What are Douyin and Bilibili, exactly?

[vellocet]

As a part of my effort to be more active in Chinese circles, I've installed Douyin and Bilibili.  However I can't quite grasp what they're all about.  Douyin appears to be an endless series of short videos, while Bilibili seems to be a way to follow people who make videos.  Is this correct?  What's the intended way of using these programs?

 

Douyin has a national and local city-level.  We had a hailstorm today so I'd expect  the local stuff to be full of hail videos.  But there's just a bunch of girls walking around town, people eating hotpot and lip syncing to music.

 

Any other tips on what do to with these?  Recommended people to follow, etc.  Any other social media programs that would be good?

[Shelley]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilibili

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok

 

Apparently Douyin is also known as TikToc.

 

I know nothing about them but found these links out of curiosity, hope they help.

[vellocet]

I had really hoped for an "insider" view instead of the standard Wikipedia articles.  ?

[Shelley]

Fair enough, just thought it would be a start.

[歐博思]

1 hour ago, vellocet said:

Douyin has a national and local city-level.  We had a hailstorm today so I'd expect  the local stuff to be full of hail videos.  But there's just a bunch of girls walking around town, people eating hotpot and lip syncing to music.

You prettty much covered it. Think Vine 2.0. It's a way to take many quick glances into the social media hive-mind. Did you see the cat videos??

 

1 hour ago, vellocet said:

while Bilibili seems to be a way to follow people who make videos

I only just now knew that Bilibili has a 'livestream' section. Before, Bilibili was my go-to website for searching Chinese TV shows or movies. The livestream section seems pretty par for the course as compared to other livestream sites, like Twitch for example.

 

Typically you might find people eating and talking to their audience, exploring a city/some event, giving social commentary, playing video games, sexy dancing, playing musical instruments, the list goes on and on. Viewers can give donations to their favorite streamers, and some really popular streamers can even make a living as a "social media influencer."

[anonymoose]

3 hours ago, vellocet said:

We had a hailstorm today

 

Off topic, but yes, I just arrived in Wenzhou and witnessed that hailstorm as well. Certainly the largest hailstones I've ever seen.

[vellocet]

I don't know what Vine is.  So Bilibili is like Tudou but with livestreaming?  

 

Any tips about the interface, how to do things, what people usually expect from these services?  

[roddy]

6 hours ago, vellocet said:

We had a hailstorm today

 

2 hours ago, anonymoose said:

I just arrived in Wenzhou and witnessed that hailstorm as well.

Cool, Wenzhou meetup! 

[mouse]

1 hour ago, vellocet said:

I don't know what Vine is.  

 

 

Vine was a site/app where users uploaded six second videos. Usually they were little jokes or people showing off in some way.

 

1 hour ago, vellocet said:

So Bilibili is like Tudou but with livestreaming?  

 

Yes.

[Demonic_Duck]

If you have a VPN and 23 minutes to spare, here's a pretty comprehensive (and entertaining) video about the phenomenon that is TikTok:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lqI9mGSPRWI

 

Note that TikTok is technically a separate product from Douyin, both from Chinese company Bytedance (字节跳动). However, their functionality is basically identical - the only major difference is the content available. The target demographic (mainly kids) is also the same.

 

As for Bilibili, one of its main claims to fame is as the popularizer of the bullet screen (弹幕): a "feature" where you can leave comments on your favorite video that display to other users as they're watching. More accurately, it's where you're watching your favorite show and the entire screen fills up with (mostly spam) comments left by other users. This became so popular that many other Chinese video sharing sites later emulated the feature.

[mackie1402]

Douyin is getting more and more popular with companies advertising products and services now. A lot of the short clips of people using products have a link to Taobao, too. But yeah, think of short videos trending (up to 30 seconds usually), then people just repeating them and copying them. It's pretty common for groups of people dancing on it, copying memes online, and companies trying to sell products such as English teaching companies with foreigners teaching "10 ways to say 'good' in English" etc. 

 

[roddy]

6 hours ago, Demonic_Duck said:

...it's where you're watching your favorite show and the entire screen fills up with (mostly spam) comments left by other users. This became so popular that many other Chinese video sharing sites later emulated the feature.

 

The history of the internet, writ small. 

[MingY]

Here is what I understand:

 

Althought they both are video web, they're actually grown by 2 different paths.

 

Bilibili was inspire by Japanese video website Niconico, (or Acfun, but that's different story), they sharing very similar history - both kind of pirate web at first and become morer and more official. Main target 10-30 age teens who interst Japanese anime, video game, movie and all other stuff teens might intersted. Bullet comments system act as an 'emotion amplifier'. I personlly use Bilibili to help my study(for real) and it is really helpful.

 

Douyin, on the other hand, more like youtube branch, target all age people and have more local culture stuff. Music, baybe, cat, sprots, you name it. Short, Fast, Joy, Easy get in.

[ChTTay]

Got disagree about the target demographic being kids. Douyin is a new way to be addicted to your phone. I see so many people just mindlessly flicking through videos on that. I work with a lot of female Chinese under the age of 40 and they’re all about douyin. Can’t get enough of both putting videos up and watching them. 

 

You can also credit douyin with certain songs being popular. Once the platform puts them up as backing for videos they tend to take off (if they’re catchy in the first place). If you search QQ music you can find a playlist that keeps track of the top songs. My Chinese friend’s brother had a playlist on in his car that was considered very 火 ... it was just a CD of tracks used from douyin. 

 

From what I’ve seen there are a growing number of foreigners who play up to being a foreigner who speaks Chinese on there. There are some funny sketches but mostly I think it’s pretty mindless content. 

[Tutuisadog]

Douyin is TikTok(if you enjoy it) and bilibili is basically the YouTube in China. People post short videos on douyin or long videos on bilibili, follow whoever seems interesting to you..