Douyin President Zhang Nan: The beauty and value of Douyin
On August 24, Douyin held a creator conference in Shanghai. Zhang Nan, president of Douyin, said in a speech that the development of short videos is beyond imagination and it is expected that the total number of daily active users in the short video industry will reach 1 billion by 2020.
At the scene, Zhang Nan explained Douyin’s “beautiful” product positioning and the social value of short videos.
Zhang Nan believes that in the past year, many people have misunderstood the beauty of Douyin and opposed beauty and truth. However, in fact, the two do not conflict. The former is a value judgment and the latter is a factual judgment. Douyin advocates beauty because Douyin represents an optimistic value proposition. Zhang Nan also responded to some of the controversies surrounding Douyin and short videos.
When talking about the value of short videos, Zhang Nan said that Douyin is a tool to help users convey information. What short videos and Douyin bring is a significant reduction in the threshold for video creation and distribution, and it is a tool for information The faster flow and connection are the value of inclusive information. "Every video left by each user on Douyin will be the basis of history, and will eventually be compiled into a 'video version of the encyclopedia' of human civilization." ”
The following is the full text of Zhang Nan’s speech:
Hello everyone, I am Zhang Nan. Today I see so many creators, media teachers, and experts coming to the scene. I am very grateful to everyone and very excited. Friends who are familiar with me must know that I am a product manager, so I am not good at giving speeches or in this kind of situation.
But today I saw so many people, especially today is the first time Douyin holds a creator conference, so I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about Douyin, There are some discussions and even controversies about short videos.
At the beginning, everyone underestimated short videos
Everyone knows that ByteDance is a technology company that distributes information. We are very concerned about the development of technology. Since the advent of the mobile era and the popularization of large-screen mobile phones, our company has been paying great attention to the direction of short videos. We feel that mobile video will be a very big opportunity and may bring about very big changes in information dissemination.
Very big, but how big? Looking back now, everyone, including ourselves, may have greatly underestimated the possibilities of short videos. I remember it was 2014. The company held a meeting and discussed that we should make short videos. At that time, the entire Zhichun Road subway was full of Weishi advertisements. The product launched by Weibo at that time was called Miaopai. We were a little hesitant, should we do it or not? But by the end of the year, Meipai had hundreds of thousands of DAUs. At that time, we felt that we might have missed this opportunity.
In 2015, Yiming took our entire company team to Okinawa for the annual meeting. After the annual meeting, more than a dozen of us came to the izakaya and talked about short videos. I was particularly impressed, why? Since there were more than a dozen of us, we ordered two plates of sushi. At that time, we sat around the table and discussed whether short videos, especially UGC short videos, should still be done? The mobile phone I used at that time was an iPhone 6plus. It was the first time Apple launched a 5-inch large-screen mobile phone. Everyone still has a feeling that the market space should still be very large. However, due to various reasons, we had not launched the short video project at that time.
Until the beginning of 2016, we discussed short videos again and felt that we still could not give up. This may be an opportunity to bring a lot of changes to the world, and we should try it. Later, as everyone knew, there was the product Douyin.
17 months after Douyin was launched, DAU exceeded 100 million. This should be the fastest growing product on China Mobile Internet after WeChat. Just last month, we also announced the latest user data of Douyin - more than 320 million DAU, and we found in the background that this data is still growing, with no slowing down trend at all.
So I personally feel that if I make a bold guess, maybe by 2020, including Douyin, Kuaishou, and other short video products, the entire short video market may reach 1 billion DAU in China alone. . What is the concept of 1 billion DAU? It is almost equal to WeChat’s daily active users today.
In fact, I believe that even without mentioning these numbers, everyone can feel the changes that short videos have brought to the world.
In the past, when we went on a trip, everyone would say to take a photo, but now everyone would say to take a short video or Douyin. When I went abroad, I found that in many museums and scenic spots, you can scan and watch short videos of cultural relic information explanations directly. In some places, you can even browse the entire museum collection through short videos on your mobile phone.
If you use Taobao or Meituan-Dianping in China, you will also find that short videos have become the basic form of product and food display. I remember that Taobao internally believed that "in the future, 90% of content on Taobao may be presented in the form of videos." Even WeChat, the most important communication tool for all of us, has relaxed restrictions on Kuaishou and Weishi this year, and even optimized configurations for short videos on public accounts, Kankan, and Moments.
It can be said that all walks of life are evolving in the direction of short videos. What makes us happy is that Douyin is loved by many users and sometimes even becomes synonymous with short videos. Many people now shoot short videos and say, “Come on, come on, let’s make a Douyin video.”
