Almost two months ago, the head of the bandit regiment launched a vote on Wechat moments:

As we all know, the head mobile App with the highest retention rate for new users in China on the 7th is Wechat (nonsense).May I ask which top APP has the second highest retention rate on the 7th?」

About 100 of my Wechat friends took part in the vote, and the ones who got the most votes were: Alipay, Douyin, QQ and Meituan. The correct answer, Kuaishou Technology, only got 10% of the vote. Of course, the "7-day retention rate" data is based on the QuestMobile report and may not be entirely correct; in fact, the 7-day retention rates of QQ, Douyin and Kuaishou Technology are between Bozhong. To my surprise, so few people guessed Kuaishou Technology.

When I posted the correct answer on moments, many people were startled: "does Kuaishou Technology count as top APP?" "Kuaishou Technology's 7-day retention rate is higher than that of Douyin? I don't believe it. "" what's so interesting about Kuaishou Technology? ". Most of my Wechat friends live in first-and second-tier cities, and they really don't use Kuaishou Technology very much.

To be honest, I don't use Kuaishou Technology very often, but it is one of my favorite mobile App.My "preference list" includes Wechat, Bilibili Inc., Pinduoduo, NetEyun Music, Baidu, Inc. Post Bar, and Kuaishou Technology.

When it comes to Kuaishou Technology, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

"Ladies and gentlemen, today I will show you a big fat meat eaten raw"? The charismatic tattoo uncle smokes and plays the guitar? Can you sell 1.36 million pieces in a live broadcast? The head of the three giants in the sinking market (the other two are Pinduoduo and Qutoutiao)? It all makes sense, but it's not comprehensive.

Anyway, Kuaishou Technology is a very interesting place, very interesting. If you usually visit too much Zhihu Inc., browse too much Douyin, and watch too much Weibo Corp, this monster theft group strongly recommends that you go to Kuaishou Technology to have a look, there is the real China.

Kuaishou Technology rose in this way:From Mobile Picture Community to short Video Giant

Kuaishou Technology was founded in March 2011. originally called "GIF Kuaishou Technology", it is a mobile app that produces GIF pictures. The real short video is the V4.09 version with added dubbing function, which was launched in April 2014.

As a tool product, all the production content of GIF Kuaishou Technology was spread on Weibo Corp, and interesting motion pictures at that time were easily popular on Weibo Corp (Weibo Corp is in a period of booming, the number of monthly active users has been close to 100 million by the end of 2012), and Kuaishou Technology, as a mainstream tool of GIF, also enjoyed this dividend.

The seed users of GIF Kuaishou Technology are aptly described as a group of creative animation enthusiasts. "parody, funny" is the mainstream style of GIF, and "grassroots, loser, approachable, rebellious, young" has become the tag of this group of seed users.

• "do not forward":Weibo Corp's retweet function was very popular at that time, and it was very easy to copy it over, but Kuaishou Technology did not do so. (about 80% of Weibo Corp's content comes from retweeting.) founder Cheng Yichao's product thinking is "as long as the user posts a content, it will show it to you." this is a very equal logic. Once forwarded, the head effect will be very obvious. There is no way to guarantee that everyone will be seen fairly.

As a tool application, GIF Kuaishou Technology initially used Weibo Corp, Renren Inc and other communities as the application scene, completing the original user accumulation. However, in the period of rapid development, Kuaishou Technology still has a sense of crisis and unease-"tool applications are easy to be replaced by others, and cash realization is also a great challenge." when it reaches a certain volume, it is difficult for users to reverse their cognition.

It is based on this kind of thinking and unease that Kuaishou Technology started a two-year "painful" period of transformation and exploration. Kuaishou Technology joined the "Hot GIFshow" community module (red part of figure 4) in the V2.4 version, which was launched in October 2011, which is regarded as the first step and groundwork for the transformation of the community, and increase the operating strength of the community plate.

However, the operation of the community is very difficult, and users have long been accustomed to treating Kuaishou Technology as a tool. After half a year of operation, the response of "Hot GIFshow" has been mediocre, with less than 10 top video retweets and comments.

Kuaishou Technology's determination to transform the community remains firm.The mandatory transformation was implemented in the V3.40 version, which was launched in November 2012, with "community" as its main function without warning.V3.40 is also the lowest-rated version of Kuaishou Technology's history. this transformation can be said to be very stiff and rude. User reviews can be described as "a flood of bad reviews". DAU has also dropped from nearly 1 million at its peak to tens of thousands, losing 90% of its daily active users.

