MTI外刊阅读精选抖音异军突起挑战中国互联网巨头.docx
MTI外刊阅读精选抖音异军突起挑战中国互联网巨头Upstart short-video app Douyin challenges Chinas tech giantsLast May, a beef between two of Chinas most influential tech entrepreneurs spilled on to social media.今年 5月,中国两位重量级科技企业家的口水战蔓延到了社交媒体上。In a post celebrating record downloads of his short video app Douyin, founder Zhang Yiming accused Tencents messaging service WeChat of “plagiarising” Douyins content. Tencents Pony Ma shot back that Mr Zhangs comments were “defamatory”. The two companies have gone further, filing competing lawsuits against each other over content and data.在一条庆祝短视频应用抖音(Douyin)下载量创纪录的帖子中,抖音创始人张一鸣指责腾讯(Tencent)的即时通讯应用微信(Weixin)“抄袭”抖音内容。腾讯的马化腾(Pony Ma)反击称,张一鸣的言论是“诽谤”。不光如此,两家公司还就内容和数据问题向法庭互相起诉了对方。Few outside of China may have heard of Mr Yiming or his company. But the group, with its 300m-plus monthly users, is the rare start-up with a shot at challenging the countrys biggest tech companies.中国以外很少有人听说过张一鸣或其公司,但这家月活跃用户超过 3亿的公司,是为数不多敢于挑战中国最大几家科技公司的初创企业。The Douyin app was the most downloaded on Apples iOS platform in China for the first three months of this year, according to QuestMobile, a research company.研究公司贵士移动(QuestMobile)的数据显示,今年前三个月,抖音是苹果 iOS平台在中国下载量最大的 app。But just as important, Douyin has not taken money from Tencent or Alibaba, two companies that have become Asias biggest dealmakers through acquisitions of regional tech businesses and financial stakes in rising start-ups. Unlike traditional investors, whose sole goal is typically to secure the best return, Chinas big tech groups are often looking to co-opt fast-rising services into their ecosystems in a zero-sum game to dominate the internet.同样重要的是,抖音并未从腾讯或阿里巴巴(Alibaba)获得投资。通过并购本地区科技企业以及入股新兴的初创公司,腾讯和阿里巴巴已成为亚洲最大的收购交易者。传统投资者唯一的目标通常是确保获得最佳回报,而中国这两大科技集团往往希望在零和博弈中将迅速崛起的应用服务纳入自己的生态系统,以图在互联网占据主导地位。Douyin was launched in 2016 by Bytedance, a Beijing-based software company that also owns Toutiao, Chinas most popular news aggregator. It enables users mostly urban millennials to upload and browse short clips of everything from stunts to music videos, making it a mix of YouTube and Vine, the Twitter-owned short-video platform that closed in 2016.抖音由北京字节跳动科技有限公司(Bytedance)于 2016年推出,该软件公司旗下还拥有中国人气极高的新闻聚合应用“今日头条”(Toutiao)。抖音可以让用户(主要是城市千禧一代)上传和浏览从搞怪到音乐视频等五花八门的短片,使其成为 YouTube与 Vine(Twitter旗下已于 2016年关闭的短视频平台)的混合体。With its vast, youthful base of users, the platform is also an advertisers dream and a potent force in ecommerce.因为拥有庞大的年轻用户群体,抖音这一平台也成为广告商的梦想之地和电子商务领域的一股强大力量。“Douyins biggest selling point is its ability to make things go viral and that has a substantial influence directing traffic to ecommerce,” said Qu Kai, founder of tech investment consultancy Beijing Forty-two Chapters Technology.科技投资咨询公司北京四十二章经科技有限公司(Beijing Forty-two Chapters Technology)创始人曲凯表示:“抖音最大的卖点在于其引爆热点的能力,这对电商流量导入具有重大影响。”Tencent and Alibaba control ubiquitous chat and payment platforms. Tencents messaging service hosts 1bn-plus accounts, and smaller tech groups rely on it to reach users. Online transactions in China commonly go through Alipay, the payments company that is closely linked to Alibaba and says it has 500m users.腾讯和阿里巴巴基本上控制着在中国非常普及的聊天和支付平台。腾讯的即时通讯服务拥有逾 10亿账户,规模较小的科技公司要依靠它来获得用户。中国的在线交易通常通过支付宝(Alipay)进行,这家与阿里巴巴密切关联的支付公司号称拥有 5亿用户。This means that promising Chinese tech start-ups find it hard to exist outside of Alibaba and Tencent. But the challenge of tapping into the platforms is that the young groups often find themselves in a subordinate position to the two giants, which have a combined market cap in excess of $1tn.这意味着,有发展前景的中国科技初创企业很难在阿里巴巴和腾讯的生态系统之外生存。