South China Morning Post
Advertisement
Advertisement
TikTok
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
People take selfies with their food on the second day of the HKTDC Food Expo, International Tea Fair, Home Delights Expo and Beauty and Wellness Expo, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. File photo: SCMP / K. Y. Cheng
Tech

Tencent-backed Kuaishou launches short video app for global audience – and it looks similar to TikTok

  • Kuaishou is China’s second-largest short video app, after ByteDance-owned Douyin
  • Its new offering, Snack Video, closely resembles Douyin’s international counterpart TikTok
TikTok
Yujie Xue
Yujie Xue
Why you can trust SCMP
Tencent Holdings-backed Kuaishou Technology, which operates China’s second-largest short video platform after ByteDance-owned Douyin, has released a new short video app targeting users outside China that closely resembles TikTok, ByteDance’s international version of Douyin.
Snack Video, which is Kuaishou’s second international offering after Kwai, is available on the Google Play app store. Early users and reviewers have pointed out similarities between the new app and TikTok, from its all-black theme to its search function which recommends trending accounts, just like TikTok’s “Discovery” feature.

Snack Video users can post videos up to 57 seconds long, compared to TikTok’s 60 seconds. Like TikTok users, Snack Video users can add friends from their phone books or other social media apps such as Twitter as well as start group chats. It also uses a content recommendation algorithm that shows users videos similar to those they have interacted with, another feature TikTok is known for.

Screengrab of Snack Video's video feed (left) beside TikTok's.
Kuaishou and ByteDance are two of the biggest players in the lucrative short video market, which was worth more than 100 billion yuan (US$14.1 billion) last year in China alone, according to Qianzhan Industry Research Institute. In the first two months of the year, Kuaishou reported that its eponymous app in China had 300 million daily active users, while Douyin reported 400 million daily active users.

“The features and user experience of SnackVideo are more similar to TikTok than Kwai,” said Zhang Yi, chief analyst at consultancy iiMedia Research. “It could be a move for Kuaishou to try to expand its existing user base to the likes of TikTok’s by imitating it.”

Short video apps like TikTok are changing entertainment in China

Kuaishou did not respond to questions about whether Snack Video was launched to compete directly with TikTok, or how the new app’s strategy differs from Kwai, the international version of its Chinese short video app Kuaishou.

Snack Video is designed for "ordinary people who grew up in this community", a spokeswoman said in a statement on Monday.

While the spokeswoman did not comment on when exactly Kuaishou launched the new app, Snack Video’s company registration information shows that it was registered on April 13.

The two companies’ apps have focused on different target demographics in the past, according to Zhang. “Compared to Douyin or TikTok, the users of Kuaishou [and Kwai] typically are lower-income, younger and less educated,” he said.

Despite Kuaishou’s strong performance against Douyin in its domestic market, Zhang was sceptical about Snack Video’s chances of beating TikTok internationally: “The global short video market is quite competitive and relatively mature now. In most countries where short video is popular, it is not a novel thing,” he said. “TikTok’s positioning as not only a short video app but also a strong social media platform could also be considered an overwhelming advantage over Kwai.”

Post