In the next more than ten versions of V3.X, the remaining sections such as "Discovery" (V3.40), "same City" (V3.48) and "concern" (V3.94) have been added (enriching the functions of "people nearby", "blocking", "Weibo Corp entrance", "who likes your work" and so on. 8 months of iteration and operation finally achieved results.

• Generation Z:When transforming the community in 2013, 87% of the users were post-90s and 46% were post-00s. Many people who like Kuaishou Technology are primary school students, middle school students and college students. Kuaishou Technology also meets the needs of young people to express and expand their social circle. At that time, there were three main types of content: beauty selfie, children and pets.

  Investors who are familiar with the Internet should think of another well-known Internet company-Bilibili Inc.. They never thought that once upon a time two companies that were very different and went to the same destination were so similar.

Early mobile Internet applications, as long as the products are done well, there is no shortage of traffic. Kuaishou Technology founder Cheng Yichao met Suhua for the first time in the summer of 2013, and the meeting, known as the "long March rendezvous", also laid the foundation for Kuaishou Technology's "rocket-like development."

Cheng Yichao is proficient in products and Suhua is good at algorithms. Before coming to Kuaishou Technology, Suhua studied machine learning in Google China, and then Baidu, Inc. was poached to be responsible for the construction of Phoenix Nest system, knowing well about search and algorithm recommendations. After half a year of running-in, Suhua applied "algorithm recommendation" to content distribution, and the user experience was immediately improved, thanks to the experience in the field of artificial intelligence and Baidu, Inc. 's business search engine Phoenix Nest. Suhua's methodology is exactly the same as the headlines, and Kuaishou Technology's application of algorithms is even earlier than the headlines.

When the algorithm was launched in the spring of 2014, the slope of Kuaishou Technology's downloads became steeper. By July, the number of daily active users had exceeded 1 million, and by January 2015 it had exceeded 10 million.The user growth rate of 100 times in one year is enough to correct the name of "algorithm".(you should know that Kuaishou Technology's App promotion department was only set up in the second half of 2016, and the growth comes from natural growth. )

• "the weather, geography, people and none of them are indispensable":Compared with single-factor determinism, I prefer the "fit theory", that is, the right time, the right place, the right person to do the right thing.

  What is the time? The popularity of 4G/WIFI/ smartphones from 2013 to 2014, the rise of the mobile Internet, demographic dividends and duration dividends, the influx of users and the time it takes to be consumed. What is the geographical location? After the pains of community transformation, user-generated content belongs to the platform. Kuaishou Technology uploaded an average of 1 million users a day in 2014, and a large amount of user content was waiting to be distributed.

  What is human harmony? With both supply and demand, the key is how to match efficiently. The algorithm is like an "accelerator", users feel particularly obvious, click on any video, similar videos will be more and more, unwittingly long and sticky.

The creators of the content in the head often represent the tonality of the community, "Li Jiaqi to Douyin", "Old Tomato to Bilibili Inc." and "Brother Sanda to Kuaishou Technology".From the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2015, Kuaishou Technology experienced a wave of YY anchors' migration, which together with Kuaishou Technology's original content creators formed Kuaishou Technology's "grassroots jianghu" ecology.

These YY anchors have strong appeal, "jianghu style" and high fan loyalty, and they have formed original online celebrity associations such as "Sanda Family" in Kuaishou Technology. This "grassroots jianghu" has also played a role in promoting the user structure of "South Douyin North Kuaishou Technology" and "Earth Tide sinking". These former YY anchors are widely found in Kuaishou Technology's high-quality content creators.

The story begins with a man named "Li Tianyou". In the early days, MC Tianyou shouted wheat live on the chat platform, and his rich social experience and original ability quickly made him popular. In 2014, a friend told him that his "listen up, ladies" message went crazy on Kuaishou Technology, and MC Tianyou conveniently signed up for an account and posted a seven-second video, "Don't change your name, sit or change my last name, my name is Li Tianyou," and his followers rose 400000 when he woke up.

