Douyin Launches New Features in Push to Accelerate Growth
Douyin, the Chinese mainland version of TikTok, has recently launched two new functions, namely Yao Yi Yao, meaning “shake it”, and “learning” for acquiring knowledge about the video creation process.
Yao Yi Yao is now integrated into the area bar, located at the top of the Douyin homepage, opposite the map function.
This new feature is designed to match users in the same city by simply shaking the phone. In other words, Yao Yi Yao is for making friends with strangers, and is available only for people in the same city. This feature will likely bring about a much higher social success rate because users tend to prefer making acquaintances with others in the same city.
Yao Yi Yao also contains its own method of monetization, whereby anchors can set various thresholds in chat rooms. For example, users cannot connect with anchors unless they pay for virtual gifts. In this case, users are incentivized to buy virtual coins in Douyin, with which they can purchase gifts for anchors in chat rooms. Under this model, anchors can earn money and sustain the operation of chat rooms, while the platform directly makes profits from the selling of virtual coins.
Meanwhile, the new “learning” feature is positioned adjacent to the previous “city” bar, and users can enter the interface by clicking on the short video.
The content libraries feature mostly drama, documentaries, interviews and creative editing videos. Douyin hopes to attract more users and increase user stickiness through knowledge-type short videos.
Bytedance has frequently invested in a range of target fields over the past two years, such as games, education, medical care, robotics and automobiles. According to incomplete statistics of public data in National Business Daily, Bytedance has invested in 76 programs since 2020, 30 of which were made in 2021, covering catering, games, entertainment, enterprise services, education and other fields.
“Bytedance is actually learning from Tencent in investment layout. The first step is to gather traffic, and then monetize the traffic. Investment is mainly to expand and extend around areas enabling monetization. This is a step that Bytedance must take when it has developed to a certain stage. Considering the slower growth of Douyin and Toutiao, Bytedance needs to quickly create a second growth curve,” Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Consulting, said in an interview with National Business Daily.
