In the 1970s, artist Andy Warhol made two predictions about the future: "Everyone can be famous for 15 minutes, and everyone can be famous for 15 minutes."

Now, in this era, the time to be famous has been shortened to 15 seconds.

Thanks to the rapid development of short videos, a few words of dialogue, a cover song, or even a charming smile can make a person famous quickly.

The most popular among them is naturally owned by ByteDance. Today, Douyin has become popular all over the country.

On July 9, Douyin Marketing General Manager Zhi Ying announced at the first Video Festival that as of July 2019, Douyin’s daily active users exceeded 320 million.

Going back to Douyin’s launch in September 2016, in just three years, Douyin has become a national “time harvester”, and the overseas version of “TikTok” has also swept across many countries.

Such a rapid growth rate was not even expected by ByteDance insiders.

“At the beginning, everyone underestimated short videos.” Zhang Nan, President of Douyin, said at the first Douyin Short Video Festival.

So, back to the original question, why is Douyin so popular?

There may be hundreds of answers, such as the algorithm mechanism is addictive, you can kill time when you are bored, etc., but the Forward-looking Economist APP hopes to find a complete explanation of "Why Douyin is so popular" through this article.

Asking even though you know it |Why is Douyin so popular?

Douyin was founded in September 2016. At that time, in the short video industry, Kuaishou had been established for more than 4 years. Although short videos have not yet become a trend among the general public, the market has gradually taken shape.

The Forward-looking Economist APP believes that this is a phenomenon worthy of attention in the short video field. An in-depth interpretation of the reasons for this gap can better understand the core driving force of Douyin's continued popularity.

Many articles analyzing Kuaishou and Douyin believe that Douyin is like a media and is easier to spread externally, while Kuaishou is like a community and prefers internal interaction. Opening the two apps, you can still feel the difference in product positioning between the two.

Although they all watch videos after entering the interface, Douyin only has one video per screen and plays automatically, while Kuaishou has multiple videos spread out and requires the user to select one and click to watch; after the video is played, Douyin will seamlessly switch to the next video recommended by the algorithm, while Kuaishou needs to exit the video interface and re-select a new video.

Style and tone will in turn affect the user group. The Forward-looking Economist APP believes through multi-party data analysis that Douyin’s user group distribution is more in line with the characteristics of national-level applications.

According to the "2018 Kuaishou Content Report", Kuaishou users are mainly "small town youths" from third- and fourth-tier cities and below, accounting for 79%, and people from first- and second-tier cities account for 21%; and according to "Penguin Zhiku: Douyin & Kuaishou User Research Report", Kuaishou users are mostly between the ages of 18-35, accounting for 80%.

Compared with Douyin, as of February 2019, Douyin’s new tier (third- and fourth-tier and below) population accounted for 56.8%, and first- and second-tier cities accounted for 43.2%, which is significantly higher than Kuaishou; in terms of age distribution, Douyin’s population over 30 years old accounted for 31%. This is completely different from the impression that short video applications are mainly used by young people. It also means that Douyin has an advantage over Kuaishou in terms of crowd expansion and covers a wider range of people.

As StraightFire, an active user of the Douban Mobile Internet Product Manager Group, said, Douyin is better able to meet the needs of users from all walks of life and all ages. Therefore, after Douyin further matures and the content ecology becomes richer, the growth rate will be much higher than Kuaishou.

When it comes to the richness of the content ecology, this is also an important reason why Douyin leads Kuaishou.

If the early Kuaishou was Laotie 666, then the early Douyin was a show for beauties and handsome guys. However, as time goes by, the user base continues to expand, and Douyin’s content ecology is also extremely rich, with various tutorials, cute pets, and positive content emerging one after another. In addition to the core UGC, more PGC, official media, and corporate blue V content are also gathering popularity on the Douyin platform and blooming, providing users with interesting, informative, and valuable content. While gaining a large number of fans, they can also generate revenue, forming a virtuous cycle of content ecology.

More than that, the Qianzhan Economist APP also noticed that under the current background of strong industry supervision, it is also constantly launching targeted operational activities to ensure that the content is actively compliant and users often read it. For example, the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Partner Program" focuses on inheriting intangible cultural heritage, the "Green Pepper Project" promotes short video youth education, and the "Douyin Beautiful Check-in Place" cultural tourism certification brand activity helps poverty alleviation through cultural tourism in poor areas, etc.

Take the "DOU Short Video Science Popularization Knowledge Competition" launched by Douyin and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in March this year as an example. The one-month competition received a total of 1,078 short video works for knowledge popularization. The participating videos covered the four major themes of scientific knowledge, scientific experiments, scientific inspections, and scientific research results, and the cumulative video views exceeded 300 million times.

Douyin Bar Ji Xiaotu "On Douyin, short videos for knowledge popularization have a profound impact, much more far-reaching than the impact of a book in the past." When talking about the value of science popularization on short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuang Tingyun, a member of the "Douyin Science Popularization Advisory Group" and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.

From the above, the Qianzhan Economist APP concluded that in the early days, Douyin lowered the creative threshold for ordinary users through the vertical screen, filters, video production techniques on the product, and UGC on the content, allowing users to have both content to watch and interest in shooting; and after establishing its leading position in the short video field, Douyin began to work hard. Based on a relatively good user base, through product operations, Farecom introduces PGC, official media, corporate blue V, etc. to enrich the content ecology, making the content positive and uplifting, allowing users to read it frequently, and further absorbing new users among existing Internet users, thus maintaining the continued growth of its user base and the continued high popularity of the product itself.