In October of the same year, MC Tianyou entered YY. Before the official live broadcast, MC Tianyou released a short preview video on Kuaishou Technology. As a result, the live broadcast room of YY had more than 10, 000 viewers that day, becoming the first anchor in YY history to have more than 10, 000 live broadcast rooms on the same day. At that time, after years of development of YY, the power of the guild was becoming more and more stable, and the rising channel of anchors was narrowing day by day. The rise of MC Tianyou undoubtedly stimulated other anchors on the platform, and a large number of anchors poured into Kuaishou Technology.

In February 2015, a post called "YY Anchor Kuaishou Technology's list of fans" went viral on the YY forum, including MC Tianyou, and many typical live broadcasts that rely on Kuaishou Technology, and called on "the future development trend must be mobile terminals, anchors hurry to use it."

After a sweet period of 1 year (Kuaishou Technology drainage, YY realized)In April 2016, many YY anchors began to "work part-time" in Kuaishou Technology with the live streaming function.YY, which is busy with mobile live broadcasts such as Yingke, Zanthoxylum bungeanum and DouYu International Holdings Limited, has no time to take care of it.It was only in March 2017 that it severely punished gold medal anchors for taking part-time jobs outside the station, but it has been unable to reverse it.

In fact, these head anchors have also laid the foundation for Kuaishou Technology to realize cash in the field of live broadcasting and carrying goods.

• "grassroots rivers and lakes"Most of Kuaishou Technology's head anchors are "jianghuqi". Eight of the TOP 20 anchors are from Northeast China and four from Guangdong, while Northeast China and Guangdong should be the most "loyal" places in China. In addition to the new popular stars-CCTV News, Wang Zulan and Xie Na, Kuaishou Technology's head anchors are mostly grassroots or tuhao.

  In addition, eight TOP 20 anchors have broadcast live on YY, especially Sanda Brother, prodigal son Wu Di, Abbot and Liu Damei. YY, which has been sinking all the way from online games, has the characteristics of sinking. It is not known whether "Kuaishou Technology sinking users chose YY anchors" or "these anchors led Kuaishou Technology's sinking". In our view, it is more likely to "add fuel to the flames".

Kuaishou Technology "Douyin" and Douyin "quick hand"

From MC Tianyou to Wang Zulan, Kuaishou Technology is becoming more and more shaky, and of course Douyin is becoming more and more handy, but their values will not change.For a product with nearly 400 million MAU and 200 million DAU, "sinking & Rural & North" alone is not enough to cover its users.Whether from the creative side, the addition of a series of stars such as Xie Na, Wang Zulan and Deng Ziqi, or from the user side, the number of daily active users in first-and second-tier cities increased from 40 million in January to 60 million in July (50% of the daily active users came from the first and second lines). Or the number of daily active users in the south has exceeded 80 million, Kuaishou Technology is undoubtedly becoming more and more popular.

From the growth curve of daily active users of Kuaishou Technology and Douyin, Kuaishou Technology is obviously more "Buddhist", while Douyin's growth is completely explosive. However, Douyin also promoted Kuaishou Technology's fighting will in the fierce competition, and Kuaishou Technology's daily active user growth rate also increased significantly from April 2018 to January 2019. Kuaishou Technology has no manually operated flow pools and is more restrained in advertising (a large number of elevators and subways in first-and second-tier cities have been put in place since the beginning of 2018).

While the headlines with rich combat experience are very "scary" in terms of user growth, product operation and commercialization. On the one hand, Douyin is launched vigorously, and it can be seen in various pre-installed channels and variety shows. Behind it is its strong commercialization ability support, can achieve self-sufficiency On the other hand, Toutiao is very capable of operation, with a series of operations driving the Spring Festival Douyin growth of nearly 30 million in February 2018 and directly surpassing Kuaishou Technology in April.

Douyin early invested a lot of money to find a dance academy choreographer, and in Jinri Toutiao test what kind of music and dance are popular, focus the flow to the head, explosive. )

Without fear of the future and without thinking about the past, the revolution of short videos is not over.

• "No Buddhist system":Kuaishou Technology, who has just spent eight years, has grown from four staff members to 8000, with 200 million DAU. For most people, the Buddhist attitude and slow company seem to be Kuaishou Technology's label. The original mind has not changed-"every ordinary person's life deserves to be recorded, shared, seen and respected." now Kuaishou Technology wants to be a great company, not only a great product.

