User:Bkenny44/Douyin

Douyin is a short-form video app owned by ByteDance. Launched in September 2016 under the original name A.me before rebranding to Douyin in December 2016, Douyin is primarily used for creating and sharing short videos in genres such as lip-sync, comedy and viral challenges.

Douyin is only available for download in mainland China; its international sister app TikTok was launched in 2017 exclusively in markets outside China. The two apps have similar user interface and features but no access to each other's content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available.

The app is operated as part of a distinct business unit within ByteDance under the Douyin name, alongside the parent company's five other business units: TikTok, Dali Education, Lark, BytePlus and Nuverse. The Douyin unit oversees the company's ad-powered content businesses in China.

As of May 2021, Douyin is the top short-video app in the Chinese market by monthly active users.

Douyin has been criticized for its censorship and surveillance of the app's users in compliance with Chinese government policies that apply to all local content platforms.

Development, launch and early growth
Douyin was launched in September 2016 after being developed by a team at ByteDance made up of fewer than ten people. The team was led by Ren Lifeng, who later became the head of ByteDance's Xigua Video. The app was originally called A.me, a name that was decided upon following A/B testing. The app held a launch event to attract users, at which each participant received a 50-yuan JD.com gift card. In December 2016, the name of the app was changed from A.me to Douyin, after proposed names such as "Huangyin" and "Douka" were rejected internally.

In order to encourage a younger audience, Douyin's early developers devised video categories that emphasized themes of food, drink and leisure, such as martial arts, fitness, travel, wine, painting, music and dance.

Douyin's user base in China surged in the second half of 2017, becoming a mainstream phenomenon following the first season of the rap competition reality show The Rap of China. Within a year from its launch, the app had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day.

TikTok was launched in September 2017 as an international version of Douyin. In November 2017, ByteDance acquired rival short video app Musical.ly for approximately $1 billion and merged its existing user base and data into TikTok in August 2018, creating a single, larger video community.

Expansion
In March 2018, Kelly Zhang was appointed CEO of Douyin. As CEO, Zhang worked to build Douyin's presence in Chinese cities by developing partnerships with international luxury fashion and sports brands.

Tencent's WeChat platform has been accused of blocking Douyin's videos. In April 2018, Douyin sued Tencent and accused it of spreading false and damaging information on its WeChat platform, demanding CN¥1 million in compensation and an apology. In June 2018, Tencent filed a lawsuit against Toutiao and Douyin in a Beijing court, alleging they had repeatedly defamed Tencent with negative news and damaged its reputation, seeking a nominal sum of CN¥1 in compensation and a public apology. In response, Toutiao filed a complaint the following day against Tencent for allegedly unfair competition and asking for CN¥90 million in economic losses.

In July 2018, Douyin initiated a program to begin certifying multi-channel networks (MCNs) to operate on its platform. Before then, Douyin had reportedly banned MCNs from signing contracts with popular influencers on the app, instead preferring to sign direct exclusive contracts with influencers with over 200,000 fans. At the same time, Douyin launched Xingtu, or "Star Map Platform," a digital marketing platform for matching brands and MCNs with content creators with large fanbases.

In January 2019, Musical.ly founder Alex Zhu was brought on to head Douyin, nominally reporting to Kelly Zhang. In June of that same year, Zhu left Douyin to head TikTok instead, while Zhang returned to active leadership of Douyin.

Douyin's popularity grew, and it reached 400 million daily active users in January 2020. A few months later, it reported over 600 million daily active users in September 2020. At the time, Douyin CEO Kelly Zhang announced that over 22 million creators made more than 41.7 billion yuan ($6.15 billion) on the platform that year.

Focus on e-commerce and other areas
Douyin Pay launched in January 2021, offering Douyin's own third-party payment service for the first time and paving the way for e-commerce on the app.

In February 2021, Kelly Zhang also announced plans to increase their investment in the app's search capabilities.

In March 2021, Douyin launched "flagship stores" for companies with brand accounts on the app, allowing these brands to sell their products directly on the app rather than directing users to third-party platforms such as JD.com, Tmall and Taobao. Within weeks of launching this feature, at least 220 domestic and international brands opened flagship stores on the app. In May 2021, JD.com opened its own flagship store on the app, giving Douyin users in-app access to the e-commerce company's entire collection of products.

In September 2021, Douyin announced a policy to protect younger users on the app, restricting those under the age of 14 years old to 40 minutes of use per day, and limiting the hours of use to between 6am to 10pm.

