TikTok for finance: ByteDance’s Douyin finds success in short videos about economics and wealth management

Amid slowing industry growth, Douyin, the local version of TikTok, is finding success in the normally staid category of financial content, potentially giving ByteDance a new source of short video revenue in a market saturated with goofy lip-synching and dance videos.

Douyin is now seeing a thriving community around videos for topics ranging from macroeconomic analysis to personal wealth management. As of last November, 100 million users had engaged with such content and 29 million content creators were making it, according to a source close to the company.

The popularity of financial content saw explosive growth last year. The number of creators making such content ballooned 790 per cent, while the number of people turning a profit from that content grew 133 per cent compared with the previous year, the source said.

While it is unclear whether Douyin has promoted financial content, the sudden popularity of the category on a platform with 600 million daily active users could impact how financial information is created, delivered and consumed in China.

Some of Douyin’s financial content creators have managed to rack up millions of followers. One of these channels, Zhinancaijing, has 7 million followers tuning in to watch the host’s over-the-top delivery of serious subject matter in videos that include cartoonish captions.

“It‘s easy to make entertainment [content], there’s a lot of pretty girls and a lot of handsome boys that can dance around the videos … but it’s very hard to have good financial content,” said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group. “So if you’re good, you’re going to be able to get millions and millions of people watching your platform, and you can make a lot of money, and [the platform] can make a lot of money.”