In 2016, when other giants were withdrawing from the short video field, ByteDance made a choice and put all its chips on it. Behind this decision was the awareness of a profound trend that had been ignored by the market, which ultimately led to the birth of a product that reshaped the global entertainment landscape.
The exit of giants and market myths
In 2016, the short video market was widely regarded as a "dead end". Tencent's Weishi gradually stopped updating after 2015 and announced its complete closure in April 2017. This strategic withdrawal sent a clear signal to the outside world. Even giants with strong social relationships and resources found it difficult to achieve profitability and breakthroughs in this track. The industry focused on Kuaishou, the leader at the time. Its daily active users had exceeded 40 million, occupying the minds of users in sinking markets.
Kuaishou’s dominance and market gaps
Kuaishou built a strong competitive barrier at that time. It originated from the GIF tool and was close to the real records of ordinary people. It successfully acquired a large number of users in third- and fourth-tier cities and rural areas. Its core distribution logic is "following" and "being in the same city", thereby forming a solid community network. However, market surveys show that young users in first- and second-tier cities generally feel that Kuaishou's content is too "local" and lacks products that match their aesthetics and expression habits. This leaves structural opportunities for the emergence of new categories.
ByteDance’s differentiated insights
Two points constitute the core insights of the ByteDance team. First, they firmly believe that "information video" is an irreversible media evolution trend after graphics and text, and video will become the main carrier of content consumption in the future. Second, they realized that distribution efficiency was a shortcoming of all short video products at that time. Whether relying on social relationships or manual editing, there is no way to efficiently match massive content with diverse interests. This made them determined to use the "algorithm recommendation" model that has been successfully tested in Toutiao as a key weapon to break the situation.
Technology-driven breakthrough points
In 2016, Douyin's predecessor "A.me" was launched. Its biggest innovation is that the content distribution mechanism is completely based on algorithm recommendation. It does not rely on the user's social relationship, but based on the user's every like, stay, share and other behaviors. By optimizing the recommendation flow in a timely manner, this technology allows every new user to see the content they are interested in in a very short time, solving the "cold start" problem. This is essentially a successful practice of deeply applying data and artificial intelligence technology to the field of content consumption.
Precise cutting of product positioning
Douyin has made a clear distinction from Kuaishou in terms of product positioning. It mainly focuses on "music short videos" and provides a wealth of popular music clips, as well as special effects filters and simple editing tools, which greatly lowers the threshold for creation. Its interface design presents fashionable and concise features, and the content tonality focuses on "trendy, cool, and beautiful", accurately attracting young users in first- and second-tier cities. Such a clear positioning allows it to avoid head-on competition with Kuaishou and instead open up a new market segment.
The process of transforming cognition into barriers
ByteDance has an All-in decision, which is a process of quickly transforming the recognition of "algorithm-driven video distribution" into product barriers. Not only did they invest a lot of resources in technology research and development and product optimization, they also launched a large-scale market offensive after the 2017 Spring Festival, naming popular variety shows, and launching online and offline advertising bombs. This combination of "cognition + technology + execution" allowed Douyin to exceed 100 million daily active users in just one year, achieving an astonishing reversal from 0 to 1.
Looking back on this period of history, do you think that under the current wave of AI technology, which industries are likely to be cognitively disrupted by underlying technologies such as "algorithm recommendation" next year? Welcome to share your views in the comment area, and please also support this article by giving a like.
