“I’ve got to admit that I deleted the APP for a while because I didn’t figure out how to use it,” an Amemv user told TMTPost. However, two days later, he downloaded the APP again and studied the secrets by viewing other users’ short videos again and again. Sometimes, he would spend an entire afternoon doing so and never feel bored.

　　However, it was not until this March that Amemv achieved major breakthrough through the “Shower Dance” activity. Amemv’s respondent revealed to TMTPost that their operation team would keep up with the latest trends of popular culture to discover new hot-spot topics, songs or dances among young users.

　　Search index of “Amemv” on search engines

　　“The other days, soon after Lady Gaga released a new solo, Amemv followed up,” an early Amemv users told TMTPost.

　　With the full support from TouTiao, Amemv is in no hurry to pursue profits and achieve commercialization. Compared with profit model, Amemv’s team is more concerned about attracting new users and keeping old users at present.

　　A broadcaster also revealed to TMTPost that Amemv’s Operation Editors had always been exchanging ideas with them to perfect the APP. “Previously, when I made new short videos via Meipai, I have to figure out myself what kind of video I wanted to make. Now on Amemv, however, I have a clear set of game rules to follow,” the broadcaster explained.

　　TouTiao’s ambition towards future

　　As a matter of fact, Zhang claimed that TouTiao would integrate all its resources in short video sector and spend at least 1 billion yuan to reward short video makers during the 2nd TouTiao Account Columnist Conference held last September.

　　On May 16th, TouTiao invested another 1 billion yuan in its another short video APP “Volcano Short Video” and planned to support UGC short video producing with 1 billion yuan in the next twelve months.

　　While Amemv targets mid and high-end users in first and second-tier cities, the group of users Kuaishou had ignored, Moutain Short Video marked Zhang’s ambition to compete directly with Kuaishou over grassroot users in third and fourth-tier cities, though 1 billion yuan will be far from enough to facilitate its competition in the long run.

　　A day earlier, a quotation sheet was widely circulated on the internet, detailing the invitation quotation of different online celebrities. For example, the quotation of MC Tianyou reached as high as 20 million yuan. “Yes, MC Tianyou is to join Volcano Short Video in the near future,” Sun Zhi, product manager of Volcano Short Video, confirmed during the press conference. However, he didn’t reveal the specific business cooperation model.

　　What’s really threatening to other short video platforms, however, is that Moutain Short Video might be added to TouTiao APP some day in the future, whose DAU and MAU has reached 78 million and 175 million as of December 2016.

　　Besides, based on the “Mobile Internet 2017 Spring Report” released by QuestMobile this April, TouTiao’s video service has successfully penetrated half of its user base.

　　It is worth noticing that although TouTiao still ranked 23th among Chinese APPs with over 100 million users as of Q1 2017, its growth rate reached 115.8 per cent year-on-year. In addition, its average monthly usage time has reached 1,021 minutes, only second to WeChat (1,965 minutes).

　　TouTiao’s long average usage time owes much to short videos. However, most short videos on TouTiao are made by TouTiao account owners. In other words, most short videos on TouTiao are PGC-based at present.

　　Based on QuestMobile’s statistics, Miaopai remains the biggest PGC-based short video platform in China.

　　During the World Online Celebrity Conference held last September, Liu Xinzheng, vice president of Miaopai’s mother company Yixia Technology, revealed that UGCs accounted for 90 per cent on Miaopai and popular PGC accounts contributed to 90 per cent of view times.

　　The problem with TouTiao’s PGC model, however, is that once users find the types of contents they are interested in, they will gradually move to platforms specialized in the specific types of contents.

　　At the same time, TouTiao’s success owes much to being listed as one of the pre-installed APPs in new smartphones. However, since Chinese users replace new smartphones every year on average, APPs that depend highly on traffic have to gain users again every year. In this sense, these APPs’ dominance may not be as solid as people expected.