Where Are You Guys Going?

Numbers. They can be so deceiving. Here are some charts from our latest Global Digital Report.

For those of us living in China, it is no surprise that WeChat is ranked as the favorite social media platform. It is how we communicate with friends, family, colleagues, vendors, customers, neighbors, the government, the police, etc. etc. However, I think a question that is missing in our research is, what is your second favorite social media platform.

Back in the simpler days of 2014, the answer would have been Weibo, hands down. But now, a decade later, Weibo has lost much traction, and Douyin and Xiaohongshu have leapfrogged it and are now neck and neck in the race to become China's second favorite social media platform.

As late as last year, marketers in China would tell you that Douyin and Xiaohongshu and Weibo each had its own purpose. The channel analysis would have gone something like this:

Douyin: entertaining short videos

Xiaohongshu: product recommendations

Weibo: celebrity gossip and real-time news

Before I go on, I should say that I have a theory regarding the power of any social media platforms, and it is this simple formula:

amount of daily UGC x possibility of going viral = popularity of a platform

Since its launch in 2009, Weibo has been notorious for its stingy algorithm. Namely, you could post all you want, but most likely the platform would not give you any exposure beyond those who follow you. Granted, the idea of algorithmic FYP's was not in existence yet, so most people felt like they could post all they want, but going viral was very difficult. However, because there was no other game in town, people kept posting.

Fast forward to last year, 2023. People now had options. If they wanted to post funny videos, they went to Douyin. If they wanted to post advice for travel or shopping, they went to Xiaohongshu. Both platforms rewarded all users equal opportunity to get five minutes of fame through their algorithms, and both have siphoned away much UGC from Weibo. Meanwhile, Weibo stayed its course and still offered a stingy algorithm, so while people still posted to Weibo whenever they witness something newsworthy, they were still not getting rewarded with exposure by the platform.

Fast forward to yesterday, when news of a Chinese-made, record-breaking screen at the Adele concert was talk-of-town on X, I got curious and wanted to see how Chinese people thought about it.

Since it qualified as a newsworthy event, I went on Weibo and searched for 阿黛尔, which is Adele's Chinese name. And, I found... nothing. I thought, wow, maybe Chinese people don't care about record-breaking screens or Adele concerts? But that didn't feel right.

So I went on to Xiaohongshu and searched. Lo and behold, hundreds of articles came up, all posted by Chinese fans who attended the concert. I was a bit disappointed that none of them were talking about the record-breaking big screen, but was glad to see that UGC on Chinese social media was alive and well.

Then I checked Douyin. Almost the same results of hundreds of posts being returned for my search, except, of course, all the content posted was in short video format.

Through this simple exercise, my new channel analysis for Chinese social media is:

Douyin: capture anything you experience in short video format and post

Xiaohongshu: capture anything you experience as still photos or live photos and post them as a carousel

Weibo: why bother posting here anymore?