  Next, Kuaishou Technology will change the organization, optimize the structure, the pursuit of the ultimate, fast and unbreakable concept throughout the work, the next goal: 2020 Spring Festival, 300 million DAU.

It is already a public plan for Kuaishou Technology to make a big effort to achieve a stable DAU of over 300 million during the 2019 Spring Festival. This is both a defensive plan and an offensive plan.

• Defensive:Each Spring Festival travel season is accompanied by a "downward infiltration" of Douyin, as returning college students and workers take Douyin home. In 2017-19, the continuous downward infiltration of Douyin did not affect Kuaishou Technology, because the short video market was not yet saturated at that time; now, the penetration of short videos has peaked, and the increment of Douyin in the sinking market is likely to be Kuaishou Technology's reduction. Kuaishou Technology will never allow this to happen.

• Aggressive:At present, there is still a 20% gap between Kuaishou Technology's DAU and Douyin, and this gap can be bridged. 2020 may be the last time window for high-quality content App to "expand its user base". It won't come again, even if it costs a lot of money. Expanding the users of Kuaishou Technology App will also help Kuaishou Technology to achieve an App matrix similar to the headline system and occupy more markets.

Kuaishou Technology's user stickiness comes from content tone and interaction.

Facts have proved that video creation brings higher user stickiness and higher retention. Compared with content consumers, video creators put more "painstaking efforts" and more memories and fan relationships in the community, which leads to higher loyalty. We analyze the ecology of medium and short videos from the perspective of stickiness and interaction:

1. User relationship:On Bilibili Inc., the relationship between users and up masters is like a spiritual confidant, seeking resonance or preaching karma; on Douyin, the relationship between users and creators is more like that between idol and fans, including not only stars but also Internet celebrities; the relationship between fast-hand users includes both idol relationships (head) and old friends (medium-and long-tail).

2. Users use:The longest user is Bilibili Inc., with an average daily time of about 82 minutes, with users watching about 21 videos a day, Douyin followed by 66 minutes per day, with more than 100 users playing short videos per day. Kuaishou Technology's average daily time is only 50 minutes (with monthly fluctuations, slightly lower than Douyin on average), and the number of short videos played per day is estimated to be similar to Douyin.

3. User stickiness:Kuaishou Technology's app ranks second in the market in terms of user stickiness, second only to Wechat, with a DAU/MAU of 58% (first Wechat 82%, third QQ 54%) and a 7-day active retention rate of 92% (first Wechat 96%, third QQ 87%), slightly higher than Douyin (DAU/MAU 49% and 7-day active retention rate 84%), and significantly higher than Bilibili Inc. (DAU/MAU 25% and 7-day active retention rate 67%), which is mainly the contribution of creator ecology.

   The community ecology that precipitates "hard work", memory and fan relationship is more stable, and "national creation" means high stickiness and high user retention. Maybe people think that high stickiness just means deep barriers. In fact, high viscosity (DAU/MAU and retention) is a necessary and non-sufficient condition for high MAU, and Kuaishou Technology's height may be above QQ.

4. Interaction:Kuaishou Technology received 140 billion likes (yoy+100%) in the whole year, with an average of 2.3 likes per person per day, and the interaction rate is more than 3% (you can compare the personal experience of likes in moments), which is at a high level.

The tonal differences among Douyin, Bilibili Inc. and Kuaishou Technology can be seen from Slogan (although their contents are not necessarily in line with the positioning of Slogan):

• Douyin is to "find a better life".The main word "tide" is "the person you want to be and the life you want to live". Since it is "better", there must be a difference between high and low, so Douyin content has a very serious tendency to headline, with 3-5% of videos accounting for about 80% of the click-through rate.

• Bilibili Inc. is a "live high-definition video of a live TV series on barrage.""on-screen comment" emphasizes interactivity, "Pan Drama" emphasizes two dimensions, and "Live" is a rapidly developing business. This reflects Bilibili Inc. 's ambition to expand the user base and achieve "out of the circle" while keeping the Z-generation stronghold.

• Kuaishou Technology is "seeing every kind of life".This is a little intriguing. "every kind of life", of course, includes the beautiful, the fashionable, the real, the original, as well as the vertical and grassroots. You can use Kuaishou Technology as a Douyin or B station, but the opposite approach doesn't work.

E-commerce brings goods:Kuaishou Technology is more like Pinduoduo and Douyin is more like Tmall.