There are many misunderstandings about the beauty of Douyin
As short videos increasingly enter the lives of ordinary people, the public and the media begin to care about the value orientation of short videos. . In fact, for Douyin, we have always had a very clear value orientation for products and content, which is "beautiful".
At the end of 2017, Douyin grew rapidly, turning from a product for niche and trendy people into a platform for ordinary people to record their lives. We found that many people recorded their happy and simple life moments on Douyin. I think this can be summed up as "recording a good life", and this sentence is particularly in line with our original intention, so it became our slogan for 2018. This is also our expression of the value of the platform.
However, we later discovered that many people misunderstood the meaning of "beautiful", or were deliberately misled.
Last year, some colleagues mentioned that life itself is not beautiful, and most products just use various filters to trick and deceive users. Someone else asked, which one do you choose, the flawed truth or the false beauty? In fact, I think these statements deliberately oppose beauty and truth.
I don’t agree with this statement. I think this is a routine. In my opinion, there is no conflict between beauty and truth. Truth is a factual judgment, while beauty is a value judgment and a value proposition. I remember I once saw a video on Douyin. It was a 69-year-old disabled old man who was working hard to climb Mount Everest. His legs were both prosthetic limbs. But when I watched that video, I felt It’s a sense of power that comes over my face, and I think this is beautiful.
I have always felt that beautiful things must be diverse. Being natural is beautiful, being flawed is also beautiful, being proactive is beautiful, and living a life of peace and contentment is also beautiful. Of course, I also admit that not everything in life is beautiful, but sometimes life is difficult, which makes the beauty more precious.
Life is a prism with a thousand aspects, and we hope that everyone can see the aspect that shines with courage and optimism from Douyin. Pessimism has its own unique aesthetic value, but as a platform that affects hundreds of millions of users, Douyin chooses to be optimistic.
Not all content is worthy and should be seen by everyone
In addition to "beautiful", I also want to say a few more words about "truth" at the factual level.
In mid-2017, a group of underage mothers began to appear on some short video platforms. Douyin was also very concerned. At that time, we felt that although this was an objective phenomenon, it was very inappropriate to rely on the identity of a minor mother to attract traffic and trigger other minors to imitate. So at that time, we unified the standards and restricted the uploading of this kind of content to Douyin.
Of course, it’s not just for underage mothers, there are many similar contents, such as fortune telling, Feng Shui and so on. Although these phenomena exist objectively and the content is very eye-catching, Douyin has imposed strict restrictions. Overall, I really don't think that everything is worth or should be seen by everyone. The pursuit of authenticity is certainly valuable, but it should not be an excuse for platforms to avoid content moderation.
Pursue bringing value to users, creators, society, and human civilization
After talking about beauty, today I also want to talk to you about my own views on the value of short videos and the value of Douyin some ideas. The explosion of short videos actually happened in the past year. There have been some controversies and voices in society surrounding short videos and Douyin. Such as fragmentation, meaninglessness, addiction, underage, etc.
I think there is a misunderstanding here. Just like truth and beauty are not contradictory, short content does not mean worthless or meaningless. The length is actually just a form, and whether it has value depends on what content is contained in the video. In fact, short content is the most important part of human culture.
Compared with the Book of Songs, five-character quatrains are short content; compared with "A Dream of Red Mansions", "Liao Zhai" is short content; compared with symphonies, Jay Chou and Lin Xi are short content. Therefore, from the perspective of information dissemination and knowledge dissemination, long-term has long-term value, and short-term has short-term benefits. Treating short content as fragmented and meaningless content is a misunderstanding and prejudice in my opinion.
Of course, some of the society’s concerns are indeed justified, and we are also exploring improvements. Last year, we were the first in the industry to launch a minor protection system, and Douyin is also opening up video permissions for 1 to 15 minutes to help people express themselves better. Of course, not enough has been done, and there is still a lot of work to be done to improve it.
On the other hand, short videos are indeed a new thing. We are also thinking, what is the value of short videos? I don’t know if you all know that the English word "Video" for video comes from Latin. Its Latin etymology is equivalent to the meaning of "I see" in Chinese.
This Latin etymology well summarizes my own thoughts about Douyin and short videos. TikTok is actually a tool that helps users convey information. What short videos and Douyin bring is a significant reduction in the threshold for video creation and distribution, faster flow and connection of information, and the value of inclusive information.
Based on this, Douyin will better improve its products in the future. I hope that Douyin can eventually reflect its value in four dimensions:
First, of course, it is the user dimension, because users are always our first pursuit. For users, short videos are first of all the value of recording and expressing. Video content spans time and space, connecting people together.
