Ouyang Nana has made Vlog popular. The next trend in short videos is really | depo minimal 5000, marsya and the bear

The popularity of short videos has provided an initial education to the market. Chinese mobile Internet users have begun to move from the era of reading words and pictures to the era of reading videos.

Author /Moffy04

Source /Cheetah Global Think Tank

ID /CheetahGlobalLab

What is the most fashionable content form on the mobile Internet right now? Many people will talk about "short videos", but keen observers will find that short videos rely on comedy, jokes and shows to obtain fast-food traffic, and are facing growth pressure:

Forsighted short video entrepreneurs have already sensed this, and now they are turning their attention to a new battlefield - Vlog. According to the self-media "Entertainment Capital Theory", the platforms that have taken action include:

On the Baidu search index, the popularity of Vlog has also increased significantly in the past half month:

It’s not surprising that capital is always looking for the next trend, but why Vlog? Why now?

1

From short video to Vlog,

The users faced by the platform are changing

Some people say that the second half of short videos depends on Vlog, but this statement may not be accurate. Short videos and Vlogs are essentially different species.

The full name of Vlog is Video Blog. Compared with short videos, Vlogs are longer and the content tends to tell a complete story or express an opinion.

In addition to the difference in content, what is more important for the platform is that from short videos to Vlog, they will face completely different video audiences and content creators.

1. Different audiences

Users who watch short videos and Vlogs have different needs.

Short video users pursue a kind of instant gratification. They expect content that can make them laugh out loud, but may be forgotten in a blink of an eye.

Vlog audiences have higher requirements for content. Vlog can actually be regarded as an upgraded version of text blog (Blog). It still mainly records or expresses opinions, but it is richer in presentation form.

What the Vlog audience pursues is not necessarily to be funny, but to experience other people’s lives or understand other people’s perspectives within the scope of their own interests.

For example, "Huanong Brothers", which became popular on Weibo some time ago,Their long video works are actually equivalent to small documentaries on rural life, which not only include "every excuse to eat bamboo rats", but also rural scenery and lively life; but their short video versions on platforms such as Douyin tend to cater to some early "memes". A typical template is: the bamboo rats are sick, cooked, and eaten, which makes them laugh.

2. Different creators

Correspondingly, Vlog creators also have different characteristics from short video creators.

Short videos require creators to give the audience some kind of emotional stimulation in a very short period of time. Therefore, short videos pursue to a certain extent the "amazing", "explosive" and "hilarious" moments. Excellent short video creators are those who are good at capturing these moments.

In contrast, Vlog is not that exciting. It requires telling a story slowly or expressing a point of view with reason. An excellent Vlogger must first be an interesting person, so Vloggers are better at building personal IP than short video creators.

2

Why now?

Unlike abroad, Vlog has not become popular in China yet, so why do companies choose to promote it now? The answer might as well be found in the history of Youtube.

Youtube was founded in 2005. At that time, video creation was still a very high-stakes matter. Not only did you need to have equipment, but you also needed to master complex video editing software such as Premier.

Internet celebrities at that time were not considered celebrities. Users might choose to subscribe, but from the bottom of their hearts they still regarded Vloggers as bored grassroots like themselves.

There are two transfers. The first is the wave of mobile Internet. Smartphones have greatly lowered the threshold for creation. Video content has exploded since then, and the themes have become more and more diverse, laying the foundation for covering the long-tail market in the future.

The second one is the acquisition by Google, which brought 2 changes to Youtube:

1) Strengthen monetization. Although product placement initially brought controversy, in the end Vloggers were able to share profits with the platform, and gradually moved from grassroots to professional. The status of top Vloggers can even be on par with celebrities, and their income and sense of accomplishment have been greatly improved;

2) Machine recommendation. Google exports its years of accumulation in machine algorithms to Youtube, which covers the long-tail market and allows the content of niche Vloggers to be exposed, which once again increases the enthusiasm of Vloggers.

To put it simply, Google has done one thing well: motivating Vloggers. In China, it was only recently that short video entrepreneurs and other Internet giants began to really pay attention to incentives. Now at the economic level, various platforms are competing to provide subsidies to Vloggers.

With today’s headlines and TikTokWith the rise of music, algorithm recommendation has gradually been accepted by various platforms as a mainstream content distribution model. These have prepared the conditions for the rise of Vlog in China.

Finally, the popularity of short videos has also provided preliminary education to the market. Chinese mobile Internet users have begun to move from the era of reading words and pictures to the era of reading videos.

3

China does not lack Vlog, but it lacks Vlog platform

For a long time, Vlog has been a relatively niche content form in China. The popularity of Vlog abroad began with Youtube. Later, with the arrival of the mobile wave, apps hosting Vlog appeared such as Snap and Instagram.

Looking back at China, mainstream video websites are still dominated by large-scale film and television dramas; the up owners on station A and station B may be the role closest to Vloggers, but due to their obvious two-dimensional attributes, they still have not successfully entered the mainstream cultural perspective; and the short videos that have appeared recently are also different from Vlogs in terms of content and audience type.

The lack of mainstream Vlog platforms may have led some people to think that Vlog is inherently incompatible with China, and even tried to find reasons from the cultural level. For example, some people thought that Chinese people were not good at expressing themselves, lacked self-confidence, etc.

But in fact, we have never lacked excellent Vloggers. For example, Internet celebrities such as Papi Jiang and Wang Ziru, who were born in the past two years, actually started out as Vloggers—a person, a video, and some stories or opinions.

But later, with the commercialization of personal IP, they were no longer just Vloggers.

There are actually many similar small and medium-sized Vloggers. They are scattered on Weibo, Station A and Station B, mainstream video websites and now short video platforms.

So in fact, you will find that it is not that there are no Vlogs in China, but that there is a lack of a platform like Youtube that brings together outstanding Vlogs.

And this is what Internet giants are vying to do.

What other Vloggers do you know?

[Source: Tencent Ventures]