As TikTok shortens attention spans, China’s Netflix-like platforms struggle to keep viewers
- China’s streaming platforms have accused short video apps of hurting their business by letting users post edited clips of movies and TV shows that can be watched for free
- With hefty content costs, low subscription prices and a competitive market, the path to profitability remains unclear for China’s long form video sites, analysts say
When Wu Qi was under a coronavirus lockdown in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong early last year, he started posting one-minute videos made from clips of blockbuster movies and TV shows on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Wu added narrative text to the screen, summarising the story, and soon won over thousands of followers. Then on the eighth day, one video clip became a “minor hit” and his followers exploded.
“After waking up one morning, I saw that I had more than 10,000 followers,” Wu wrote in a social media post. As the videos continued to attract more followers and rack up tens of millions of views, he started to monetise the traffic by doing promotions and selling products in live streams.
He even started recruiting students interested in producing short videos, offering them paid tuition based on his own experience. His account now has more than two million followers, which brings him a monthly income of over 20,000 yuan (US$3,128).
Wu is one of thousands of uploaders on China’s short video platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou, specialising in editing video clips from hit shows such as Game of Thrones.
It is a proven path to quick popularity and profits – repackaging the most eye-catching scenes or recapping complete plots of movies in a few minutes to appeal an audience with short attention spans.