With concerts and pop stars, Tencent’s Channels emerges as big challenger to short video giants Douyin, Kuaishou
- Tencent has been organising online concerts featuring major stars from the 1990s and 2000s, such as Lo Ta-yu, Jay Chou and Westlife
- The growing popularity of WeChat’s Channels could shake up the Chinese short video market, which has been led by ByteDance’s Douyin
Tencent Holdings, China’s most valuable tech giant, has made significant inroads in its bid to attract a wider audience for short videos on its super app WeChat, as it seeks to challenge the dominance of TikTok’s Chinese version, Douyin, and the country’s second largest player, Kuaishou.
The Shenzhen-based company said in its latest quarterly report that the volume of videos and total viewing time on Channels, its WeChat-based short-video platform, saw “significant growth”, thanks to more entertainment programming and improved algorithms.
The company has also been organising online concerts featuring major stars, including Taiwanese Mandopop singer Lo Ta-yu, whose event on Channels last weekend drew 42 million unique viewers, according to Tencent.
Data from Chinese analytic firm iiMedia Research showed that WeChat’s video service has been growing rapidly in the past six months on the back of more concerts and entertainment content that draws on the resources of Tencent’s music arm.