Image source @Visual China
Text | Funky
Since ByteDance adjusted its organizational structure at the end of last year, the relationship between Douyin, Toutiao and Xigua Video has become closer. On the one hand, Douyin is attracting traffic for the latter two, and on the other hand, Toutiao has gradually become a new window for Douyin’s live streaming traffic.
In March of this year, the author noticed that there were many quick windows for Douyin live broadcast in Toutiao, and published the article “Douyin Needs Traffic of Toutiao”. But it didn’t take long for the tentacles of Douyin Live to officially reach today’s headlines.
On the evening of May 14, 2022, Toutiao announced that it would upgrade the live broadcast section as a whole. “The upgraded live broadcast service will be provided by Douyin.” According to the rules, the live broadcast rights in the user’s Toutiao account can be migrated/integrated. To the Douyin account, and the content of the Douyin account can be distributed on Douyin, Toutiao and Xigua Video at the same time.
01 Transformation and Videoization of Toutiao
Previously, before Byte did not divide its business into the current six major sectors, Toutiao had been playing a role in the integration of byte-based application content services. Today’s Toutiao includes its own graphic content, short video content from Douyin and Huoshan Video (the predecessor of Douyin Volcano), and medium and long video content from Xigua Video, which is appropriate in the byte system. A proper “content master”.
Today’s Toutiao is even better than before, and the most notable feature is that Toutiao is being videoized.
Today’s Toutiao was created in 2012 and released its first version in 2013. Since then, it has quickly become the hottest graphic information APP in the market with its intelligent recommendation algorithm. It is also the success of today’s headlines that allowed ByteDance to successfully hatch Douyin in the follow-up.
As an app that focuses on graphic content, the development of Toutiao has indirectly changed the life of many independent information content apps and portal websites, allowing users to obtain more content more conveniently within an app. The market foundation is not as stable as expected, and a series of platform upgrade measures have been implemented.
Before today’s headlines are not really videoized, the direction of their exploration is still mainly in the category of graphics. Several major exploration initiatives include Toutiao Q&A (Wukong Q&A) for Zhihu, Wei Toutiao for short content on Weibo, and Toutiao Hot List for hot searches on Weibo.
But the final result?
The development of Wukong Q&A failed, and it was finally merged into Toutiao Q&A; Wei Toutiao is still developing, but it is still difficult to really challenge the short content of Weibo; as for the Toutiao Hot List, Toutiao originally developed a first-level independent interface for it, which can influence influence It is difficult to shake the Weibo hot search list, and finally the headline hot list is classified into the sub-content section.
Since then, the popularity of Douyin/Tik Tok has also reflected from the side that in the era of mobile Internet, many users have not had much patience to really read an article, but are addicted to short video content and cannot extricate themselves. This is also an important reason for the current limited development of graphic applications, the bottleneck of 100 million users in domestic long-term video applications, and the fact that Toutiao itself is pushing micro-toutiao content with less text when faced with graphic content. .
After all, many people are less patient with browsing long pictures and videos, and are more concerned about “short and smooth” content.
Today’s Toutiao live broadcast service will be provided by Douyin, which means that the cooperation between Douyin and Today’s Toutiao is officially on the stage in the field of live broadcast. Douyin raises the ceiling of live streaming services.
So, another question worthy of attention is why Douyin looks at Toutiao instead of other byte-based platforms?
02 Why is Toutiao today?
As long as the domestic graphic information APP is mentioned, the first thing that many users think of is Toutiao, but under the bright appearance, the current development of Toutiao may not be very good.
Last year, according to a report by the Shanghai Securities News, Toutiao was reported to be on the verge of losing money. In addition, the situation of Toutiao today is different from that of Douyin. It not only needs to face the competition of graphic information applications including Baidu APP and Tencent News, but also has to face the competition of short video applications for user time.
Therefore, on the one hand, Byte does not want to gradually lose the market influence of its former “top-stream application”, and needs to inject more video content into it to maintain new vitality; on the other hand, it needs to use live content to cut into e-commerce. Douyin, the best helper in the byte system is naturally Toutiao, whose user volume is larger than that of Xigua Video.
Such “two-way running” also determines the future positioning of Toutiao. As one of the six major business segments of ByteDance, Douyin, today’s headlines, Xigua Video and other applications in the Douyin segment must serve its development.
Recently, several companies under ByteDance changed their names to Douyin, which was linked to the arrival of the new CFO Gao Motion, which is also considered to be ByteDance’s preparation for the listing. The name change of ByteDance to Douyin is more to boost social influence and public awareness when it goes public. After all, ByteDance may not be as well-known as Tencent and Ali in domestic second- and third-tier cities. However, the company’s reputation is only one of them. , and more importantly, to let the market and capital see the platform’s hard power of Douyin, which requires the cooperation of today’s headlines.
In the e-commerce sector, Douyin, which continues to develop e-commerce business, has become an increasingly important role in the domestic e-commerce market. Data from Dolphin Club shows that Douyin ranks fourth in the 2021 domestic e-commerce TOP100 ranking, with a GMV of 800 billion yuan, second only to Pinduoduo, which ranks third.
At present, old players in the e-commerce market are also blocking new players such as Douyin in various ways. In the short term, if Douyin wants “data” to become better, it can only ask Toutiao for channels and traffic.
Douyin is trying to play a key role in the part of the platform’s “making popularity”, or the part of the platform’s influence on domestic fashion trends. Whether it’s the popular student Zhang before, or the current Liu Genghong and the account “Bottom Hot Boy” who became popular with the “How to become an international supermodel” series of videos, their popularity is more or less related to Douyin.
There are many similar examples. Douyin influences users by virtue of its platform ability of “making popularity”, and is labeling itself as a “trend”, showing higher social hotspot influence and raising its valuation. For ByteDance, Douyin’s popular traffic is best to spill over to its own platforms such as Toutiao, and eventually form a traffic closed loop.
03 Epilogue
Today’s Toutiao is running wildly on the road of videoization. In addition to “Home” and “My” in the four first-level menus at the bottom of the application, the other two “Video” and “Exhibition Hall” are video pages.
The success of Toutiao in those years, and the continuous transformation and changes since then, also reflect the development of graphic information platforms. Just like the traditional paper media, the graphic reading method will continue to exist, but there may be fewer and fewer people who are really willing to calm down and read a graphic report.
Perhaps, this is the “psychedelic effect” attached to the progress of technology and the times. The short, fast and mindless way of reading is just what most people need.
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