Bilibili is transforming into China’s YouTube as dedicated ‘uploaders’ look beyond niche anime, comics and games
- Users known as ‘uploaders’ are the lifeblood of Bilibili, helping it maintain appeal among avid fans as Tencent Video, iQiyi and Youku chase films and TV shows
- Content creators who have stuck with Bilibili say it is because of its supportive community and more interactive features
Given its origin as a niche streaming site for fans of anime comics and games (ACG), Bilibili’s success has been a surprise for many. But behind the company’s rapid rise is a group of dedicated users known as “uploaders” who create content for the platform, helping turn it into China’s YouTube.
A unique combination of original features and an avid fan base has helped make Bilibili the go-to platform for many content creators. This has made the company a big success, both with its users and with Wall Street. Since going public on the Nasdaq in early 2018, Bilibili’s share price has increased more than tenfold. The Shanghai-based company is now seeking to further capitalise on its success by raising US$3 billion with a second listing in Hong Kong, joining other Chinese tech firms that have recently sought to tap into investors’ appetite for such stocks.
The company’s growth does not mean profit, however. Bilibili has been in the red for 13 consecutive quarters, with losses of 844 million yuan (US$130.7 million) in the fourth quarter, more than twice the losses from a year earlier. For the company’s backers – which include Sony, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, the owner of the South China Morning Post – burning cash in the pursuit of new users and content is just part of betting on China’s future. The average Bilibili user is just 21 years old, potentially giving it an advantage for future growth in a country with a median age approaching 40.
Among these young, dedicated users is Chen Pinsen, an uploader who started in 2016, when he was still in high school. On the day he turned 17, he used a 30-yuan microphone to create a video tutorial that he later published on Bilibili.
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“I wanted to add something to my birthday and do something meaningful,” Chen said.
His first video initially drew fewer than a hundred views, but it has now been watched more than 460,000 times. Now in his final year at the Beijing Film Academy, Chen has nearly 500,000 followers on Bilibili, where he regularly publishes videos sharing his knowledge about filmmaking.
Bilibili has about 1.9 million monthly active uploaders like Chen, who are known as “up zhu”, a Chinese term similar to “YouTuber”. While Tencent Video, Baidu’s iQiyi and Alibaba’s Youku, China’s three biggest video streaming sites, are locked in an expensive war over exclusive films and television series, Bilibili is building on its reputation as a home for anime fans to become a vibrant community for all kinds of video creators and users.
The platform’s unique culture has turned out to be an asset, and it was able to grow without the commercial attachments of larger video streamers. Bilibili’s success was also aided by its signature feature called “bullet chat”, or danmu, which are comments that fly across the screen while videos are playing. This helped make the platform more interactive, increasing the appeal for users and content creators alike.
This is why Chen decided to stick with Bilibili over other platforms. Early on, Chen also uploaded his videos to Youku, where he had more followers, but the experience of interacting with people on Bilibili was so much better that he later gave up on Alibaba’s platform.
“You certainly want to gain something from creating. It could be money or some kind of relationship that keeps you going,” Chen said. “Nobody was willing to leave comments on [my videos on] Youku, but many people on Bilibili are encouraging.”
That supportive community has made Bilibili a positive environment for uploaders.
“It’s quite friendly for content creators,” said Zake Zhang, a Shenzhen-based product manager at a tech company.
Zhang produces videos about personal development and vlogs for his Bilibili channel with 53,000 followers. He said Bilibili uploaders, like all content creators, sometimes suffer verbal attacks, but fans defend them. “There’s this culture where people protect things they like,” Zhang said.
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After its US listing, Bilibili accelerated this transition, known as “breaking out of the circle”. So far, the company is seeing success.
The company is now entering a “virtuous cycle”, according to Founder Securities analyst Yan Renwen, who wrote in an earlier research note that the Bilibili is gaining more quality uploaders that help increase the platform’s commercial value, further boosting its influence.
This is a significant change from when Chen joined the site five years ago. Bilibili is now a mainstream entertainment destination.
As Bilibili tries to appeal to a broad spectrum of viewers, its content is expanding from ACG culture into areas like lifestyle, education and career development.
One of Bilibili’s popular uploaders in 2020 was Luo Xiang, a criminal law professor at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, who was born in 1977. Luo now has more than 10 million followers on Bilibili since becoming known for his lectures on Chinese criminal law.
For many uploaders, including Chen, the sense of recognition is a better reward than financial gain. When he first joined Bilibili in 2016, the website had about 100,000 uploaders, mainly individuals, and now his department at the university is trying to open an account.
“Bilibili broke out of its circle after all,” Chen said.
