For Douyin, the grass is greener at competitor Little Red Book

Business & Technology

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On Chinaโ€™s internet, zhรฒngcวŽo ็ง่‰ โ€” literally โ€œplanting grassโ€ โ€” means posting a product recommendation that entices people to open their wallets, and ByteDanceโ€™s Douyin wants in:

  • Imitating the user interface of competitor Xiaohongshu, or โ€œLittle 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, Douyinโ€™s 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 Alibabaโ€™s Taobao.
  • Thatโ€™s 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 Douyinโ€™s 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.