In January 2022, Douyin announced a campaign to encourage the app's live-streamers to promote "traditional culture." According to the announcement, users who live-stream content in the categories of folk songs, bel canto, national instruments, Western instruments, ethnic dance, classical dance and contemporary dance could apply to receive cash rewards and other preferential treatment.

In February 2022, Douyin along with other local social media platforms announced initiatives to limit misinformation and inappropriate content, following increased interest in the war in Ukraine. At the time, the platform announced it had removed more than 3,500 videos and 12,100 comments related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Basic interface
Douyin's basic interface for watching videos consists of three main tabs: "Videos in the same city," "Following" and "Recommendation." The default mode is "Recommendation," in which content is selected based on Douyin's recommendation algorithm. In contrast to other digital media platforms where content is mainly distributed through users' social networks, Douyin's content distribution relies more heavily on its algorithm, while minimizing socialization between users.

Content producers can add digital stickers, hashtags, filters and background music to their videos. The app makes data-based predictions and recommends which of these added elements are most likely to help a video reach higher viewership. Many use external video editing apps such as ByteDance's Jianying to streamline content production.

Other features
Beyond short video, Douyin's other prominent features include e-commerce, gaming and livestreaming. In China, Douyin's livestreaming and short-video campaigns are widely used by corporate brands.

In April 2018, an addiction-reduction feature was added to Douyin. This encouraged users to take a break every 90 minutes.

It was reported that Douyin has used facial recognition technology to monitor live streams, report users potentially violating the app's content guidelines and limit the ability of underage users, foreigners and people speaking a language other than Mandarin to broadcast on the app. The app also reportedly uses speech and text recognition to detect content the Chinese government considers vulgar or inappropriate.

In April 2021, Douyin launched a new feature called dou yi dou (roughly, "shake it"), which allows users to find new friends by shaking their phones and identifying others shaking their phones at the same time in their vicinity.

Like most Chinese content platforms, Douyin has an in-house moderation team to comply with the Chinese government's strict censorship policies, which prohibit the distribution of content it considers vulgar or inappropriate. In 2021, Douyin was fined "tens of thousands of yuan" for spreading what China's National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications called "obscene, pornographic and vulgar information," including smoking and "sexual provocation." The government's statement also pointed to some of the app's users encouraging others to visit other platforms "to conduct activities that violate law and regulations."

In June 2021, Douyin launched a web version, with similar functionality to the mobile version. According to the South China Morning Post, the move to extend Douyin's reach to desktop users was motivated by the mobile version's user base approaching the total number of smartphone users in China.

Use by brands
Many corporate brands in China use Douyin's e-commerce functionality, which led to the sale of more than 10 billion products in the year ending in April 2021 and a GMV that more than tripled during that period. According to Campaign, Douyin is the top short-video platform in the Chinese market in terms of value for brands. The publication singled out KFC as a large brand that has used Douyin's e-commerce platform successfully, noting that KFC used creative short videos on the app to surpass McDonald's, its main competitor.

Brands with a noteworthy presence on Douyin within the fashion and beauty industry include luxury fashion houses such as Dior, Burberry and Prada, cosmetics brands such as Maybelline and Sephora and jewelery brands such as Chow Tai Fook.

Partnerships
Douyin has partnered with multiple music companies, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Apple Music and others, to obtain the rights to their music libraries. Beyond expanding Douyin's music library, one of the other goals of these partnerships is to fight against music piracy.

On April 23, 2020, Douyin reached an official partnership deal with the Spanish professional football league La Liga, becoming the league's official social media partner. The move came after several Spanish football clubs established a presence on Douyin, including FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid RCD Espanyol, Valencia CF and Real Sociedad.

Headquarters
During the time Douyin was developed and at the time of its launch in 2016, the app's small team was based at ByteDance's main location at AVIC Plaza in Beijing. Soon thereafter, due to a shortage of workstations for employees, Douyin's operations moved one kilometer away to the China Satellite Communication building (also known as "Zhongweitong") along with ByteDance's other short video products Toutiao and Xigua Video. In 2018, again due to lack of space following a period of rapid growth, Douyin's operations moved from Zhongweitong to the Zijin Building, remaining in the Zhongguancun technology hub within Beijing's Haidian District.

Leadership
Douyin is led by Kelly Zhang. She has been credited with helping create and launch Douyin in 2016 and contributing to its rapid growth.