China’s short-video platform Douyin released its user volume for the first time on Tuesday, with more than 150 million daily active users and 300 million on a monthly basis as of June.
The figure presented a landscape for the short-video market in China that was different from three months ago, when a report issued by the internet consultancy Analysys showed that Douyin’s archrival Kuaishou held a safe lead up to February with 108 million daily active users, even more than the combined volume of the other three video apps—Douyin, Xigua and Huosha.
According to Douyin’s official WeChat account, the platform has increased by 80 million daily active users in the span of three months, as the figure in March stood at over 70 million.
Tech news portal All Weather TMT reported that Douyin’s daily user pool went through a significant expansion from less than 40 million to nearly 70 million during the Spring Festival holiday, which fell during Feb 15-21. The news portal cited Zhi Ying, senior director with Douyin, saying that during Spring Festival the mobility of existing users, mainly spread among first or second-tier cities, made more people know about the app and use it.
Beginning with music and dance videos, Douyin has since expanded its reach to various other categories, such as gourmet food, exercise, travel and culture, as Douyin said on its WeChat account. Now, more than 40 percent of the users on Douyin are aged 24-30, compared with the earlier group of major users falling in the range of 18-24 years old.
In addition, Douyin has also attracted more than 500 government bodies and media organizations to open an account on its platform, including the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and people.cn. As of June, more than 1.6 billion video views came from related government accounts on Douyin, with All Weather TMT quoting data from the short-video application owned by Beijing ByteDance Technology, which also operates the Toutiao news app.
ByteDance vowed to internalize its services. Zhang Yiming, founder and CEO of Bytedance, said in March that half its users are expected to come from overseas within three years.
Zhi said that Tik Tok, an overseas iteration of Douyin, and Musical.ly, a video social network purchased by Toutiao in November, have provided services in more than 150 countries and regions, enjoying the fastest growth in the world among mobile apps.