Some goods are better sold by short video and live broadcast, while others are more suitable for text display. Although Kuaishou Technology's e-commerce business started relatively late (starting in 2018), in fact, the "old iron economy" is already very mature in carrying goods and GMV.

According to Nielsen research, 84% of merchants get business transactions on Kuaishou Technology, of which 42% earn more than 100000 per year, and Kuaishou Technology accounts for the vast majority of its transaction volume (more than 56%), with an average revenue of more than 1068 yuan per video.

More than 16 million users earned income on Kuaishou Technology platform in 2018 (of which 3.4 million came from poverty-stricken counties at the national level)The number of people selling goods in Kuaishou Technology in poor counties across the country has exceeded 1.15 million, and the total annual sales have exceeded 19 billion, which has also achieved "fair benefits" in terms of bringing goods.

At present, live broadcast is still the main form of carrying goods for Kuaishou Technology, and Kuaishou Technology's ability to carry goods ranks among the forefront of the whole network. National Sports Center "Bird's Nest" held the wedding, but also invited Jackie Chan, Cecilia Cheung, Deng Ziqi and other stars to help, this "Mary Su" story, but also accompanied by an interesting result: the wedding live broadcast with 100 million goods. This is "Simba" (Xin Youzhi), the first person to bring goods to e-commerce on Taobao, with nearly 30 million Kuaishou Technology fans, the highest sales of 1.36 million pieces per live broadcast (66 yuan per passenger per unit), and the highest sales of over 100 million pieces per live broadcast (83% makeup protection). A real "flow star".

From the annual sales list of Taobao e-commerce talent in 2018, we can find:Fast hands account for 25% of the total, and they all rank at the top.Its anchorman's ability to carry goods is even higher than that of "Douyin lipstick" Li Jiaqi (ranked 16th), which shows the strong ability of anchor Kuaishou Technology to carry goods. Incidentally, I would like to mention a very important fact. Kuaishou Technology Anchor sells a lot of private brand products. In addition, the price of branded products sold by "primary anchors" is even lower than the lowest price of the brand online (similar to Douyin). In fact, "live streaming" not only brings realistic discounts to fans, but also more efficient.

Kuaishou Technology brings goods more like Pinduoduo, while Douyin brings goods more like Tmall, mainly in terms of category, brand and price:

What kind of products sell best in Kuaishou Technology? Lao tie prefers to buy food and drinks in the studio (44%), facial treatment (25%), daily use at home (10%), oral care (5%) and makeup (4%).

In contrast, Douyin has a very significant difference in women's wear (18%) and 3C digital (10%), while daily use at home (26%) and makeup (8%) are also higher than Kuaishou Technology. (although Douyin users like to browse make-up most, it sells ≠ views.) in addition, short-video products are slightly different from live streaming, with the top three categories being books, home use and makeup, respectively.

Take cosmetics as an example to see the difference between Kuaishou Technology and Douyin live streaming brands. The best-selling make-up brands of Douyin are mainly domestic brands, including "perfect Diary" and "Peraireal", with the largest proportion of makeup and facial care products. There are many white-brand / private-brand products sold by Fast hand, among which 6 products are the best selling, with 50, 000 sales per live broadcast (brand name: Xin Youzhi and zuzu).

In terms of price, low unit price products (0-30 yuan) are loved by users of various short video platforms, while Douyin users are more receptive to prices, and 50-200 yuan products are also popular. Kuaishou Technology users prefer high-quality and low-price products, with 80% of the products priced no more than 50 yuan.

It is conceivable that the competition between Kuaishou Technology and Douyin will continue for a long time. Kuaishou Technology is neither the Douyin of a low-line city (its seniority is much older than Douyin), nor the little brother of Tencent (Tencent has not even further increased his holdings or provided many resources). It's not even a "short video platform" (it's all-embracing).

After the rise of byte jump, the Internet industry is divided into four ecosystems-Tencent system, Ali system, Baidu system and byte system; maybe in 2-3 years, we can see the fifth largest ecosystem, namely Kuaishou system.

Although it is impossible to predict the future, the rogue regiment has a strong intuition that Kuaishou Technology's future may far exceed the expectations of most investors and outsiders. However, the road needs to be taken step by step, and exactly how to exceed expectations is still unknown.