TikTok’s Mainland Counterpart Douyin Tests Photo Feature, Aiming to Create In-App Version of Xiaohongshu?
Chinese media outlet Tech Planet reported on Saturday that Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has recently tested a new function allowing photo posts. This feature aims to add a lifestyle sharing function with pictures and text, in addition to its live-streaming and short video sharing, so as to create a broader business ecosystem of live-streaming, short video sharing and photo posts.
The report shows that Douyin’s new photo posting feature is not much different from that of popular Chinese lifestyle sharing platform Xiaohongshu in the overall design.
The new feature is displayed in the same way as Douyin’s short videos. After the user who creates the content selects the picture post feature in the sharing page, he or she can publish a collection of pictures with words.
After publishing the content with pictures and text, the user can click “Expand” in the interface to see the relevant text introduction. Users can comment, like and forward in the expanded page, and pictures can be browsed by sliding left and right.
In addition, the posted content on Douyin, like Xiaohongshu, supports adding topics. Users can jump to related topic pages and see the same type of video or graphic content by clicking on topics.
The report analyses that the form of lifestyle sharing has been switched between pictures and short videos, and short videos can be presented more intuitively. However, from the form of saving, collecting, and viewing again, the sharing content with pictures and texts has more advantages. This may be the reason why Douyin tests the new feature of posting pictures and text.
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In addition, because the published content can be linked with goods, merchants can sell products with sharing photo posts. Of course, compared with making short videos, it is easier to create pictures and texts, which is suitable for local businesses.
Kang Zeyu, President of Douyin’s e-commerce wing, put forward the concept of “interest e-commerce” on April 8 this year, in which he mentioned the idea of helping consumers actively discover potential interests and helping merchants recommend products to target consumers.
