "switching to the main site." at the same time, some creators said that since their income mainly comes from douyin, their income was not greatly affected before and after this adjustment.

the background of the launch of the mid-length video plan is that content platforms are fighting fiercely in the mid-length video track. under the out-of-circle effect of bilibili that year, xigua video tried to label itself as a mid-length video and use revenue to encourage creators to settle in and publish content.

but obviously, the trend of short videos has passed. "the era of relying on platform revenue to support an account is long gone," said a creator. what the platform needs is an account that can bring in advertising revenue.

before the adjustment, the medium-length video plan required that videos only generate revenue if they are longer than 1 minute. after the adjustment, as long as they are original, vertical screen videos and graphic content can generate revenue, and the incentives are no longer limited to medium-length and long videos.

unlike short videos, medium videos, especially those up to 15 minutes long, are often dominated by commentary and other content, and the monetization ability of such content is not strong. when the traffic dividend of the entire industry is over and the pattern is initially determined, adjusting the profit sharing is inevitable.

however, xigua's continued integration into the douyin ecosystem does not mean that douyin has given up on the long video track. the adjustment is just to shrink the original mid-length video battle, merge similar items, and concentrate on major tasks.

at the same time, douyin has become bytedance's main battlefield for attacking long videos.

the long video content can be simply divided into iqiyi, youku and tencent video’s copyrighted content, and bilibili’s ugc or pugc content. the former is a traditional business, and for douyin, which is good at high-gross-margin advertising business, the copyright business has a high threshold and limited cost-effectiveness.

it can be seen that douyin's featured channel does not synchronize the long video content of xigua video's tv series and movie channels. this part of the content is still retained in the xigua video app. douyin's featured channel only displays 1-10 minutes, ugc or pugc content similar to bilibili. this type of content has also become douyin's key support content.

in june this year, "mi sanhan" released a series of videos on douyin, which were about reading the original works of ancient literature in one go. the length of the videos ranged from 4 to 8 hours. among them, his interpretation of "dream of red mansions" received over 10 million likes and over 100 million views. it should be noted that in january last year, the 15-minute single episode of his interpretation video of "dream of red mansions" released on douyin received only a few thousand likes.

during the same period, "yizhixiaobaozi" also published in-depth interpretations of classic literary works on douyin, such as "226-minute in-depth interpretation of "the three-body problem"" and "248-minute in-depth interpretation of "white deer plain"," and other content, each of which received millions of likes. also in june, taolue academy published an 8-hour in-depth interpretation of the taoist classic "zhuangzi" which received nearly 200,000 likes.

it is no coincidence that many top creators released super-long videos of the same type at the same time. in june this year, douyin launched a creator incentive activity, which lasted for 3 months. one of the content directions was to watch cultural classics in one go.

this is why many top creators released similar content in june. in addition to cultural classics, the "30 low-level questions in one breath" released by "big questions dialectic" at the same time also received millions of likes.

the fact that super long videos have become popular is of course related to the solid content of the video itself, but it is still the platform that is driving it.

in fact, reading a series in one breath is not new. in 2023 or even earlier, both douyin and bilibili have had similar popular content. the introduction of this type of content by douyin is obviously intended to set a number of content benchmarks.

the production threshold for this type of long video, which is as long as seven or eight hours, is high, and creators often need several months to produce one. mi sanhan’s "450-minute interpretation of "a dream of red mansions"" mentioned that this video took 5 months to produce. it is difficult for creators to maintain the update frequency relying solely on this type of content. the role of this type of content is to support the platform's benchmark cases, attract more creators to join, and increase the platform users' consumption of this type of content.

on a daily basis, creators update more medium-length videos of about 5 minutes or 15 minutes, which are the mainstay of medium-length and long-length videos.

in 2020, xigua video and bilibili started a battle for content and creators of mid-length videos. four years later, bytedance once again launched an attack on bilibili, but the protagonist of the attack became tiktok.

the three-month event launched by douyin mainly includes cultural classics in one breath, interpreting social phenomena with social science knowledge such as sociology, in-depth exploration of the connotation of classic literary works and historical talk shows, and these contents were previously one of the advantageous categories of bilibili.

in fact, as early as july 2022, mi sanhan put his 8-hour interpretation of "dream of red mansions" on bilibili. the current playback volume exceeds 5 million. in horizontal comparison, this playback volume is already quite excellent on bilibili, but compared with the later playback of over 100 million on douyin and becoming a cultural phenomenon, mi sanhan's performance on bilibili at the time was not good enough. in january this year, mi sanhan's bilibili account stopped updating, and in june, he switched to douyin.

similarly, yizhi xiao baozi started updating content at the end of 2020, and currently, the first content posted on his douyin account was in february this year.

muyu shuixin, one of the top 100 up-loaders at bilibili, posted a video on douyin in august this year, saying that he finished reading records of the grand historian in 9 hours. although muyu shuixin updates on both platforms on a daily basis, this video was not synced on douyin.

either douyin took the initiative to do so, or the up-masters followed the direction of traffic. objectively, a group of knowledge video up-masters from bilibili moved to douyin in the middle of this year and gained secondary dividends on douyin.

knowledge videos are the traffic code for bilibili to break out of the circle. over the past few years, they have also become the basic foundation of bilibili. douyin's competition for these creators has obviously posed a threat to bilibili.

in fact, compared with the short drama industry which is still popular this year, medium and long videos themselves do not have many new stories to tell. the presence of xigua video has been declining, and bilibili has also fallen into the problem of user growth.

in the second quarter of this year, bilibili's average daily active users reached 102 million, a year-on-year increase of 6%, and its average monthly active users reached 336 million. in the first quarter, its monthly active users were 341 million, and its monthly active users growth stagnated.

at the performance meeting in early 2021, chen rui set a goal: to expand the scale of monthly active users to 400 million by 2023. however, to date, bilibili's monthly active users are still some distance away from 400 million.

on the road to growth, bilibili has run into douyin, which is trying to expand its mid-length video ecosystem. how it responds is obviously a new highlight of the mid-length video track, which seems to be as calm as water on the surface.

for douyin, the difficulties it encountered in the operation of xigua video in the past still exist, that is, the commercialization ability of medium and long videos is not as good as that of short videos. it is still unknown how long douyin's traffic support for medium video content will last.