Chapter 424: Chapter 239: Becoming an Influencer Big Shot! A Comedian Seeks Advice

The news Chen Jincheng was reading was about Kuaishou’s recent negotiations with ACFun, which resulted in a full acquisition.

Many people might not have been familiar with ACFun, but the company had an enormous impact on the internet as a whole, and on short-video platforms in particular.

He had actually Forgotten about this.

’Kuaishou must have already integrated ACFun’s resources by now. They’ll soon be rolling out ACFun’s unique bullet-comment feature and a new algorithm based on its special data.

This will allow Kuaishou’s videos to interact with each other, and the bullet comments will create a feeling of moments overlapping across time.

Later, many people who watch videos will turn on the bullet comments and see ones from the past. Some will even leave their mark, like: "So-and-so, officially watching on Month Day, Year!"

Later, others will continue the chain: "So-and-so, officially watching on Month Day, Year."

Essentially, bullet comments from any given day could be seen by viewers in the future.

This bullet-comment feature will eventually become standard on nearly every video platform, but almost no one will know that it was originally an innovation from ACFun, the company Kuaishou acquired.

Unfortunately, the internet is a place of rampant imitation. It won’t be long before this feature is copied by every other platform out there.

Of course, this feature won’t be what allows Kuaishou’s daily active users to temporarily surpass Tiao Yin’s in 2019. The key will be ACFun’s special data algorithm, which Kuaishou will use to overhaul its own recommendation system.

This algorithmic reform is so revolutionary that even Tiao Yin will Later be forced to copy it. If they don’t, Kuaishou might leave them in the dust.

And it’s precisely this special algorithm that will cause the once-dominant, top-tier influencers to Later fade into obscurity, becoming irrelevant.

Anyone who used Tiao Yin before 2019 should remember how the recommendations worked. Every time you opened the app, it would inevitably push videos from the biggest influencers, even if you hadn’t followed, liked, or commented on them. This was especially true for the PK streamers you didn’t want to see. The app would insist on recommending them, making the experience incredibly annoying.

That was the fundamental limitation of the old recommendation algorithm.

Kuaishou was the same way.

At the time, both platforms had a competitive system for traffic allocation, but influencers with large fan bases always had the upper hand. Moreover, the platforms also used a three-day "trending" algorithm that consistently prioritized videos from influencers who already had a lot of fans and were currently popular.

This happened even if their videos had no originality, creativity, substance, or entertainment value whatsoever.

To put it simply, it was impossible for new creators to break through. The environment lacked competition and had become completely stagnant.

Later, when Kuaishou’s new algorithm comes out, it will segment the traffic. Thirty percent of traffic will still be allocated using the old algorithm, reserved for already established influencers. The remaining seventy percent, however, will be distributed randomly under the new algorithm, giving more newcomers a chance to break through.

This is what will, Later, lead to an era where influencers from all walks of life can flourish, and it will also free the platform from being held hostage by its biggest stars.

The difference is simple. Before Tiao Yin also adopts this algorithm, top-tier influencers are incredibly arrogant during their livestreams. They constantly threaten the platform, saying things like, "I’m going to have a talk with Tiao Yin tomorrow," or "I’ll make Tiao Yin do what I want." Later, the dynamic will completely flip. Tiao Yin will be able to ban these top creators at will, and for every one they ban, the algorithm can instantly create a new star to take their place.

Even the biggest influencers will have to beg, "Daddy Tiao Yin, please have mercy."

Meanwhile, that seventy percent of traffic will create an increasing number of viral influencers. These newly viral creators will then be moved into the thirty percent traffic pool. As the number of established influencers in that thirty-percent bracket grows, the traffic allocated to each one of them will inevitably shrink.

Those old-school, top-tier influencers who fail to innovate, create new content, or keep up with user demands will slowly fade into obscurity, even if they have twenty million fans.

But all of that will come after. It must be admitted that Kuaishou’s acquisition of ACFun will lead to a period of traffic growth that will, for a time, allow it to surpass Tiao Yin.

It will mark the beginning of an era where Kuaishou and Tiao Yin are two titans clashing for dominance.

Around this time, Kuaishou will also begin aggressively poaching all sorts of creators and MCNs from Tiao Yin, sparking a mass exodus of influencers. Of course, the majority of those jumping ship will be the lower-tier creators who see it as their chance to finally make it big.

For a while, this will lead to a renaissance of creative content on Kuaishou.

What’s more, during that period, the daily active user overlap between Tiao Yin and Kuaishou will be as high as 180 million people.

In other words, Kuaishou’s ability to surpass Tiao Yin’s traffic will be built on siphoning away a huge number of users from Tiao Yin itself.

Those 180 million daily active users will be using both Tiao Yin and Kuaishou.

You could say that if Tiao Yin hadn’t developed its e-commerce features—the shopping cart function—it might have actually been eliminated during this phase.

But then, as luck would have it, Tiao Yin will quickly run into trouble with its shoppable videos, leading to a major scandal involving its video ads.

At almost the exact same time, Penguin will seize the opportunity to launch its second major offensive against Tiao Yin. This time, all of Penguin’s subsidiary divisions will coordinate to release over a dozen short-video apps, like HaPi and Yoo. Combined with the revival of Penguin’s own Weishi, they will launch a brutal siege against Tiao Yin.

This, in turn, will give Kuaishou the time it needs to catch up on the e-commerce front. Later, they’ll even get lucky and cultivate a mega-influencer like Lion King.

This period will be one of absolute crisis for Tiao Yin. Facing aggressive poaching from Weishi, many people will jump ship, including some of Tiao Yin’s top-tier influencers.

Many will even think that Tiao Yin is about to be crushed. After all, given Penguin’s track record and the sheer scale of this attack, it seems certain that Tiao Yin, like all the companies that previously stood in Penguin’s way, will be unable to hold its ground.

At that time, Penguin’s ecosystem will have 600 million daily active users!

But the reality is that Weishi will fail to properly assess its own standing. It will operate as if it *is* Penguin, but in the end, it will be completely unable to compete with Tiao Yin. The supposedly fierce siege will end up posing very little threat.

Still, it will definitely give Tiao Yin a good scare at the outset.