For Douyin, the grass is greener at competitor Little Red Book
Business & Technology
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On Chinaโs internet, zhรฒngcวo ็ง่ โ literally โplanting grassโ โ means posting a product recommendation that entices people to open their wallets, and ByteDanceโs Douyin wants in:
- Imitating the user interface of competitor Xiaohongshu, or โLittle Red Book,โ the social network is expanding from video-only content to photo- and text-based posts.
- Browsing, saving, and buying products is much easier to do with photos than videos; consider Pinterest, where users curate visual inspiration boards and wish lists.
The context: Social ecommerce is huge money for social media platforms, but only if they can manage to close the sale in-app.
- Last year, Douyinโs ecommerce transactions tripled to an eye-popping $77.9 billion โ but four-fifths of that went to third-party sites like JD.com and Alibabaโs Taobao.
- Thatโs why Douyin is taking a page from Xiaohongshu, whose 100 million young, mostly female monthly active users recently powered a secondhand sales boom.
Key question: If Douyinโs photo- and text-centric features succeed in China, will they be adopted by sister app TikTok next? If so, then controversy-ridden Instagram might want to watch its back.