Secondly, users can also obtain valuable information through Douyin. Now more and more knowledge and information are beginning to appear on Douyin, whether it is life knowledge or some professional popular science knowledge. I came across Professor Yi Zhongtian’s short video on Douyin some time ago. He popularized a lot of historical and cultural knowledge to me.
Everyone should know that Professor Yi Zhongtian used to be on Baijia Forum, but now he is on Douyin. What changes is the platform, what remains unchanged is knowledge. Douyin will also support and strengthen knowledge content more in the future. Recently, we are preparing a new function. Creators can publish related videos in the same collection in a structured and sequential manner. Users can enter the collection through the videos they are interested in, so as to systematically watch related content. We will be the first to open this function to educational content creators, because knowledge-based information actually has the highest requirements for dissemination, and we hope to do a good job in this function.
At the same time, Douyin can always bring happiness to everyone in life. I remember one time I took a taxi home and chatted with the driver about Douyin. The driver told me that Douyin was very good and brought joy to people across the country. Although this was just a very common sentence, I was particularly touched at the time because it made me feel that our work was valuable.
Today is Douyin’s first Creators Conference. I want to say that the creators here are the protagonists of Douyin, and Douyin is wonderful because of you. Therefore, how to provide better services to creators and everyone present is an important dimension of Douyin’s value.
Not long ago, a colleague told me that there is an account on Douyin called "Uncle Wen's Umbrella". Uncle Wen was also speaking in the video just now. He is an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage and relies on short videos. The video attracts customers, and his monthly sales of oil-paper umbrellas have exceeded 100,000 yuan.
I don’t know if you have ever seen an oil-paper umbrella, or have you ever used an oil-paper umbrella? In fact, oil-paper umbrellas are very beautiful. Before the emergence of Douyin, it might be difficult for Uncle Wen to have a suitable platform to show the beauty of intangible cultural heritage to ordinary people.
But the form of short video is naturally suitable for carrying this kind of content.
Our platform is to provide such creators with richer creative tools, more accurate content distribution, and better monetization methods. I think this is the value of the Douyin platform and the value of short videos. Later, some of my colleagues will talk to you in detail about some of the services we provide to creators.
Going one step further, we also hope that Douyin can continue to create value for society. In April last year, I went to Xi'an for the first time. At that time, the city of Xi'an became popular on Douyin and became an "Internet celebrity" city on Douyin because of the city's cultural characteristics such as calligraphy works, terracotta warriors and horses, and bowl-breaking wine. And local friends told me that during the Qingming Festival, the number of tourists in Xi'an increased by 40% year-on-year.
In fact, in the past, cultural and tourism information was mainly disseminated through pictures, texts, TV and movies. But pictures and texts are not as intuitive as videos, and the threshold for television and movies is too high. For example, "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" directed by Cao Dun invested hundreds of millions and took more than 200 days to shoot, and it also became popular in Xi'an. The TV series is great, but for most places, it is hard to find.
At that time, we judged that the popularity of Douyin and short videos was greatly lowering the threshold for dissemination of natural and cultural scenery, which would bring new opportunities for urban promotion and cultural tourism poverty alleviation.
This is also true. In the past year, not only Xi'an, but also Chongqing, Nanjing and other cities have become popular on Douyin due to their local characteristics and have become Internet celebrity cities. Many poor areas, such as Daocheng in Sichuan, Libo in Guizhou, and Luanchuan in Henan, have also become popular on Douyin. We later launched the "Mountains Are Beautiful" campaign to help promote the tourism industry in poor areas. Today, Douyin has become a platform that showcases the beautiful scenery and customs of my hometown.
I think these are the social values that Douyin pursues.
Finally, if we use video to achieve the ultimate goal of "information universalization".
I have imagined such a scene countless times and hope to share it with everyone. You can imagine what it will be like in the city of Shanghai, or even in this building, in this room, in 100 years. Maybe it will become an exhibition classroom of a history museum, where you are sitting At the location, there are a bunch of cute children sitting around on the ground, and in the sky, through "image projection", for example, "short videos" are projected, like a starry sky, constantly flashing, as the teacher keeps Zooming in and looking at these videos, the children laughed, sad, excited and even meditated along with these short videos...
Yes, this may be a hundred years from now, an ordinary person who cannot On ordinary days, what they watch may be short videos shot by creators decades or a hundred years ago. These videos may contain records of daily life and some professional teaching content.
Douyin may still be there at that time, or it may have disappeared. But every video left by every user on Douyin will become the basis of history, and will eventually be compiled into the "video version of the encyclopedia" of human civilization. I think this may be the greatest significance of the existence of Douyin and short videos.
At the end, I want to return to the topic I shared today - the beauty and value of Douyin. I hope that all content creators on Douyin can continue to create more valuable content in the future.
Beauty is value. Thank you all!