但接入这些平台的挑战在于,年轻企业往往会发现自身处于从属这两大巨头的位置。两家巨头市值合计超过 1万亿美元。Douyin and Bytedance have maintained their independence largely thanks to $2.8bn of funding from global investors such as Sequoia and Susquehanna International Group.抖音与字节跳动之所以能够保持独立,很大程度上得益于来自红杉(Sequoia)、海纳国际集团(SIG)等全球投资者的 28亿美元融资。“Douyin is the biggest in social right now and one of the few major platforms thats not owned or partially owned by Tencent or Alibaba,” said Ron Cao, a partner at venture capital firm Sky9 Capital and an investor in Bytedance.字节跳动的投资者之一、风投公司云九资本(Sky9 Capital)合伙人曹大容(Ron Cao)表示,抖音是中国为数不多既不属于、也不部分属于腾讯或阿里巴巴的主要平台之一。The company also has its own messaging service, allowing it to bypass its bigger rivals chat platforms.该公司还拥有自己的即时通讯服务,使其可以绕过更大竞争对手的聊天平台。Douyins growing popularity has sparked a fierce competition with Tencent, which has its own popular streaming app and blocks most Douyin videos from its ubiquitous messaging app, WeChat.抖音日渐高涨的人气引发了其与腾讯的激烈竞争,后者也拥有颇受欢迎的流媒体 app,并在微信中屏蔽了大部分抖音视频。Alibaba and Tencent have homed in on video streaming to pull users to their platforms. Chinas top four short-video platforms had 582m users at the end of March, according to QuestMobile equivalent to more than three-quarters of the countrys mobile internet users.阿里巴巴和腾讯已经在发力视频流媒体,希望将用户吸引至自家平台。贵士移动的数据显示,截至 3月底,中国前四大短视频平台拥有 5.82亿用户超过了中国移动互联网用户的四分之三。This has implications for the Chinese online retail sector, a market valued at Rmb7.18tn ($1.1tn) in 2017, according to the countrys commerce ministry.这对中国在线零售行业意义重大。中国商务部的数据显示,2017年,中国在线零售市场规模估计达到 7.18万亿元人民币(合 1.1万亿美元)。Ecommerce groups are also increasingly reliant on the influence of internet celebrities to recommend their products.电商集团也日益依赖网络红人推荐商品。Douyin has used a stable of so-called key opinion leaders (KOLs) akin to the “influencers” that are popular on Instagram and YouTube to become a force in Chinese ecommerce.凭借一批所谓的“关键意见领袖”(KOL)类似于在Instagram和 YouTube上受欢迎的“影响者”(influencer)抖音成为了中国电商领域的一支力量。“Douyin could transform ecommerce because of people selling stuff through short videos,” said Shaun Rein, managing director for market consultancy CMR China. “The nature of entertainment and ecommerce are merging.”中国市场研究集团(CMR China)的董事总经理雷小山(Shaun Rein)表示:“由于人们能通过短视频销售东西,抖音可能给电子商务领域带来变化。娱乐和电子商务在性质上正在融合。”Mr Rein said many of his retail clients were thinking of ways to market to savvy Chinese buyers beyond simply opening an online shop on Taobao, Alibabas ecommerce platform where many of Douyins most popular stars also sell products.雷小山说,他的许多零售业客户正在考虑通过新途径向精明的中国买家推销商品,而不仅仅是在淘宝网(Taobao)上开店,后者是阿里巴巴的电子商务平台,许多最受欢迎的抖音红人也在淘宝上售卖产品。“I think that the paradigm of retail could shift away from stores where there isnt always trust to a KOL model that builds a relationship with followers,” he said.他说:“我认为,零售模式可能会从那些并不总是存在信任的商店转移到依靠与粉丝建立关系的网红的模式。”One Douyin KOL is 21-year-old university student Luo Xi. Online, he is best known for sharing K-pop inspired videos of himself and his girlfriend to his 3.4m followers, who buy outfits branded Rossikishop, his personal fashion label.21岁的大学生罗西是抖音上的一位网红,他以向 340万粉丝分享受韩国流行音乐启发制作的自己和女朋友的视频而在网上闻名,粉丝们会购买带有他个人时尚标签 Rossikishop的衣服。“On Douyin, every person can share or record their own beautiful life,” said Mr Luo, who added he had met several close friends through the video streaming platform and maintained daily correspondence with fans through the platforms messaging function.“在抖音上,每个人都可以分享或记录自己美好的生活,”罗西说。他还说自己通过这个视频流媒体平台结识了几个好友,并通过该平台的消息功能与粉丝保持日常交流。Last year, Douyin bought American lip-syncing app Musical.ly for $1bn to bring its short-video concept to the US